In contrast to Lexington Avenue, the five-block stretch of Irving Place, from 14th to 20th Street at Gramercy Park carries two-way traffic and is decidedly local in nature. After the opening of Union Square in 1839, the Irving Place area became one of the most sought-after residential neighborhoods in the city, a situation which was only enhanced by the development of Gramercy Park to the north and Stuyvesant Square to the east. Historically and architecturally significant are 47 and 49 Irving Place – the latter where Washington Irving is said to have lived, but did not – which are part of the East 17th Street/Irving Place Historic District, and 19 Gramercy Park on the corner of 20th Street, part of the Gramercy Park Historic District.