About 1825 the land on the east side of Fifth Avenue from Forty-second to Forty-fourth Streets belonged to Isaac Burr, whose estate extended along the old Middle Road.  The present Seymour Building at the north-east corner of Forty-second Street is on the site formerly occupied by the home of Levi P. Morton, and before that by the Hamilton Hotel.  Near the adjoining corner to the north is No. 511, the late residence of Mr. Richard T. Wilson, Jr.  That number was once the home of “Boss” Tweed.  Arrested for robbing the city, Tweed asked permission to return to his house for clothes.  While policemen were guarding the Fifth Avenue entrance he escaped through a rear alley, made his way to his yacht in the East River, and sailed to Spain.  Today unsightly advertising signs, thorns in the flesh of the Fifth Avenue Association, disfigure the north-west corner of Forty-second Street.  Behind the signs there is an office building.  Until a few years ago the Bristol Hotel stood here, and back in the days before the Civil War there was a small tavern on the site, while on the adjoining lot was the garden of William H. Webb, the ship-builder.  Webb’s house was at 504 Fifth Avenue, and 506 was once the home of Russell Sage.

The brown synagogue, Temple Emanuel, at the north-east corner of Forty-third Street, dates from 1868.  The congregation was organized in 1845, first holding services in the Grand Street Court Room, thence moving in 1850 to a remodelled Unitarian Church in Chrystie Street, and again, in 1856, to a Baptist Church in Twelfth Street.  The present structure, considered one of the finest examples of Saracenic architecture in the country, was designed by Leopold Eidlitz, and completed at a cost of six hundred thousand dollars.  The materials are brown and yellow sandstone, with black and red tiles alternating on the roof.  Within, near the entrance, are memorial tablets to Dr. Leo Merzbacher, first Rabbi, 1845-56, and to his successors, Dr. Samuel Adler (father of Felix Adler), 1857-74, and Dr. Gustav Gottheil, 1873-1903.  The present Rabbi is the Rev. Joseph Silverman.

Back from the Avenue, on the west side, between Forty-third and Forty-fourth Streets, there once stood the Coloured Orphan Asylum.  It was a square four-story building, occupying almost the entire block, and there was a garden in front extending to the road.  The Asylum, which was under the management of the Association for the Benefit of Coloured Orphans, organized in 1836 by a number of prominent New York women, received from the city in 1842 a grant of twenty-two lots and erected the building in which the children were housed and taught trades.  In the summer of 1863 there were between two hundred and two hundred and fifty children in the institution.  Then Congress passed the Conscription Law.  In the evening papers of Saturday, July 11th, the names of those drafted from New York were announced.  Excitement seethed that night and all day Sunday.  Monday the storm broke.