New York Walkabout: Remembering The Ladies' Mile

During the Gilded Age, at the turn of the 19th century, Broadway, from Madison Square to 9th Street was the nation’s shopping center. The New York Times and New York Magazine helped crown the area the Flatiron District. Camera buffs spoke of the Photo District. The most nostalgic moniker is The Ladies' Mile. King's Handbook (1892) noted, “all America goes to New York for its shopping when it can” and the “fascinating, alluring, irresistible”, the “vivacity of lower Fifth Avenue,” and “the charming people that linger about spellbound... what are the Parisian boulevards, or even Regent Street, to this magnificent panorama of mercantile display?” Henry Collins Brown, a former curator of the Museum of the City of New York., noted that "... all the world came to to Broadway to shop, to dine, to flirt, to find amusement, and to meet acquaintances…”.