I had never met him, but he had often been pointed out to me, as, shortly before 9 o’clock, he walked with his son, Waldorf, down Fifth Avenue, from their home to their office in Twenty-fifth Street. Astor was a portly figure with impressive side-whiskers. I watched for them and followed them to their office and asked for an interview. My plain statement of facts made no apparent impression on them. I tried again: I told Southmayd’s story of Hans: a smile broke the severity of the elder’s face. “Mr. Astor,” I concluded, “you must admit that it’s unfair to your property to compare the Harlem of to-day with the Brooklyn of 1856.” “You’re right,” said Astor. “You make me a proposition of what relative values you put on the various plots, and what will be the amounts of the separate mortgages, and I will have it checked up.” I submitted my figures and they were accepted without any change. The mortgages were paid long before they were due, as all the property was promptly improved. I believe this was the first time that the Astors broke away from their policy of not selling any of their holdings. While these activities were going on in Harlem, a great many builders had erected rows and rows of private houses on the West Side, principally between Central Park West and Amsterdam Avenue, so as to be adjacent to the Elevated roads. In 1887 and 1888 there was a considerable slump, and over three hundred new private houses were unsold and unoccupied. Everything looked very gloomy. All of us who were interested in the West Side were terrified when an announcement came that there would be an unrestricted auction of the Joshua Jones Estate on Seventy-fourth and Seventy-fifth streets from Central Park West to within a few hundred feet of Amsterdam Avenue. Ehrich and I attended the auction, and when the first lot on Seventy-fourth Street was put up with the privilege of the balance of the block, we astonished the auctioneer and all present by taking all twenty-four lots. That afternoon Ehrich and I went up to look at our purchase. As we walked over the lots a couple of men shouted at us to get off the property. We asked them why, and they said: “Don’t you see our traps? We are catching birds here.” There is not much bird-trapping in that neighbourhood to-day! Success breeds enterprise. When we had disposed of these various plots at a good profit, I was ambitious to undertake still larger transactions. The original Rapid Transit Commission was then laying out the routes of the first subway, and I, in search of another One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, began to prospect for the district in which the Commission would be likely to locate a northerly spur, concluding that if Washington Heights were made accessible, One Hundred and Eighty-first Street would become the important thoroughfare of that neighbourhood.