 In 1853, Horace Greeley, the editor of the "New-York Tribune", bought the first part of what would eventually become a farm nearby, much of it developed for that purpose either by Greeley himself or under his supervision to use as an experimental farm, testing new agricultural techniques he wrote about in his column.While he was frequently ridiculed for this in his day, due to his own professed previous ignorance of the subject, much of the advice he published in those columns was actually correct.Originally the farm was intended to be a summer residence for the Greeley family.