Gramercy Park and Madison Square
As Manhattan began its move uptown in the nineteenth century, wealthier residents clustered at the center of the island, away from the industry and tenements located nearer to the East and Hudson Rivers. This placed Fifth Avenue and a handful of other neighborhoods among the more desirable addresses. Near the tenement and factory district of Rose Hill and Kips Bay, upper class neighborhoods developed in the nineteenth century around Gramercy Park and Madison Square.
The residential enclave Gramercy Park was begun in 1831 when Samuel Ruggles purchased Gramercy Farm to lay out building lots. At the center was a private park resembling those found in London. Gramercy Park became an exclusive upper class neighborhood of ornate row houses and mansions belonging to prominent New York families. It remained so until the 1870s and 1880s, when large apartment buildings, referred to as “French flats” to differentiate them from tenements, began to appear in the area. After the Third Avenue elevated railroad opened in 1878, middle class residents moved into these buildings and Gramercy Park lost some of its exclusivity.
The march up Fifth Avenue reached Madison Square in the 1850s when construction of Italianate style row houses and several mansions began around the park and on adjoining streets. Prominent residents of the Madison Square area included future President Theodore Roosevelt and the author Edith Wharton. By the 1870s, Madison Square was taking on a
