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Show MINT OVER TWO MILLIONS ARCHEISHOP CORRIGAN SELLS ASYLUM BLOCK ON 5TH AVE. Next to the Cathedral and Opposite the Vanderbilt Mansion Church Owned It Fifty Years. The property of the Roman Catholic Orphan asylum, on Fifth avenue, New Y'ork City, adjoining the cathedral, has just been sold for $2,500,000. No real estate transaction of recent years, perhaps, per-haps, emphasizes more conclusively the northward trend of the growth of New-York New-York City than the sale of the asylum. For nearly half a century this imposing impos-ing structure has been a conspicuous and familiar feature on Fifth avenue. Early in the next century it will be effaced to make room for taxable property. prop-erty. The purchase prise is understood under-stood to be $2,500,000. The sale is to include Poland Hall, a beautiful fireproof brick and stone structure, which occupies the entire Madison avenue front of the asylum lot. It is scarcely five years since Bo-land Bo-land hall was built at a cost of $178.-000. $178.-000. There are the schools, gymnasiums gymna-siums and manual training departments, depart-ments, in which the boys of the orphan asylum are taught. It has one of the finest audience halls in the city. This building, tosrether with the asylum, will be razed as soon as the new asylum, asy-lum, now in process of erection at Fordham, is ready for occupancy. The contract states it will be habitable next June. Boland hall was the outgrowth, of a legacy of $50,000 left to the asylum by Mr. Boland. a citizen of New York, for the provision of manual training within with-in fifty miles of the city. A tract of land known as "Boland Farm" was purchased by the authorities near Peekskill. Its distance from the city made it impracticable. When brick earth was subsequently, discovered on the farm it was sold at a profit of $7.-500. $7.-500. And Boland hall took its present shape, one of the most substantial and best equipped schools of the city. Early in the '50s the city gave to the Catholics the present site bounded by Fifth avenue, Fifty-first and Fifty-second-streets and Madison avenue for the erection of an asylum. At the same time the Episcopalians received the land long occupied by St. Luke's hospital hos-pital and now the home of the Univer sity club. So remote was the waste land that anyone could have it for till-asre. till-asre. It. abounded in rocks," goats and rude shanties. That part of the city j remained for years unsurveyed.. For a radius of more than half a mile there was nothing but fields. In 1852 the asylum asy-lum was incorporated and began the erection of the structure with which all New York is familiar. Previous to that the Catholics eared for their orphans in a little house in Prince street. The work was instituted by Archbishop Huehes. who put in charge the Sisters of Charity. Two years after the erection of the Fifth avenue asylum New Y'ork in-j in-j dqlged in a nine days' . wonder. Ten i block's below the asylum, on the south-j south-j east corner of Forty-first street and 'Fifth avenue, . Bryan Lawrence, a we'd known Irishman of that day. sold to William. H. Vanderbilt. for $17,000 the waste land upon which the Vanderbilt house was erected. The public thought young Vanderbilt. then his father's pride, crazy to give such a sum for land so far outside the pale of civilization, civiliza-tion, while the luck of Lawrence in receiving re-ceiving so fabulous an amount was the envy of his contemporaries. The Vanderbilt Van-derbilt property on that site today i3 worth $5,000 a foot. Its sale was the foundation of the fortune of Lawrence, who died very rich. When the Vanderbilt mansions opposite oppo-site the orphan asylum were erected the head of the family was much distressed lest the grounds should not be kept in good order, and thus detract from the sightliness of his view. It was rumored rumor-ed at one time that he offered the asylum asy-lum authorities $1,000,000 for the grounds, and proposed to convert them into a park. Continuous residence, however, how-ever, proved to him that the same spirit spir-it that has ever animated the monastic orders of the old world to make "the desert blossom as a rose" was the births j right of the sisterhood. Few private grounds in the avenue have been more attractive in sward, tree and flower pot than those that enclose the home of the orphans. The Vanderbilts have never failed to express their appreciation, and every year they purchased $50 worth of tickets for the annual orphan benefit, which was established by the late Augustin Daly. I Six months ago the site of the new asylum was purchased for $300,000. It I is historic ground. It was Washington's headquarters, and the mound from which his staff kept watch on ths movements of the forces in New Jersey and Long Island will be left intact. The property adjoins the Webb Home for Sailors. The new structure, which will cost when completed $1,500,000 provides also for the girl orphans, who are now-cared now-cared for in the fine Structure covering cover-ing the east side of Madison avenue, between Fifty-first and Fifty-second streets. With the passing of the or-nhan or-nhan asvlum a local bit of oolorinsr to which the neighborhood has become attached at-tached will vanish namely, the long procession on Sundays and fete days to and from the asylum and the cathedral ca-thedral of the surpliced boy choir. A hundred strong, in their, black, red or purple cassocks, they lent a picturesque color note to the avenue, as did their fresh young voices volume to the choral cho-ral responses of the cathedral service. The choir of the cathedral is made up wholly, of the orphan boys and has long been recognized as one of the best trained boy choirs of the city. |