were two immense elms...on entering this gate you passed through a large field, thru another gate, opening on the lawn. A carriage road of white pebbles surrounded the house, & a beautiful grove of cedars led to the garden which was filled with every variety of the best and choicest fruit.
Eliza Smith wrote of a Manhattan none would recognize today. She remembered a "lovely brook, with a high rock shaded by willows" to the south of the estate house, and leisurely summer days spent "in a sort of little bay" on the shore of the East River.
Her father wished to purchase Rose Hill, but the property was to be divided among the heirs of Nicholas Cruger, who had died in 1800. Years later, Eliza Smith lamented "this just prevented our being very rich millionaires, for to own acres in the thickly settled parts of the city would give fortune enough for anyone."
