A Square Comes Full Circle.

STAND in the bright green expanse of Madison Square Park with a Shake Shack burger in your hand, and you will see three early 20th-century skyscrapers that speak of the square's longtime commercial identity: the Flatiron Building, the Metropolitan Life Tower, and the gold-crowned New York Life Building. Indeed, the square has had a commercial flavor for so much of its existence that it is easy to forget its earlier, if ephemeral, incarnation as the social center of fashionable New York. In the Civil War era, elegant brownstones adorned the north, east and south edges of the square, and a lavish mansard-roofed mansion built by Winston Churchill's grandfather stood across Madison Avenue from the park's northeastern corner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]