The Amiable Child Monument

St. Claire Pollock, the child for whom nearby St. Clair Place was named, died on July 15, 1797 in the fifth year of his life, probably after falling from the cliffs of the parkland onto rocks near the Hudson River, and was buried in one of the few private graves on public land within New York City’s five boroughs. Over the next two centuries, differing accounts of his origins and family persisted: George Pollock, the owner of the property where the boy was buried, was either his father or his uncle, and was a linen merchant of Scots-Irish or possibly English descent who lived in a mansion on Strawberry Hill, later called Claremont, in the 1790s. By January 18, 1800, after selling the property to his former neighbor Mrs. Cornelia Verplanck, George Pollock wrote asking that the small enclosed burial place of a favorite child, covered by a marble monument, be kept enclosed and sacred as part of her estate. The surrounding site also carried a longer history: Claremont Hill had been the location of the Battle of Harlem Heights on September 16, 1776; by 1806 it belonged to Michael Hogan, a former British Consul in Havana, who built Claremont Mansion, for which Claremont Avenue was named, with the estate’s name possibly derived from Hogan’s County Clare birthplace or from his friend Prince William, Duke of Clarence, later King William IV in 1830. Known as the site of a popular roadside inn by 1860, Claremont was acquired by the city from the heirs of Joel Post in 1873 for the development of Riverside Park. In the 1890s, Claremont Inn hosted politicians, socialites, and entertainers including the Morgans, Vanderbilts, Whitneys, Lillian Russell, and Admiral George Dewey; by 1907 it had become a restaurant frequented by Cole Porter and James J. Walker before fire destroyed it in 1950 and a playground was built on the site soon afterward. A century after the tomb of the Amiable Child was laid, Grant’s Tomb across Riverside Drive, designed by architect John Duncan and sculptor John Massey Rhind, was dedicated on April 27, 1897, standing in grand contrast to the modest tribute to a young boy who never reached adulthood.

New York, New York · United States