in the block between Forty-first and Forty-second Street, was the Rutgers Female Cottage.  This institution was first opened in 1839 on ground given it by William B. Crosby in Madison Street.  The Madison Street property had been part of the estate of Colonel Henry Rutgers, of Revolutionary fame, after whom the college was named.  In 1855 certain buildings known as “The House of Mansions,” or “The Spanish Row,” were erected opposite the Reservoir by George Higgins, who thought “that eleven buildings, uniform in size, price, and amount of accommodation, of durable fire-brick, and of a chosen cheerful tint of colour and variegated architecture,” would suit the most fastidious home-seeker.  In his prospectus to the public he informed that the view from the windows was unrivalled, as it commanded the whole island and its surroundings.  But either “The House of Mansions” had some defect, or the situation was still too remote from the city.  The project was not a success, and in 1860 the Rutgers Female College, incidentally the first institution for the higher education of young women in the city, moved from its downtown home and occupied the neglected buildings.  Then there is the story of the great square opposite, running from Fifth to Sixth Avenues, between Fortieth and Forty-second Streets.  The Public Library holds the eastern half of it now and Bryant Park the western.  Like Washington Square and Madison Square the land once served as a burial place for the poor and the nameless dead.  Between the years 1822 and 1825 that northern square was the Potter’s Field.  Then, on October 14, 1842, the massive Reservoir, which remained to see almost the dawn of the twentieth century, was opened with impressive ceremonies.  The distributing reservoir of the Croton Water system, it occupied more than four acres, and was divided into two basins by a partition wall.  The enclosing walls, constructed of granite, were about forty-five feet high.  This vast structure, resembling an Egyptian temple, contained twenty million gallons of water.  The Reservoir had been there eleven years, when the Crystal Palace, modelled after the London Crystal Palace at Sydenham, was formally opened July 14, 1853, by President Franklin Pierce.  Six hundred and fifty thousand dollars was the cost of the building, which was shaped like a Greek cross, of glass and iron, with a graceful dome, arched naves, and broad aisles.  Upon the completion of the Atlantic Cable in 1858 an ovation was given in the Palace to Cyrus W. Field.  Beyond the Palace, to the north, was the Latting Tower, an observatory, three hundred and fifty feet high, an octagon seventy-five feet across the base, of timber, braced with iron, and anchored at each of the eight angles with about forty tons of stone and timber.  The tower was the design of Warren Latting, and cost one hundred thousand dollars.  Immediately over the first story there was a refreshment room, and above three view landings, the highest being three hundred feet from the pavement.  The proprietors