Sawtooth

Looking east on 23rd Street from between Madison and Fifth Avenues: Note the street sign below the McDonald’s flag: Madison Avenue starts (or ends, if you prefer orienting yourself to the south) at 23rd Street and runs off to the left, out of frame. Also off to the left, Madison Square. With one exception – the tallest building on view, the new (2008) glass-facade residential tower to the right of McDonald’s[1] – the whole south side of the street is a series of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century commercial buildings, Most of them are one lot wide, and since the height of those buildings varies widely, you get the sawtooth effect. From the left: tall, medium, short, short, tall, short, very short, tall, very short, very short, very tall, short, medium, short… Madison Square was mostly a residential neighborhood east of the commercial Ladies’ Mile shopping district; the old streetcar barn on the east side of the square was converted to an event space and named Madison Square…