Queen of Avenues (Fifth Avenue)

Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue has been called the “Queen of Avenues.” The term “queen of avenues” (lower case) was cited in print in 1949.
 
Jack McCarthy, a broadcaster of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade down Fifth Avenue for WPIX (Channel 11) television, often used the “Queen of Avenues” name.
 
   
Wikipedia: Fifth Avenue
Fifth Avenue is a major thoroughfare in the center of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The section of Fifth Avenue that crosses Midtown Manhattan, especially that between 49th Street and 60th Street, is lined with prestigious shops and is consistently ranked among the most expensive shopping streets in the world. The “most expensive street in the world” moniker changes depending on currency fluctuations and local economic conditions from year to year. For several years starting in the mid-1990s, the shopping district between 49th and 57th Streets was ranked as having the world’s most expensive retail spaces on a cost per square foot basis. In 2008, Forbes magazine ranked Fifth Avenue as being the most expensive street in the world. Some of the most coveted real estate on Fifth Avenue are the penthouses perched atop the buildings.
 
Google Books
Beau James:
The Life & Times of Jimmy Walker
By Gene Fowler
New York, NY: Viking Press
1949
Pg. 7:
The head of the line reaches the Fiftieth Street intersection, where the spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral rise above the queen of avenues.
 
13 August 1975, Syracuse (NY) Herald-Journal, pg. 39, col. 6:
FIFTH AVE.
TO TACKLE
TRASH
NEW YORK (AP)—The Fifth Avenue Association today asked its 1,000 prestigious merchant and landlord members tp lend a hand—and a broom—during the city’s sanitation crisis so that the street will continue to be New York’s “Queen of Avenues.”
 
Google Books
Life at the Dakota:
New York’s Most Unusual Address
By Stephen Birmingham
New York, NY: Random House
1979
Pg. 142:
Only along Fifth Avenue — “The Queen of Avenues” — had the millionaires consented to build their private palaces.
 
Google Books
Irish-American Landmarks
By John A. Barnes
Detroit, MI: Visible Ink
1995
Pg. 96:
FIFTH AVENUE
Every March 17, the “Queen of Avenues” hosts the world’s largest and oldest St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
     
New York (NY) Times
Jack McCarthy Is Dead at 81; TV’s ‘Mr. St. Patrick’s Day’
By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER
Published: May 26, 1996
Jack McCarthy, who mixed a bit of a brogue and a fount of Irish lore into the elixir that charmed thousands of television viewers in his 41 years as the anchor of WPIX’s coverage of St. Patrick’s Day events, died on Friday at his home in Scarsdale, N.Y. He was 81.
   
Forgotten New York
January 26, 2008
FIVE FOR LIGHTING: Streetlamp themes on the Queen of Avenues
Fifth Avenue is, as the late, great Channel 11 St. Patrick’s Day Parade compere Captain Jack McCarthy nicknamed it, the “Queen of Avenues.” It marches in an unbroken line from Washington Square North past the Empire State Building (the King of All Buildings), New York Public Library, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and Central Park to Marcus Garvey Park, where it takes a 4-block breather, begins again at 124th Street, and runs to 142nd where it meets the Harlem River Drive. It is home to magnificent churches, renowned retail, high-end residences, and innumerable parades besides the one on March 17th.