Certain of the less pretentious places in the side streets and overlooking the minor parks may be described as "the sort of thing you find about Russell Square." The Waldorf-Astoria, the Knickerbocker, the McAlpin, or the Astor as "like the Cecil, Savoy, or the Northumberland Avenue Hotels." The vast, expensive edifices of public welcome in the neighbourhood of the Plaza as "something rather on the order of Claridge's and the Carlton." These hotels are the St.Regis and the Gotham on opposite corners of the Avenue at Fifty-fifth Street, the Savoy and the Netherland on the east side of the Avenue at Fifty-ninth Street, and the huge new Plaza Hotel facing them from across the square.

When the St.Regis was first opened popular fancy ascribed to it a scale of prices crippling to the average purse.

The idea was the subject of derisive vaudeville ditties.

When a "Seeing New York" car approached the Fifty-fifth Street corner the guide invariably took up his megaphone and called out, "Ladies and gentlemen! We are passing on the right the far-famed St.Regis Hotel! If you order beefsteak it will cost you five dollars.

If you call for chicken they will look you up in Bradstreet before serving the order!" St.Luke's Hospital, now crowning Morningside Heights, opposite the Cathedral of St.John the Divine, was formerly on the land now occupied by the Gotham and the adjoining University Club.