THE "LITTLE WIZARD."

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It really looks more like a museum than a church, and is surmounted by statues of brown angels vigorously blowing trumpets toward the various points of the compass. Occupying the whole of the next block, between Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh streets, is the grandest hotel of upper Fifth Avenue the Windsor, tall and solid-looking, with a comfortable appearance and imposing front. The lobbies within the entrance are spacious, and in times of excitement in the evenings they are filled with the chief men of the city, this being the great resort for gossip and news and stock speculation at night.

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THE LITTLE WIZARD."

Opposite the side of the Windsor Hotel, across Fortyseventh Street, is a square-built and roomy though not large house, with a mansard roof, and an abundance of foliage plants in the rear windows, and having in front an elaborate portico, under which a grand staircase, flanked by evergreens and garden vases, leads up to the hall-door. This is No. 579 Fifth Avenue, the residence of the most mysterious and probably the best-abused person in the United States a retiring and modest man, who is usually in seclusion, yet manages to communicate with the outer world through the abundance of wires entering his house. The bulls and bears of Wall Street blame upon these radiating wires most of their woes, for Jay Gould is supposed to sit within and constantly manipulate them. This "Little Wizard" has been the greatest speculative power in New York in recent years, and has had a remarkable career, being alike the product, and to a large extent the producer, of modern Wall-Street methods. He was a poor orphan and clerk in a country store, afterward becoming a surveyor and map-maker. He secured an interest in a Pennsylvania tannery, and to sell its leather was the object of his earliest visits to New York. Before long he owned the whole tannery, but his metropolitan visits taught him

there were quicker methods of making money; so he sold out and removed, being at first too much afraid of New York to live there, and he made his home in New Jersey. But it was not long before New York became afraid of him. His subsequent career is well known. Nobody ever made such ventures. He was for years the "great bear," wrecking, pulling down, ruining-controlling newspapers, courts, legislatures, and being even accused of trying to bribe a President. Then, as he became an extensive investor, he changed, at least so far as his own properties were concerned, and in his later operations has been a "bull." His fortune is the largest at present in the hands of any one man in New York, being mainly in railways and telegraphs, but its amount is unknown, for Jay Gould is a sphinx, talking, yet telling nothing. Unostentatious and modest to an extreme, this wonderful speculator moves quietly in his work, deeply mourns the recent loss of his wife, and is training up his sons to take his place. He makes display only in his grave, having expended one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in building a miniature of the Pantheon for his mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery, in the northern suburbs.

I have written of the old Dutch governor, Peter Minuit, who bought Manhattan Island from the Indians. About the time he made that shrewd bargain he founded for his little colony in 1628 an orthodox Dutch church. After several removals this church now exists in a costly brownstone structure at Fifth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street. This magnificent edifice, the inscription tells us, is the "Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of the City of New York, organized under Peter Minuit, Director-General of the New Netherlands, in 1628, chartered by William, king of England, 1696." The present church was built in 1872. Filling the entire block above, between Fiftieth and Fifty-first Streets, is the great Catholic cathedral of St. Patrick, a magnificent white marble structure

THE VANDERBILT PALACES.

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in Decorated Gothic, covering a surface of three hundred. and thirty-two by one hundred and seventy-four feet. The central gable of the front rises one hundred and fifty-six feet, and the unfinished spires on either side, upon which work slowly progresses, are expected to be three hundred and twenty-eight feet high. This noble church presents a striking resemblance to the great cathedral at Cologne, particularly in the interior, where the softened light unfolds the cloistered arches, the high nave, rich decorations, magnificent windows and splendid altars. Behind the cathedral and fronting upon Madison Avenue is the white marble residence of Archbishop Corrigan, and in an enclosure fronting Fifth Avenue, in the next block northward, is the Catholic Orphan Asylum-a large brick structure, with much of its front made of a continuous series of glass windows. Opposite the archbishop's residence, upon the other side of Madison Avenue and surrounding a courtyard, are the extensive buildings of Columbia College, the old King's College of New York, which was founded in 1754 by a fund started from the proceeds of sundry lotteries, raising in all seventeen thousand two hundred and fifteen dollars. This is now a very wealthy establishment, having other buildings and departments in various parts of the city, and it is famous both as a school of law and of medicine.

THE VANDERBILT PALACES.

The finest portion of Fifth Avenue has now been reached, and, crossing Fifty-first Street, we get into the modern domain of the Vanderbilts. Diagonally across from the cathedral, upon the west side of the avenue, are two elaborate brownstone dwellings with ornamented fronts and having a connecting covered passage containing the entrance-halls for both. They occupy the block, and are the homes of the late William H. Vanderbilt's daughters, being only exceeded in magnificence by his own residence, a drabstone

structure of castellated architecture and highly decorated, upon the upper corner of Fifty-second Street. This is now the house of his eldest son, William K. Vanderbilt. The second son, Cornelius Vanderbilt, lives at the corner of Fifty-seventh Street in the fourth Vanderbilt palace, an elaborate brick house with ornamental stone decorations. These palaces were constructed, decorated, and furnished with the intention of outshining any other dwellings in New York, so as to be in keeping with the wealth of their owners and ornaments for the city where it was amassed. Fully fifteen millions of dollars were expended upon them. But, unfortunately, like so many men who have built grand houses, the Croesus who designed them had barely moved in when he died. It was in the reception-parlor of his new house that William H. Vanderbilt, while talking to Robert Garrett, suddenly fell over from his seat almost into the latter's arms, and instantly expired. Garrett had made a social call after a long estrangement, owing to the railway wars, between the families, Vanderbilt being inclined to reconciliation. The death was unexpected, and knowledge of it was concealed until the Stock Exchange had closed. That night the New York speculators had busy work laying plans to prevent a panic next day. This Vanderbilt mansion is the grandest in New York, and opposite is the tall structure of the elegant Langham Hotel, while on the corner above is St. Thomas's Episcopal church with its beautiful rose windows. Fortunes have been expended upon the decoration of all the dwellings in this costly locality. At Fifty-seventh Street is St. Luke's Hospital, managed by the Episcopal Church. At Fifty-fifth Street is Dr. John Hall's Presbyterian church, of brownstone, the fortunate pastor being said to preach to two hundred and fifty million dollars every Sunday in the largest and wealthiest Presbyterian church in the world. As a guide to the valuation of land on this part of Fifth Avenue, I may mention that twenty years ago Robert Bonner of the

THE NEW YORK CENTRAL PARK.

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New York Ledger bought the east side of the avenue, between Fifty-sixth and Fifty-seventh Streets, two hundred feet front by one hundred and seventy-five feet deep, for two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. This land is now valued at one million two hundred thousand dollars without buildings. William Waldorf Astor has just bought the Fifty-sixth Street corner, fifty feet front by one hundred and twenty-five feet deep, for three hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, and C. P. Huntington the Fiftyseventh Street corner for four hundred and fifty thousand dollars, each intending to build a residence; and the central part has also gone to the Astor family for four hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. Mr. Astor paid at the rate of forty-seven dollars per square foot, and Mr. Bonner's sons, who were the recent owners, are netting nine hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars' profit on their father's landed investment of two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars twenty years ago. Along all the crossstreets are displayed elaborate rows of brownstone houses, and as Central Park is approached the enormous “apartment-houses" of French flats that face it rise high above us in various directions. The park is at Fifty-ninth Street, and its dense foliage obliterates much of the view beyond, but Fifth Avenue stretches far northward as the park boundary, with many fine buildings upon it, including the Lenox Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But the travel upon the avenue there is sparse, as its gay equipages generally pass into the park through the "Scholar's Gate."

VII.

THE NEW YORK CENTRAL PARK.

THE pride of New York is its Central Park, the pleasure-ground upon which has been lavished all that art and