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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.”