This is a just across Fifth Avenue from yesterday's view, looking back up across the street from the view two days ago.

Both the A/X Armani Exchange store on the right and the H&M windows on the left were put in during the past two years, and it was much darker and less crowded on this corner. Light attracts people.

85 years ago, the Union Club was where the A/X is now, and Henry Clay Frick was living in one of the former "Vanderbilt Row" of mansions where the H&M and the adjacent store are now. Perhaps some trace of Frick or the Vanderbilts has survived -- a single hair -- and can be found somewhere in these stores.

There is a Dover Book, Fifth Avenue, 1911, From Start to Finish, with which it is fun to walk from the start of Fifth at the Washington Arch, marking down that are still standing.

Viewpoint:West side of 51st Street, looking northwest up Fifth Avenue, 12/04/00 or so. Veteran Rube subscribers will notice he's sneaking some of his old pictures back into circulation -- this is so that the high-res version can be made available.