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This building was the first thing that the Rube saw on his first official walking tour of NYC a few years ago, and he was amazed that such an antique thing still survived in the city. Pretty much sold him on walking tours as being the way to go!

The structure was originally three times as long as what is shown in Fig 1., and contained nine mansions unified by the column row. According Gerald R. Wolfe in his New York: Walking Tours of Architecture and History, it was built in 1833 and lived in by John Jacob Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and F.D.R.'s grandfather, Warren Delano; stayed in by Thackeray, Dickens, and Washington Irving, and was the site of President Tyler's secret marriage to the daughter of a resident.