station to see over the entire island. The nearness of the Harlem River made Slang Berg a militarily strategic location. During the American Revolutionary War, Hessian soldiers "mounted a battery" at the hill "to command the mouth of the Harlem River". Despite the 18th-century local prominence of the Gouverneur Morris family, the name "Mount Morris" for the rocky formation, one of two the Dutch called the Ronde Gerbergte is of 19th-century origin: One is an abrupt wooded eminence, by modern innovation styled Mount Morris, but which the Dutch called Slang Berg, or Snake Hill, from the reptile tribes that infested its cleft rocks and underbrush even within memory of the living. Southerly from it the gneiss rock crops out in huge, disordered masses. A little way to the right, as seen from McGown's Pass to the south, is ... a lesser height or ridge, and which to the inhabitants came to be known as the Little Hill. Little Hill was leveled when the right-of-way of the Park Avenue main line was graded for the New York and Harlem Railroad, following the present route of Park Avenue. Construction On September 4, 1839, a residential square, on land which was formerly a race track for horses, out of of a land grant farm owned by the Benson family, was set aside. The square was relocated from the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, which had planned for a square in the neighborhood, in order to take advantage of the rugged topography that stood squarely in the path of Fifth Avenue, which was being extended north of Central Park. "Mount Morris Square" was officially opened December 1, 1840. Usage The new square that existed on paper remained unimproved for decades. It was landscaped in 1869, to a plan by the City surveyor Ignaz Pilat, for which the Central Park Commission allocated $15,000. Walks were graded and the sloping path to the summit was constructed; by the next spring, The New York Times predicted, "croquet playing, decent picnic parties, and a band of music will attract not only the inhabitants of Harlem, but those of New-York". Blocks of the original rusticated retaining walls, akin to the stonework that surrounds Central Park, can still be seen. Music has been played in the park since its beginnings, with the Parks Department promoting performances in 1872 and 1893. By 1900 a refreshment booth had been built at the 120th