Fifth Avenue—Architecture and Society:
History of America’s Street of Dreams

Fifth Avenue, America’s ‘Street of Dreams,' embodies New York's evolving architectural, urban, and social history. Present on the 1807 Commissioners’ map emerging from a country road, then in the proposed grid plan of 1811 as one of the major boulevards, Fifth Avenue by the end of the 19th century had become synonymous with a lavish fashionable life, grand mansions, and services catering to the wealthy. As in her previous books, The Villard Houses and Triumvirate: McKim Mead & White: Art, Architecture, Scandal and Class in America's Golden Age, Mosette Broderick gives life to the glamorous stages of New York society. In Fifth Avenue—Architecture and Society: History of America's Street of Dreams, she also tracks the street's shifting fortunes as fashion, hotels, and apartment towers bring a new skyline to the elite environs.

Mosette Broderick

A scholar specializing in 19th and early 20th century American and English architecture, Mosette Broderick is Clinical Professor in the Department of Art History, New York University and Director of NYU's London MA Programme in Historical and Sustainable Architecture. Mosette has won the NYU Distinguished Teaching Award and is the author of The Villard Houses and Triumvirate: McKim Mead & White: Art, Architecture, Scandal and Class in America's Golden Age.

The video begins with a brief introduction of the author by Museum Director Carol Willis. Mosette Broderick's illustrated talk follows.