The High Line Hotel Clement Clarke Moore, who wrote his 1823 Christmas poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," on the property. Moore also operated an apple orchard on the estate, which is where The High Line Hotel is now located. In the 1820s, Moore donated the land that contained the apple orchard to the Episcopal Church. It would become the home of the General Theological Seminary, which is still in operation at the location. The land, however, remained mostly undeveloped until 1878 when Eugene Augustus Hoffman was appointed dean. Hoffman hired architect Charles C. Haight to design a Neo Gothic-style campus based on the
A Visit from St. Nicholas a result, "New Yorkers embraced Moore's child-centered version of Christmas as if they had been doing it all their lives." In "An American Anthology, 1787–1900", editor Edmund Clarence Stedman reprinted the Moore version of the poem, including the German spelling of "Donder and Blitzen" that he adopted, rather than the earlier Dutch version from 1823 "Dunder and Blixem." Both phrases translate as "Thunder and Lightning" in English, though the German word for thunder is "Donner" and the words in modern Dutch would be "Donder en Bliksem." Modern printings frequently incorporate alterations that reflect changing linguistic and cultural sensibilities. For example,