Amidst the Ruins

Remnants of LaGrange Terrace. also known as Colonnade Row, formerly at 418 to 426 Lafayette Place, New York, NY, from row houses built by Seth Greer and designed possibly by Alexander Jackson Davis, Ithiel Town, and James Dakinin in approximately the 1830's.

Among the famous occupants and guests in these homes during their heyday were John Jacob Astor IV, President John Tyler Cornelius Vanderbilt and Washington Irving. Astor had once owned an amusement park on this same site. The marble shown here was quarried at Sing Sing Prison by convicts.

These columns and other marble were removed when half of the existing buildings were torn down at the Colonnade in perhaps sometime after 1860 to make room for a Wannamakers Department Store. 428, 430, 432, and 434 Lafayette Street remain to this day.

These remains are currently resting in a parking lot at Delbarton Academy, a Benedictine boys school, which had formerly been the grand estate of Luther Kountze in Morristown, New Jersey. They were rediscovered during work being done for construction of a new building on the campus. Apparently, Mr. Kountze acquired these with some purpose in mind for using them in the future. A future which never unfolded. So here they sit.