Fifth Avenue, which begins at Washington Square, was born in 1824, and quickly became New York’s premiere residential address. Its development began at its southern end, where the grandest mansions New York had ever seen were built, and that grandeur quickly made its way up the island as the city grew. The city’s richest families and its most celebrated architects joined forces to build some of the most eye-popping monuments to opulence and excessive wealth ever seen. 

With her newly-published book, Fifth Avenue: America’s Street of Dreams, Professor Mosette Broderick will explore the rich history of this street, its architecture, the social, cultural, and economic forces which shaped it, and its transformation over the years. Many of those lavish homes are now gone, but some remain, and in some cases, are the first and only structures to have ever been built on their sites. Join us for this fascinating talk on the 200th anniversary of Fifth Avenue’s beginnings with one of the leading authorities on New York City architecture and history. 

About the Speaker:

Professor Mosette Broderick specializes in 19th and early 20th century American and English architecture, and has been a professor of architectural history and urban issues at New York University since 1989. She wrote the history portion of the book, The Villard Houses: Life Story of a Landmark (Viking Press, 1980), and is also the author of Triumvirate:  McKim Mead & White-Art, Architecture, Scandal and class in America’s Gilded Ages, (Alfred A Knopf, 2010), as well as Fifth Avenue: History of America’s Street of Dreams (Unicorn, 2023).  She has begun a study of the American beach style of the 1980’s popularly known as The Shingle Style.  She is also working on the collection of works of art from a Florentine dealer of the late 19th century.

In addition to the above research, Professor Broderick is the Director of the London MA Programme in Historical and Sustainable Architecture, as well as the Director of the Urban Design and Architecture Studies program.