Colonnade Row Westchester marble and linked with a colonnade of Corinthian columns providing the homes with their current name. The marble for the buildings was found at Sing Sing, where the convicts worked to cut it for use in construction. The precise year of the buildings' construction, as well as the architect responsible are subject to some debate. The architects generally credited with Colonnade Row's design is Alexander Jackson Davis, Ithiel Town, and James Dakin, who were believed to have designed the homes for the Astor and Vanderbilt families. Town and Dakin are believed to have begun work on the project, which
Perrault's Colonnade French classical architecture, it is shown in nearly every project and early drawing of the east facade, and its reexcavation revealed the original "soubassement", or podium (see the engraving from Blondel's book). The moat may have been filled in around 1674 to facilitate construction (see the engraving by Sébastien Leclerc) and not restored due to lack of funds to build the "contrescarpe" after Louis XIV's attention shifted to the Palace of Versailles. However, in 1981 Germain Bazin argued that the reconstruction of the moat was misguided, since for aesthetic reasons Louis XIV had never wanted it. For centuries, Perrault’s Colonnade