Clark began investing in West Side real estate in 1877, even as the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide predicted that the area would become “the cheap side of the city.” Clark anticipated that Central Park would render Eighth Avenue as desirable as Fifth Avenue. Improvements in public transportation, along with the completion in 1877of Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould’s Ruskinian gothic American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan Square, between 77th and 81st Streets, one of the few realized public spaces on the Commissioners’ Plan, convinced Clark that the West Side was ripe for investment. He hired architect Henry J. Hardenbergh to design the new apartment building and nearby row houses, on 73rd Street. Unfortunately, Clark died in 1882, before his vision was realized. In the view to the north, the museum is the only vertical structure in a large, horizontal expanse. AR