H.B. Claflin estate gatekeeper's house, 1923. Horace B. Clafin was a dry goods merchant who rose to prominence as the foremost wholesale merchant in the city in the early and middle 19th century. In the 1860s he began assembling a large estate in the then-rural countryside of the Bronx. The estate grew to more than 100 acres and eventually included three large mansions and a number of outbuildings (like this gatekeeper's lodge). The H.B. Claflin & Company became insolvent in 1914 and in 1919 the estate was divided and put up for sale (a section of the property had been earlier been sold to the city for the construction of the Jerome Park Reservoir). The property included about 300 lots which, while originally rural countryside, were by 1919 conveniently located near considerable mass transit infrastructure. Today the streetscape is densely populated with apartment houses and private residences.