Tales of Fifth Avenue Through Time

To borrow from Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, “Last night I dreamt I went back to ‘Manderley’ again.” Instead, we will time travel back to 1824 and a similar little unpaved road that crossed the Brevoort’s farm—land holdings that stretched, since 1701, from the Bowery up past today’s Washington Square to 14th Street. Brevoort generations developed the land to the northern outskirts of the village of Manhattan.

Tales of Fifth Avenue Through Time connects that past with the present via yellowed archival photos—the closest we have to time travel. Historical; yes, hysterical; oh yes, scandalous; but of course—all while being documented via panorama, box and brownie, digital and selfie, cinema, silent and sound, capturing the environs of the wealthiest families on the planet that lived on the only avenue to lend its moniker to a candy bar.

Tourist and locals will take a tour bus, and you will too, literarily and visually, past the surviving and ghosts of mansions; past the churches and museums; and past the most exclusive stores credit cards can handle, down the canyon of high-rises that is Fifth Avenue, Manhattan.