nted by
William Waldorf Astor in 1896. Paintings of importance are, in the main
room, Munkacsy's Blind Milton Dictating "Paradise Lost" to his
Daughters, Sir Henry Raeburn's Portrait of Lady Belhaven, Copley's
Portrait of Lady Frances Wentworth, Turner's Scene on the French Coast,
Sir Joshua Reynolds's Mrs. Billington as Saint Cecilia, Gilbert Stuart's
Washington, Horace Vernet's Siege of Saragossa, Raeburn's Portrait of
Van Brugh Livingston; in the Stuart Room, Boughton's Pilgrims Going to
Church, Schreyer's The Attack, Inness's Hackensack Meadows, Sunset,
Troyon's Cow and Sheep, Detaille's Chasseur of the French Imperial
Guard, Bougereau's The Secret, and Weir's View of the Highlands from
West Point.

[Illustration: "ON THE SITE OF THE OLD CROTON RESERVOIR THE CORNER-STONE
OF THE PUBLIC LIBRARY WAS LAID NOVEMBER 10, 1902, AND THE BUILDING
OPENED TO THE PUBLIC MAY 23, 1911. TO IT WERE CARRIED THE TREASURES OF
THE ASTOR LIBRARY AND THE LENOX LIBRARY"]

About 1825 the land on the east side of Fifth Avenue from Forty-second
to Forty-fourth Streets belonged to Isaac Burr, whose estate extended
along the old Middle Road. The present Seymour Building at the
north-east corner of Forty-second Street is on the site formerly
occupied by the home of Levi P. Morton, and before that by the Hamilton
Hotel. Near the adjoining corner to the north is No. 511, the late
residence of Mr. Richard T. Wilson, Jr. That number was once the home of
"Boss" Tweed. Arrested for robbing the city, Tweed asked permission to
return to his house for clothes. While policemen were guarding the Fifth
Avenue entrance he escaped through a rear alley, made his way to his
yacht in the East River, and sailed to Spain. Today unsightly
advertising signs, thorns in the flesh of the Fifth Avenue Association,
disfigure the north-west corner of Forty-second Street. Behind the signs
there is an office building. Until a few years ago the Bristol Hotel
stood here, and back in the days before the Civil War there was a small
tavern on the site, while on the adjoining lot was the garden of
William H. Webb, the ship-builder. Webb's house was at 504 Fifth Avenue,
and 506 was once the home of Russell Sage.

The brown synagogue, Temple Emanuel, at the north-east corner of
Forty-third Street, dates from 1868. The congregation was organized in
1845, first holding services in the Grand Street Court Room, thence
moving in 1850 to a remodelled Unitarian Church in Chrystie Stree