This book is dedicated to Susan E. Lyman.

Susan Lyman, one of the best informed of New York's modern historians, wrote and lectured frequently about the city's culture and many charms; she wrote pamphlets on the city's manners and on one of its early historians, Martha J. Lamb. Two books demonstrate this dedication: The Face of New York: the city as it was and as it is, with photographs by Andreas Feininger, published in 1954. Ten years later, also published by Crown, was her last book The Story of New York, an informal history of the city. Miss Lyman spent years in tracing and writing the history of Mr. Gracie and his country seat; her two manuscripts on these latter subjects, labeled "dead hopes," were among the papers left for disposition by her literary executor, Mrs David S. Wells, and were made available to Mrs. Olshansky and to the author by Mrs. Wells.