The new beauty of the Hyde Park estate carried its fame throughout this country and to Europe. Many notables came to Hyde Park to visit Dr. Hosack and to enjoy the scene. Among them were Philip Hone, diarist and former Mayor of New York; Washington Irving, noted author; the poet Fitz-Greene Halleck; Jared Sparks, American historian and editor of the North American Review; Capt. Thomas Hamilton, British novelist and adventurer; Harriet Martineau; Dr. James Thacher, physician and biographer; and the young English artist Thomas Kelah Wharton, who made several engravings of the estate. In 1840, some 5 years after Dr. Hosack’s death, John Jacob Astor bought the mansion tract, containing about 125 acres of land west of the Albany Post Road. Astor almost immediately made a gift of this purchase to his daughter Dorothea Langdon and her five children. One of her sons, Walter Langdon, Jr., eventually bought out the property interests of his mother, sisters, and brothers, and by 1852 had become sole owner. [Illustration: _Gardener’s cottage._] The handsome house originally built by Dr. Samuel Bard, then enlarged by Dr. Hosack, was completely destroyed by fire in June 1845. A new mansion was built on the site of the destroyed house in 1847. By 1872, Langdon had reunited the farmland east of the Post Road through purchase. In October of that year, fire destroyed the splendid barns that had been Dr. Hosack’s pride. Three years later, Langdon built the gardener’s cottage and toolhouse, the only buildings still standing that antedate the Vanderbilt era. Until late in life, the Langdons spent much of their time in Europe, and the Hyde Park mansion was closed for years. In 1882, however, Langdon returned to Hyde Park, living there the life of a country gentleman. There were no surviving children when he died in 1894 at the age of 72. When Hyde Park was offered for sale the next year, Frederick W. Vanderbilt purchased it. [Illustration: _Tool house._] _Description of the Mansion_ Vanderbilt Mansion was designed by the firm of McKim, Mead, and White in 1896-98 in an Italian Renaissance style then popular with that firm. The mansion has about 50 rooms on 4 levels, including servants’ quarters and utility features like the kitchen and laundry. The entire construction of concrete and steel, faced with cut stone, is fireproof—except for the interior paneled walls and the furnishings. FIRST FLOOR _Main Entrance Vestibule._ This is a small, high-ceilinged room that leads from the imposing front portico of the mansion to the reception hall. It is without distinctive furnishings except for a pair of large Mediterranean green-glazed pottery jars. [Illustration: _Library and family living room._] _Reception Hall._