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 for whom he had originally written the piece. Moore's conception of Saint Nicholas was borrowed from his friend Washington Irving, but Moore portrayed his "jolly old elf" as arriving on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day. At the time that Moore wrote the poem, Christmas Day was overtaking New Year's Day as the preferred genteel family holiday of the season, but some Protestants viewed Christmas as the result of "Catholic ignorance and deception" and still had reservations. By having Saint Nicholas arrive the night before, Moore "deftly shifted the focus away from Christmas Day with its still-problematic religious associations." As