When St. Clair Pollock lived in Morningside Heights it was still a rural outpost of New York City. In 1797, the year he died at five, metropolitan life was still concentrated at the bottom of the island.

The boy’s father buried him near the cliffs that he is rumored to have fallen to his death and erected a monument to him and his love of these hills. When he eventually sold the estate he asked the new owners to take care of the grave site for him, they did as did the future owners. Today the monument still stands in Riverside Park and it is one of the few graves on public property in the city of New York.