From Village Preservation and Salmagundi Club:

Opened in 1824, Fifth Avenue originally vied with several other locations for social supremacy, including St. John’s Park, Lafayette Place, and Second Avenue. By the Civil War, Fifth had become “The Avenue” superseding all other addresses in which to flaunt you had arrived.

In this talk, part of our celebration of the thoroughfare’s 200th anniversary, we’ll explore some of the early mansions constructed on Fifth Avenue below 14th Street in the years prior to achieving social victory. Only one of these early mansions – the Hawley Residence at 47 Fifth – still survives today in anything resembling original condition. It’s now the Salmagundi Club, in which this talk will take place.

About the Speaker: 

Multi-faceted Anthony Bellov is an award-winning videographer, pianist, tenor, singing instructor, and architectural historian with a bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Pratt Institute and a master’s in Museum Leadership from Bank Street College of Education. His video explorations of the world-renown Merchant’s House Museum, in New York’s NoHo have generated great excitement among historic house and architectural preservation advocates. He says, “Successful architecture is a happy manifestation of function expressed as geometry and detail.” Through his still images of buildings, Bellov explores the overarching balance of form with the radiant exclamation point of detail.