Recalls Benjamin Whitlock, whose Hunts Point mansion was known as ‘Whitlock’s Folly’.
Born in New York City in 1815, Whitlock became a cotton merchant in the South and, as some accounts have it, possibly an enslaver. His mansion near Oak Point, now Hunts Point, was completed in 1859. He became a pariah in New York and died in 1863. Whitlock Avenue is one of the place names that keep the house’s memory.