(337) 
in the autumn, the asylum property on 49th Street was pur- 
chased as ‘‘ temporary quarters,” to which on May 12, 1857, 
the college removed, and remained there for 40 years.* The 
idea of using the garden ground for college buildings was 
abandoned. Its rapidly rising value proved that it was worth 
more for nursing the college than for housing it. 
In 1857 sixteen city lots at 48th Street and Fifth Avenue 
were sold to the Dutch Reformed Church for $80,000, the 
first sale of any part of the garden:grounds. In 1859, a map 
of the rest was made in city lots (No. 611, Reg. Office), and 
not long afterwards the trustees began leasing on renewable 
21-year leases for the erection of first class dwellings; and 
before 1875 the lots on the four blocks were all taken and 
dwellings erected. Then, for the first time, the college came 
into the receipt of ‘‘ highly profitable rentals,” and in a few 
years it passed from straightened circumstances to comparative 
affluence. f 
By the close of the century, the property that was esti- 
mated by the college authorities to be worth only from six to 
eight thousand dollars when received from the state, | was 
worth as many millions. It had enabled the ill-supported 
college, struggling with innumerable difficulties for near a 
century and a half, to expand into a great university. The 
sale of the block between 47th and 48th Streets for about 
$3,000,000 within a few years past has supplied the means 
for the payment of a considerable part of the cost of this 
expansion. The residue of the grounds, if sold at present 
prices, would discharge the remaining indebtedness and leave 
a surplus endowment of several millions. If these splendid 
results have sprung primarily from Dr. Hosack’s courageous 
and brilliant enterprise, they are equally the fruit of the saga- 
cious and heroic tenacity of the college trustees for three 
quarters of a century in holding on to the garden property, 
and in resisting the temptation to purchase present ease and 
freedom from debt at the sacrifice of a triumphant future. 
The Decline of the Garden. — This was inevitable from the 
time when it came to the state in 1817 and the state refused to 
*Hist. Columbia Un., 160. 1904. ft Ibid., ror. tIbid., roa. 
