The story of the Sun, New York, 1833-1918 / by Frank M. O'Brien.

236

THE STORY OF "THE SUN"

Street, where the only woman at table was Josie Mansfield.
Of the great hotels of that day not more than one
or two are left. The Fifth Avenue then took rank not
only as the finest hostelry in New York, but perhaps
in the world. The Hoffman House was running as a
European-plan hotel. It had not yet become a Democratic headquarters, for the Democrats still preferred
the New York, on the American plan. The other big
" everything included" hotels were the St. Nicholas,
where Middle West folk stayed, and the Metropolitan,
where the exploiter of mining-stock held forth. Among
the smaller and European-plan hotels were the St.
James, the St. Denis, the Everett, and the Clarendon,
all more or less fashionable, and the Brevoort and the
Barcelona, patronized largely by foreigners.
The restaurants were limited in number, for New
York had not acquired the restaurant habit as strongly
as it has it now. When you have mentioned Delmonico's, Taylor's, Curet's, and the Cafe de l'Universit6, you
have almost a complete list of the places to which fashion drove in its brougham after the theatre.
The playhouses were plentiful enough, considering
the size of the city. None was north of Twenty-Fourth
Street. Wallack's, at Broadway and Thirteenth Street,
was considered the best theatre in America. The Grand
Opera House, at Eighth Avenue and Twenty-Third
Street, was called the handsomest. Surely it was costly
enough, for Jim Fisk, who had his own way with Erie
finances, paid eight hundred thousand dollars of the
railroad stockholders' gold for it, to buy it from the
railroad later with some of its own stock, of problematical value.
The Academy of Music, at Fourteenth Street and
Irving Place, housed Italian opera. The Th6Atre Fran