[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] year 183G. Irving was born in New York City, April 3, 1783. He " first came to Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow when a lad ot fourteen or fifteen. He spent some of his holidays here, and formed an attach-ment for the spot which never left him." At frequent intervals in his literary career he visited Tarrytown, sometimes as a guest of his nephew, Oscar Irving. In a letter to his sister in 1832 he wrote: 11 I am more and more in the notion of having that, little cottage below Oscar's house, and wish you to tell him to endeavor to get it for me." This cottage was a small stone Dutch dwelling, the iden-tical " Wolfert's Roost" of his well-known sketch, built in early times by a member of the Acker family, and at the period of the Revolution occupied by Jacob Van Tassel as a tenant of Frederick Philipse. Irving purchased it, with about fifteen acres of land, in June, 1835. During that year and 1836 he had extensive alterations made, giving the name of Sunnyside to the place as then remodeled. Over the south entrance he placed a Dutch tablet, whose translation is as follows : " Erected in the year 1656.1 Reconstructed by Washing-ton Irving in the year 1835. Geo. Harvey. Architect." In October, 1836, he moved in. Ever afterward Sunnyside was his home. There he wrote his " Life of Washington." He was constantly visited by men of distinction. During the first year of his residence he entertained Prince Louis Napoleon, afterward Napoleon III.