bought acreage
property in the vicinity of Canal Street. Next he bought Richmond Hill,
the estate of Aaron Burr. It consisted of one hundred sixty acres just
above Twenty-third Street. He paid for the land a thousand dollars an
acre. People said Astor was crazy. In ten years he began to sell lots
from the Richmond Hill property at the rate of five thousand dollars an
acre. Fortunately for his estate he did not sell much of the land at
this price, for it is this particular dirt that makes up that vast
property known as "The Astor Estate."

During the Revolutionary War, Roger Morris, of Putnam County, New York,
made the mistake of siding with the Tories.

A mob collected, and Morris and his family escaped, taking ship to
England. Before leaving, Morris declared his intention of coming back as
soon as "the insurrection was quelled." Roger Morris never came back.

Roger Morris is known in history as the man who married Mary Philipse.
And this lady lives in history because she had the felicity of being
proposed to by George Washington. George himself tells us of this in his
Journal, and George, you will remember, could not tell a lie. George was
twenty-five, he was on his way to Boston, and was entertained at the
Philipse house, the Plaza not having then been built. Mary was twenty,
pink and lissome. Immediately after supper, George, finding himself
alone in the parlor with the girl, proposed. He was an opportunist.

The lady pleaded for time, which the Father of his Country declined to
give. He was a soldier and demanded immediate surrender. A small quarrel
followed, and George saddled his horse and rode on his way to fame and
fortune. Mary thought he would come back, but George never proposed to
the same lady twice. Yet he thought kindly of Mary and excused her
conduct by recording, "I think ye ladye was not in ye moode."

Just twenty-two years after this bout with Cupid, General George
Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, occupied the
Roger Morris Mansion as headquarters, the occupants having fled.
Washington had a sly sense of humor, and on the occasion of his moving
into the mansion, remarked to Colonel Aaron Burr, his aide, "I move in
here for sentimental reasons--I have a small and indirect claim on the
place."

It was Washington who formally confiscated the property, and turned it
over to the State of New York as contraband of war. The Morris estate of
about fifty thousand acres was parceled