Metropolitan Opera House (39th Street)

The Metropolitan Opera House, which once stood on this very block between thirty-ninth and fortieth streets, was born from a social feud. In the late nineteenth century, New York City elite were divided between old money families who controlled the exclusive Academy of Music on fourteenth street and a rising class of industrialists who were repeatedly denied their own private boxes there. Determined to establish their own status, figures like the Vanderbilts, Morgans, and Roosevelts pooled their resources to build this opera house, which opened in eighteen eighty-three specifically to outshine their rivals downtown.