He was a well-known philanthropist with significant donations to many institutions and organizations and he was a major contributor to the successful efforts to protect the Great Swamp.

[1] He was born on February 28, 1881, to Emma Hartley, who died from complication of childbirth on March 3, 1881, and Norman White Dodge.

His grandfather had provided a home on Thirty-seventh Street adjoining his on Madison Avenue for his daughter, Emma, as a wedding present when she had married Norman W. Dodge on May 6, 1880.

[3] Several years after the death of his mother, his father remarried on January 5, 1897,[4][5] and Marcellus was raised by his maternal grandparents.

They visited many locations in the Caribbean,[7] including Cuba where they toured the battle fields of recent armed rebellion before returning to Tampa.

Photographs and some remembrances of the trip by Eugene Delano were published in the Yale Courant, Volume 43 May 1907, pages 686–693, under the title, Les Iles du Salut.

She was a child of William and Almira Geraldine Goodsell Rockefeller, and was estimated to have her own fortune of more than 100 million dollars.

After it became his residence, he added two wings and some interior enhancements to the house as well as secondary living quarters, barns, stables, and a polo field.

Many of the competitors followed the international horse show circuit that closed its season with the November exhibition at Madison Square Garden on Fiftieth Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan each year.

Eventually, Dodge became the chairman of Remington Arms Company, taking the place of his maternal grandfather.

When the remnants of Glacial Lake Passaic, the Great Swamp that abutted Dodge's estate, was targeted for development as an airport by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, nearby citizens formed the Jersey Jetport Site Association in 1959 to protect it by purchasing properties to assemble for donation to the government as a federal park.

Dodge was one of the first trustees of the North American Wildlife Foundation that completed the acquisition of enough of the Great Swamp to protect the massive natural resource.

In 1964 the park was dedicated by Udall, who had become Secretary of the Interior to president John F. Kennedy and continued in the same role under Lyndon B.