The land which the New York Botanical Garden now sits on was owned by the Lorillard family, founders of a tobacco company.

The Snuff Mill (now called Stone Mill) is the last piece of the Lorillard Estate. It's also the oldest tobacco manufacturing building in the United States.

The gardens were inspired by the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, near London. The location of the Lorillard estate offered a picturesque terrain, complete with access to fresh water via the Bronx river, a rock-cut gorge, and 50 acres of old-growth forest.

The Enid A. Haupt Conservatory was one of the first buildings completed on the grounds. It was modeled directly after greenhouses at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew.

The Botanical garden includes 50 distinct gardens and collections. At the center, an old-growth forest is split by the only fresh water river in the city, the Bronx River.

While portions of the park are decorated with waterfalls and a hilly, rocky terrain, other areas are Beaux-Arts in style.

The library, built at the same time as the conservatory, is the largest botanical library in the United States and one of the largest in the world.

The conservatory was one of the first public greenhouses to open, affording the New York public the privilege of viewing "exotic" flora and fauna which was all the rage at the turn of the century.

The Haupt Conservatory still proves to be a valuable resource to the global scientific community.

The New York Botanical Garden still serves as a place of protection for the planet's biodiversity, inspiring and educating generations of Earth's caregivers.