When it was built in 1833 Colonnade Row was the biggest thing in New York since the British occupation, a 200-foot-long sweep of glistening white marble in the form of a Corinthian colonnade, nine houses combined into one great Greek revival statement on what is now Lafayette Street, opposite the Public Theater.

But five of the houses were destroyed early in the last century, and their graceful fluted columns and Corinthian capitals were carted away, vanished from the city with the dust of demolition. Vanished, that is, until a garden designer and a Benedictine monk solved the decades-old puzzle of a mysterious Lost City in the woods of a New Jersey monastery.

Although the exterior is now deteriorated to slum condition, Colonnade Row was once the most impressive Greek Revival grouping in the city. The first families of New York lived there, Gardiners, Delanos, Morgans, along with new money like the Astors. In part they sought the privacy of Lafayette Place, a two-block long cul-de-sac. But they were also attracted to the colonnade’s architectural delicacy, up to date with the sophistication of the terrace houses of London and Bath.