York College Cottage Owners and Architects

Francis Lynde Stetson (1846–1920) was an American lawyer. He graduated from Williams College in 1867 and from Columbia Law School in 1869 and was admitted to the bar in 1869 and practiced in NYC. He devoted attention chiefly to corporation and railway law, and became general counsel of the International Mercantile Marine Company, the Northern Pacific Railway, the Southern Railway, and the United States Rubber Company. In 1894, he formed the firm of Stetson, Jennings & Russell (a predecessor to the modern-day Davis Polk & Wardwell), which represented J. P. Morgan's US Steel Corporation; he was also Morgan's personal attorney. President Grover Cleveland was a partner in the firm between his two terms as President, and a close friend. Stetson also served as counsel for Samuel J. Tilden in the controversy over the 1876 presidential election. He established an estate in Ringwood, NJ from farm in the Ramapo Mountains that would become the NJ State Botanical Gardens in Ringwood State Park.

Cram & Wentworth - Ralph Adams Cram (1863 – 1942) was a prolific and influential America architect of collegiate and ecclesiastical buildings, often in the Gothic Revival style.  Cram and business partner Charles Wentworth started business in Boston in April 1889 as Cram and Wentworth. They had landed only four or five church commissions before they were joined by Bertram Goodhue in 1892 to form Cram, Wentworth and Goodhue. Goodhue brought an award-winning commission in Dallas (never built) and brilliant drafting skills to the Boston office.  Wentworth died in 1897 and the firm's name changed to Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson to include draftsman Frank Ferguson.  Cram & Wentworth are credited with designing 'The Ledges'.