NoMad, Manhattan
Private brownstone dwellings and mansions springing up around the perimeter of the park soon boasted such respected, well-to-do families as the Haights, Stokeses, Scheifflins, Wolfes, and Barlows.
[14] The mansion was demolished in 1967[15] and was replaced in 1974 by the New York Merchandise Mart, which also extends onto the site of the adjacent Madison Square Hotel, where actors Henry Fonda and James Stewart roomed in the 1930s.
[17] The area became a meeting place for the Gilded Age elite, and a late-nineteenth century mecca for shoppers, tourists and after-theater restaurant patrons.
A list of celebrities who ate at Delmonico's is a who’s who of the day, including Diamond Jim Brady, Mark Twain, Jenny Lind, Lillian Russell, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, J.P. Morgan, James Gordon Bennett, Jr., Walter Scott, Edward VII of the United Kingdom (then the Prince of Wales), and Napoleon III of France.
By the late nineteenth century, business activity began to eclipse the residential scene around the park, and the area along Broadway above the park began to be subsumed into the Tenderloin, an entertainment-and-vice red-light district full of nightclubs, saloons, bordellos, gambling casinos, dance halls and "clip joints".
[28] Designed in 1904 by Stanford White as the prestigious Colony Club for socialites, the building at 120 Madison Avenue has been occupied since 1963 by the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
[29] Long before the Academy began training its young hopefuls in the NoMad area, the Madison Square Theater opened in 1880.
Boasting the first electric footlights and a backstage double-decker elevator, the theater also provided an early air-conditioning system.
The buildings will be renovated to make them more attractive to technology firms, and the street level spaces made suitable for use by retail outlets and restaurants.
The site previously had been an inn where travelers leaving the city or returning to it could get a meal or lodging before continuing their trip.
[38] The male-only New York Coaching Club, established in 1875 by Col. Delancey Astor Kane and William Jay, was headquartered there, and elevated "four-in-hand" carriage riding to an art form.
With its 30 parlors, bar, cigar stand, barber shop, dining room and full-service amenities, the hotel served the needs of mid- to late-nineteenth-century business and upscale clientele.
[45] The NoMad Hotel at 28th Street and Broadway occupies the Johnston Building, a landmark 1900 French Renaissance limestone space[31][46] which features a Beaux-Arts cupola.
The neighborhood was once the home of Delmonico's, New York elite society's favorite restaurant and the birthplace of Lobster Newburg.
Youth Theater, and is also a center for antique galleries and one of the city’s largest collections of weekend flea markets.
The preschool of École Internationale de New York is located in NoMad at 206 Fifth Avenue between West 25th and 26th Streets, where the school has 15,000 square feet (1,400 m2) with a 33-year lease.
