In New York, where neighborhoods evolve at warp speed, there is no surer sign that an area is on the verge of "arriving" than the unveiling of a new name, particularly an acronym.

For NoMad -- or North of Madison Square Park -- a small section bounded by 25th Street, 30th Street, Avenue of the Americas and Lexington Avenue, the transformation from haven for cheap t-shirts and tchotchkes to multi-million- dollar condos and expensive restaurants follows the trajectory of similarly named SoHo, NoHo, Tribeca and Nolita.

During its glory days in the mid-19th century, NoMad was home to New York's grandest hotels: the Fifth Avenue Hotel, an opulent white marble hotel notably configured with some of the first private bathrooms; along with the Gilsey House and the Grand, both of which have since been converted for residential uses.

Meanwhile, New York's most distinguished families occupied stately mansions and brownstones surrounding the park. One such residence, the Jerome Mansion at 41 East 26th Street, owned by Leonard and Clara Jerome, grandparents of Winston Churchill, eventually became the Manhattan Club, a gathering place for prominent Democrats including Franklin D. Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland and Al Smith.

But the area began falling out of repute in the early 20th century, as continued growth of restaurants, clubs and hotels further diminished the residential character of the neighborhood, attracting businesses from the adjacent Tenderloin, a notorious red-light district. By the late 20th century, the northern area of Madison Square Park had become a veritable no-man's land surrounded by more affluent Greenwich Village, Chelsea and Gramercy.

The dawn of the new millennium signaled the beginning of a brighter future for the newly christened NoMad. In 2001, Madison Square Park reopened after a massive restoration. Three years later, Danny Meyer opened his first Shake Shack at a Madison Square Park kiosk, where lines routinely snaked around the park. High-end businesses soon followed suit and the area quickly earned a reputation as a food Mecca, thanks in large part to the opening of two notable establishments: NoMad, conceived as a follow up to Chef Daniel Humm's highly acclaimed Eleven Madison Park, and Eataly, a mega-Italian specialty market and food pavilion located on the ground floor of the former Toy Building.

Naturally, real estate prices surged. Since 2005, price-per-square-foot averages in NoMad have grown by 62 percent, with the average price per square foot for a condo at $2,038 in 2015, up from $1,256 in 2010.

A relatively low-density area, NoMad features a mix of residential conversions of former cast-iron commercial buildings and modern towers such as the SkyHouse and Twenty9th Park Madison.

In the last several years, developers have favored constructing buildings with larger residences and fewer units -- a trend that is also popular with buyers. At 132 East 30th Street, an 11-story condo with only 10 units sold swiftly when it was unveiled in the spring of 2013, with buyers scooping up 65 percent of the units in just three months.

Further south, the Whitman at 21 East 26th Street, a residential conversion of a former showroom space built in 1924, features four expansive residences situated on six floors. Apartments here have also moved quickly, especially among celebrities. Building residents include Chelsea Clinton and husband Marc Mezvinsky, who purchased their 5,000-square-foot, four- bedroom apartment for $9.25 million, and NASCAR star Jeff Gordon.

Comparatively, NoMad prices fall in the median for the larger geographic area comprising Flatiron/Union Square, Murray Hill and Chelsea. In 2015, the average sale price of a NoMad condo was $3.3 million and the average price per square foot was $2,038. That is slightly lower than prices in Flatiron/Union Square, where the average price in 2015 was $3.4 million and the average per/foot price was $2,100. It is higher, however, than the average 2015 prices in Chelsea, $2.8 million and $1,951 per foot, and Murray Hill, where the average sale price was $1.3 million and the average price per foot was $1,499.

NoMad's busiest sales years occurred in 2007 and 2008, with the opening of two large-scale residential projects: Grand Madison and the Sky House, respectively.

Built in 1907, the Grand Madison at 225 Fifth Avenue is a former showroom building converted into 192 residential condos by Elad Properties, developer and owner of the iconic Plaza Hotel. In 2015, average pricing at the building continued to climb higher than the neighborhood average, with average square-foot pricing at $2,207.

Further east and north, SkyHouse at 11 East 29th Street is a modern 55-story condominium tower designed by FXFowle and completed in 2008. Here, pricing is slightly below neighborhood averages, with average square-foot pricing at $1,776 in 2015.

The latest building to open in the neighborhood is 10 Madison Square West, a 125-unit conversion and expansion of a formerly commercial building between 24th and 25th streets, overlooking Madison Square Park. Since closings began in October 2015, the average square-foot pricing has been $2,291.

Other large projects are also in the works. The former office building at 212 Fifth Avenue is in the process of being converted to 48 condominiums. And at 281 Fifth Avenue, starchitect Rafael Vinoly has been tapped to design a 52-story condominium with roughly 140 apartments.