Fifth Avenue and St. German Hotel

Fifth Avenue, looking north from near 22nd Street, about 1856. Photo by Silas A. Holmes, Charles DeForest Fredricks. Source: Photographic views of New York City, from the collections of the New York Public Library.

The old St. Germain Hotel is on the right at 22nd Street in its original architecture (enlargement below). It opened in February 1856 and we can see its garden in the northern part of the plot, later occupied by commercial buildings. About the 1870s, the hotel's façades were stripped of some of their external decoration. About 1880, it changed the name to Cumberland apartment house. In 1901, it was demolished to make room for Flatiron Building.

A fenced Madison Square Park is on the east side of 5th Avenue. The Fifth Avenue Hotel was erected on the left, between 23rd Street and 24th St., from 1856 to 1859. The spire of the Marble Collegiate Church, dedicated in 1854, is in the distance on 5th Avenue at 29th St. A commercial building was erected on the vacant plot on the right, at 22nd Street, from 1861 to 1862.