Business: Mourning on Fifth Avenue

Since 1875 Fifth Avenue Bank has sat, like a portly, dignified oldster, at the corner of Fifth Avenue & 44th Street, Manhattan.* When it was founded most bankers hesitated to accept women's accounts because bank lobbies were usually crowded with male customers "among whom it is not agreeable for a lady to penetrate." Fifth Avenue Bank thought differently. It built a handsome parlor where ladies could "cut coupons and eat bonbons with equal relish." Off the parlor was a room furnished with manicuring scissors, hairpins, violet water, lavender salts, scented soap. In the...

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