At Its 200th ‘Birthday,’ Fifth Avenue Looks to The Future With Plans for Revamp

A baker frosts the six-foot birthday cake honoring the 200th anniversary of Fifth Avenue, Dec. 8, 2024. Credit: Rachel Kahn/THE CITY

The milestone was celebrated with car-free streets, food trucks, and a $150 million funding announcement from the mayor.

This article originally appeared in The City. 

By Rachel Kahn

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NEW YORK - What do you get the avenue that has everything for its birthday?

Sidewalks already crowded for the holiday season spilled out onto the street on Fifth Avenue between 48th and 55th as part of a celebration to commemorate its 200th anniversary. 

The event, similar to Open Streets celebrations in the past few years, featured performances, food trucks, brand installations, and even a signature piney scent piped out from decor that dotted the sidewalks. 

Rita Stoddard and Lauren Brigman, a mother-daughter duo visiting from Florida, took a picture with one of the many signs that advertised the street’s big day. Brigman had been planning to come to the city to see some Broadway shows, and had learned about the Fifth Avenue birthday celebration a few months ago.

“I couldn’t miss it,” she told THE CITY.

Stoddard gifted  her daughter the trip. To her, Fifth Avenue reminds her of old movies that she grew up watching. But it was her first time seeing the city in person. “It’s like going to Disney,” she said. “You have no favorite part.”

Native New Yorker Nancy Merish traveled a much shorter distance to see the celebrations. She and her friends mostly come for the holiday ambience. “We walk here, but we don’t necessarily shop here,” Merish said. 

Though they were happy to admire the holiday decor, Merish and her friends weren’t exactly sure what the anniversary was marking. 

Neither are some historians.

Setting the famous thoroughfare’s birth year at “1824 seems completely arbitrary to me,” Fran Leadon, a CUNY architecture professor and expert on New York’s  grid, told THE CITY last week. 

In 1785, most of the avenue was opened, and was called the “middle road,” he noted. When the Manhattan grid was established in 1811, the route was renamed Fifth Avenue. However, it wasn’t until 1824 — the date that has been chosen as the avenue’s birthday — that the lower section between 13th Street and Washington Square Park was added to the avenue, thus completing the road we know today.

“I don’t begrudge them the right to celebrate — I think it’s a good idea,” said Leadon. “It’s just curious that it seems pretty made up.”

Bringing Back Foot Traffic

For most people visiting the historic street now, Fifth Avenue means one thing: shopping.

The Flynn family came all the way from Ireland to see the Christmas lights. To sisters Niamh and Ciara, Fifth Avenue makes them think of “money.” “We’re walking down the street with our mouths open,” said Ciara of the many glamorous shops. Ciara toted a bag from Zara, a fast-fashion brand with a large location on Fifth.

The last time mother Maureen Flynn was in the city was for her honeymoon decades ago. How has it changed since then? “Busier!” she said.

It wasn’t until the 20th century when Fifth Avenue became the shopping destination we think of it as today. Manhattan Borough Historian Robert Snyder emphasizes that the avenue has gone through a lot of changes over the years: “Fifth Avenue has never been one thing,” he said. 

“All birthdays are a little bit misleading as to the full history of the street that’s being honored. It wasn’t born lined with mansions and museums and department stores,” Snyder said.

Fifth Avenue is still changing: some of the most famous stores have had to close their doors in recent years, and this season for the first time in decades, Saks won’t be showing its famous holiday light show. 

President of the Fifth Avenue Association Madelyn Wils hopes that the street can become not just a place to run a few errands, but somewhere visitors from near and far want to spend time. “People have a tendency to come to Fifth Avenue to do one or two things, and we want people to come and spend the day.”

“It is a pedestrian-oriented boulevard. And yet in the last years the pedestrians are kind of being squeezed to death on it,” she said. “We are a walking city, and we have to remember that.”

In order to achieve this pedestrian-focused vision, Wils co-chairs the Future of Fifth Partnership, which has debuted an ambitious new plan for the avenue. The partnership, which is a collaboration between city agencies and business improvement districts, plans to widen the avenue’s sidewalks, establish a bus lane, and line the streets with trees and green space. 

At the celebration on Sunday, Mayor Eric Adams announced that the city would contribute $150 million in funding for design, some construction, and much-needed underground sewer work in the new street plan. He said that the investment will eventually “pay for itself” through increased revenue from sales and property taxes — sales that he encouraged Sunday’s attendees to make.

“Not only am I telling you to spend money, we’re going to spend money: $150 million investment in the future of Fifth Avenue,” the mayor said in a speech.

The move towards more pedestrian-focused sidewalks isn’t just a plan for the future — it’s also a look back towards the avenue’s past.

“The original Fifth Ave actually had 30 foot sidewalks,” explained Wils. But when “new-fangled” cars came into the picture, the city and the Fifth Avenue Association of 1907 decided to make a change.

“What they did is they narrowed the sidewalks and widened the roadbed, and now 120 years later, we’re doing the opposite,” said Wils. 

“We’re bringing it back to the pedestrians.”