Fifth Avenue Looking South from Thirteenth Street

The Georgian revival church of Saint Paul's Chapel, the oldest surviving public building in Manhattan, provides a stately background for the blurred activity caused by passing pedestrian and carriage traffic in the foreground. Beyond the chapel stands the Astor House, which was New York's grandest hotel in the mid-1800s. This bustling section of lower Broadway near Wall Street was a center of commercial activity when Silas A. Holmes made this image.