During the Draft Riots in 1863 it was burned down, and Commodore Vanderbilt bought the site in 1866 for eighty thousand dollars, built a house, lived in it, and left it to his son, Frederick W.Vanderbilt.It is the Arnold, Constable site.

On the same side of the Avenue as the Croton Cottage, in the block between Forty-first and Forty-second Street, was the Rutgers Female Cottage.

This institution was first opened in 1839 on ground given it by William B.Crosby in Madison Street.

The Madison Street property had been part of the estate of Colonel Henry Rutgers, of Revolutionary fame, after whom the college was named.

In 1855 certain buildings known as "The House of Mansions," or "The Spanish Row," were erected opposite the Reservoir by George Higgins, who thought "that eleven buildings, uniform in size, price, and amount of accommodation, of durable fire-brick, and of a chosen cheerful tint of colour and variegated architecture," would suit the most fastidious home-seeker.