¶ Madison Avenue
Index Entry
The Madison Avenue of the Gay 90’s meant the area between madison Square and 42nd Street, dominated by the J.P. Morgan residence at 38th and Madison. Madison Avenue of the first half of the 20th century referred to the shopping section from 42nd Street to 72nd Street, dominated at its base by Brooks Brothers, the Biltmore Hotel, and the Roosevelt Hotel. So attractive did the Madison Avenue vantage appear to so many corporate newcomers that they, in effect, have pulled down all the old buildings and thus terminated all the old enterprises that constituted Madison Avenue. They have built a new canyon in the Universe whose preoccupation with the abstract function of shaping men’s conditioned reflexes, through advertising, has caused the words ‘Madison Avenue’ to hold an entirely new meaning–having nothing to do with a physical avenue itself, but with their ‘corporate image’–the collective archpropagandist, proselytizer, inducer, and seducer.
