of St. Patrick's,
originally part of the Common Lands of the City, was sold in 1799 for
four hundred and five pounds and an annual quit rent of "four bushels of
good merchantable wheat, or the value thereof in gold or silver coin."
Then it became the property of the Jesuit Fathers, and in 1814 the
Trappist Monks conducted an orphan asylum there. Eventually it passed
into the hands of the trustees of St. Peter's Church on Barclay Street,
and St. Patrick's Cathedral on Mulberry Street, who, in 1842, conveyed
about one hundred feet square on the north-east corner of Fifth Avenue
and Fiftieth Street to the Church of St. John the Evangelist. The ground
now occupied by the Union Club was once part of the site of the Roman
Catholic Orphan Asylum.

CHAPTER XVII

_Approaching the Plaza_

Stretches of the Avenue--Approaching the Plaza--The Great Hotels--Old
St. Luke's Hospital--"Marble Row"--Some Reminiscences of Mr. John D.
Crimmins--Men and Manners of Sixty Years Ago--Early Transportation--The
Saint Gaudens Sherman Group--The Cryptic Henry James--The Fountain of
Abundance.

One August day I sat beside
A cafe window open wide,
To let the shower-freshened air
Blow in across the Plaza, where,
In golden pomp against the dark
Green, leafy background of the Park,
St. Gaudens's hero, gaunt and grim,
Rides on with Victory leading him.

--_Bliss Carman, On the Plaza._

Approaching the Plaza, besides the churches, clubs, and the various
houses associated with the name of Vanderbilt, there is conspicuous the
cluster of great hotels. To sum up the nature of these hostelries
briefly, imagine an Englishman. "We now crossed their Thames over what
would have been Westminster Bridge, I fancy, and were presently bowling
through a sort of Battersea part of the city," was the way in which the
British butler in Mr. Harry Leon Wilson's "Ruggles of Red Gap" described
part of a hazy, riotous ride about Paris. Later, the same worthy, come
to our own New York, indicated the hotel of sojourn by the information
that it overlooked "what I dare say in their simplicity they call their
Hyde Park." Beneath the caricature there was a sound understanding of
the workings of the British mind. So if an Englishman contemplating a
visit seeks advice in the matter of hotels there is the obvious short
cut. Certain of the less pretentious places in the side streets and
overlooking the minor parks may be described