Robert Donaldson Jr.

[2] His sister Joanna Donaldson married Dr. Oliver Bronson, "heir to a wealthy Connecticut financier, banker, and real estate speculator.

While in London, he inherited $300,000 (equivalent to $6,540,000 today) from the estate of Samuel Donaldson,[6] a bachelor uncle who owned a prosperous commission house.

[11] He was friends with many prominent painters of the Hudson River School, including Asher Brown Durand, owned several important artworks including Gypsying Party by Leslie, The School of Athens, a copy of Raphael's fresco made by Morse for Donaldson in 1831, some Italian paintings, portraits, and several Dutch landscapes.

[19] In 1827, Donaldson purchased a house at 15 State Street in Manhattan, overlooking the Battery, previously owned by the merchant Archibald Gracie, and in 1819 the birthplace of the author Herman Melville.

[1] Donaldson hired his friend, the architect Alexander Jackson Davis, to renovate the house which he then decorated with sculptures by John Frazee,[20] paintings by Samuel F. B. Morse and Charles Robert Leslie, and furniture by Duncan Phyfe.

In 1795 John Armstrong Jr. purchased a part of the Van Bentheusen farm, and converted the existing barn into a two-story twelve-room Federal style home.

[21] Donaldson hired his friend Alexander Jackson Davis to turn the home into the rural Gothic style (as well as build a gatehouse (similar in style to the Henry Delamater House),[23] and hired friend and horticulturist and landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing to build an English garden with winding roads, waterfalls, and bridges.