ture possibilities of
the real estate of the island. Buying mostly from the Common Lands of
the City, he purchased sixteen blocks from Park to Fifth Avenue, and
from Fifty-fourth to Sixty-third Street. When he died, in 1839, he left
a will cutting off with small annuities both his son James Mason, who
had married Emma Wheatley, a member of the famous Stock Company of the
old Park Theatre, the favourite "Desdemona," "Julia," "Mrs. Heller" of
her day; and his daughter Helen, who had also married against his
wishes. The will was contested, and eventually the block between
Fifty-seventh and Fifty-eighth Streets passed into the hands of Mrs.
Mary Mason Jones. In 1871 she erected on the land houses of white marble
in a style that was a radical departure from the accepted brown-stone
type. At once they became known as the "Marble Row." Mrs. Mary Mason
Jones, in her day a social leader, lived in the house at the
Fifty-seventh Street corner. Later the dwelling was occupied by Mrs.
Paran Stevens.

To "Fifth Avenue" is owed the following description of the
neighbourhood of the present Plaza in the middle of the last century. It
is from the reminiscences of John D. Crimmins, who has been already
quoted in the course of this book. Mr. Crimmins's father was a
contractor and at one time in the employ of Thomas Addis Emmet, whose
country-seat was on the Boston Post Road near Fifty-ninth Street.

[Illustration: SOUTH OF WHERE "ST. GAUDENS'S HERO, GAUNT AND GRIM, RIDES
ON WITH VICTORY LEADING HIM," MAY BE SEEN THE FOUNTAIN OF ABUNDANCE,
AND, IN THE BACKGROUND, THE NEW PLAZA HOTEL]

Says Mr. Crimmins: "In the immediate vicinity were the country-seats of
other prominent New Yorkers, such as the Buchanans, who were the
forebears of the Goelets, the Adriance, Jones, and Beekman families, the
Schermerhorns, Hulls, Setons, Towles, Willets, Lenoxes, Delafields,
Primes, Rhinelanders, Lefferts, Hobbs, Rikers, Lawrences, and others. A
little farther to the north were the country-seats of the Goelets,
Gracies, and the elder John Jacob Astor. With all these people, who were
practically the commercial founders of our city, my father had an
acquaintance. The wealthy merchants of New York at that period
frequently invested their surplus in outlying property and left its care
largely in the hands of my father, who opened up estates, as he did the
Anson Phelps place in the vicinity of Thirtieth Street, which ran north
and extended from the East River