ed until 1826. For over twenty years he was one of the leading
physicians of New York, bore a conspicuous part in all movements
connected with art, drama, literature, city or State affairs, and was
frequently mentioned as being, with Clinton and Hobart, 'one of the
tripods upon which the city stood.' He was one of the physicians who
attended Alexander Hamilton after his fatal duel with Burr. While
professor of botany at Columbia he endeavoured to interest the State in
establishing a botanical exhibit for students of medicine, but failing
to accomplish this he acquired from the city, in 1801, the plot
mentioned above, for the purpose of establishing a botanical garden. In
1804 the Elgin Botanical Gardens were opened. By 1806 two thousand
species of plants with one spacious greenhouse and two hot houses,
having a frontage of one hundred and eighty feet, occupied what today is
one of the most valuable real estate sites in New York, the tract being
now valued without buildings at over thirty million dollars. The
financial burden of maintaining the garden was more than the doctor
could carry, and he appealed to the Legislature for support. Finally on
March 12, 1810, a bill was passed authorizing the State, for the purpose
of promoting medical science, to buy the garden. The doctor sold it for
seventy-four thousand two hundred and sixty-eight dollars and
seventy-five cents, which was twenty-eight thousand dollars less than he
had spent on it. The State finally conveyed the grounds in 1814 to
Columbia College, and this property, part of which the College still
holds, has largely contributed to the wealth of the great University."

But to revert to the churches. The Heavenly Rest is noted for its fine
wood carvings and its stained glass windows. In the tower of the
Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas hangs a bell, cast in Amsterdam in
1731, which for years hung in the Middle Dutch Church in Nassau Street.
While the British held New York the bell was taken down and secreted.
When the Middle Dutch Church became the Post Office in 1845 the bell was
removed, first to the Ninth Street Church, then to the Lafayette Place
Church, and later to its present location. The crocketed spire of the
Church of St. Nicholas is two hundred and seventy feet high. Within the
edifice is a tablet to the soldiers and sailors of the Revolution,
placed by the Daughters of the Revolution, and oil portraits of all the
ministers of the church from Dominie Du