for about half as many more.  It was a bold venture, perhaps too bold for its time.  When the novelty had worn off the profits began to dwindle and then ceased entirely.  Amos F. Eno, a New Englander who had prospered exceedingly in New York, bought the property and planned to erect a hotel that was to surpass anything that the city had already known.  Sceptics ridiculed the idea, predicting that a situation so far uptown meant certain disaster.  But the Hippodrome building was torn down, the new structure begun, and in September, 1859, the Fifth Avenue Hotel opened its doors under the direction of Colonel Paran Stevens.  It was of white marble, six stories in height.  Among the innovations and conveniences that made it the wonder of its day was the first passenger elevator ever installed.  New York then knew the device as “the vertical railway.”

[Illustration:  “THE TOWER OF THE METROPOLITAN BUILDING.  WHATEVER ARTISTS MAY THINK OF IT THE TOWER IS, STRUCTURALLY, ONE OF THE WONDERS OF THE WORLD.  EXACTLY HALFWAY BETWEEN SIDEWALK AND POINT OF SPIRE IS THE GREAT CLOCK WITH THE IMMENSE DIALS”]

But between the time when Solomon Peters received his grant and the day when the opening of the Fifth Avenue Hotel ushered in a new era, the land experienced many vicissitudes.  In the last years of the eighteenth century it was a Parade Ground, at one time extending from Twenty-third to Thirty-fourth Streets, bounded on the east by the Eastern Post-road and on the west by the Bloomingdale Road.  At the southern end a Potter’s Field was opened in 1794, and there were buried the victims of the frequent yellow-fever epidemics.  But in 1797 a new Potter’s Field was opened in Washington Square.  According to the plans of the Commissioners’ Map of 1811, there was to be no Fifth Avenue between Twenty-third Street and Thirty-fourth Street.  The Avenue was to end temporarily at the former point, and resume its journey eleven blocks farther north.  As early as 1785 a powder magazine stood within the present domains of the Square.  A United States Arsenal, erected in 1808, was near the spot of the Farragut statue.  In 1823 the Arsenal building became the house of refuge of the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents, the first organization instituted in America to care for youthful offenders.  In 1839 it was destroyed by fire.  That was two years after the Parade Ground had been reduced to its present limits of 6.84 acres and renamed in honour of President Madison.  In 1844 the Eastern Post-road was closed.  Its course may still be traced by the double row of trees that runs northeast towards Madison Square Garden.