Program Type:
ESOLAge Group:
AdultsProgram Description
Event Details
In case you missed it, the Virtual Sandwiched In with Ron Brown - Fifth Avenue - Where American Aristocracy was Born (recorded on 10/16/20) is now available on the Library's YouTube page.
[CLICK HERE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kRRjD1QYB8) to access the video.
Join Professor Ron Brown as he continues his exploration of the great city of New York and examines the history of how Fifth Avenue came to be. New York City was dominated from its founding by a Dutch and English landowning aristocracy. They were joined following the American Revolution by a new class of merchants, manufacturers, investors, and real estate speculators who transformed New York City into the business and manufacturing capital of the new nation. As the city's elite swelled with Civil War millionaires, they expanded into the newly laid out Fifth Avenue where they constructed their churches, private clubs, commercial establishments, and eventually monumental public buildings. Today new rich like Trump, Koch, Bloomberg and Schwarzman rub elbows with old Dutch Stuyvesants and Vanderbilts, English and Scot Carnegies, German Rockefellers and Astors along the avenue of the rich and powerful. Even today, Fifth Avenue is a global symbol of opulence, with every world city proudly announcing to tourists, “This is the Fifth Avenue of London/Paris/Shanghai/Rio.”