Sep 26 at 12:00 PM - Sale 2679 -

Sale 2679 - Lot 40

Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000

BURTON FREDERICK WELLES (1872-1926)


Fifth Avenue, New York from Start to Finish. 1911.
57 leaves: 50 mostly double-sided leaves with photographic panorama illustrations, interspersed with 5 ad leaves and 2 double-sided index leaves. Oblong folio, 20x56 cm 8x22 inches; publisher's gilt pictorial wrappers, minor wear, rebacked with paper; minor wear to contents including a few short tears. Welles & Co., New York.

First edition of this impressive panoramic undertaking. It follows one of the city's most famous streets from its southern terminus at Washington Square Park, through crowded storefronts, past Madison Square Park, and skirting Central Park up through the grand mansions of the Upper East Side just past 93rd Street. The last two plates show the residences of Andrew Carnegie, New York Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert, and philanthropist Felix Warburg (now the home of the Jewish Museum). Some blocks have since been entirely replaced by new construction, but the research branch of the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art are here in all their glory. One other traced at auction since 1956, at a Swann sale, 14 September 2000, lot 101.