He got control of various railroads leading east, north and west from New York, buying the shares at low prices, his excellent methods improving their earning powers, so that their value greatly enhanced. The greatest of these corporations was the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. When the Commodore died his estate was estimated at $75,000,000, left almost wholly to his son William H. Vanderbilt. When the latter died it had reached $200,000,000, bequeathed chiefly to his two eldest sons, Cornelius, who died in 1899, and William K. Vanderbilt. The family are now housed in a row of palaces farther out the avenue near Central Park, and there are fabulous estimates of their colossal fortunes, which are the greatest in America, and probably in the world. Upon the west side of Fifth Avenue the New York Public Library is being erected on the site of the old Croton Reservoir, which occupied the summit of Murray Hill, and behind it is the pretty little Bryant Park, extending to Sixth Avenue. This Library comes from the consolidation of the Astor and Lenox Libraries, augmented by the Samuel J. Tilden Trust Fund, amounting to about $2,500,000. North of this, Forty-second Street crosses the city, having the Grand Central Station of the Vanderbilt lines opposite Fourth Avenue, the only railway station in New York, though other roads are expecting to come in by tunnels under the rivers. At Forty-third Street and Fifth Avenue is the finest American synagogue, the Jewish Temple Emanu-El, a magnificent specimen of Saracenic architecture, the interior being rich in Oriental decoration. Creeping plants tastefully overrun the lower portions of its two great towers. There are numerous fine churches on this portion of the avenue, two of which are rather more famous than the others. When the old Dutch Governor Peter Minuit bought Manhattan Island from the Indians, he founded an orthodox Dutch church in 1628. This church is now a costly brownstone structure in Decorated Gothic at the corner of Forty-eighth Street, having a crocketed spire two hundred and seventy feet high. Its inscription tells us it is the "Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of the City of New York, organized under Peter Minuit, Director General of the New Netherlands, in 1628, chartered by William, King of England, 1696." The present church was built in 1872. Occupying the entire block at Fiftieth Street is the magnificent white marble Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Patrick, in Decorated Gothic, with two spires rising three hundred and thirty-two feet. This noble church much resembles the great Cathedral at Cologne, particularly in the interior. Behind it, fronting on Madison Avenue, is the Archbishop's white marble residence, and adjacent is the old building of Columbia College, the original King's College of New York, founded in 1754 by a fund started from the proceeds of various lotteries, which then raised $17,215. It now has new buildings elsewhere.