Christopher Gray, writing for the New York Times:
In November 1869 The New York Tribune carried a notice that “Mr. Rutherford Stuyvesant’s new building … is now rapidly approaching completion. It is an attempt to introduce in this city the style of house-building almost universal in Paris, that of including several distinct suites of rooms under a single roof. This is wholly different from the plan of the tenement house.” What motivated Stuyvesant, then 27, is not known.