Peter Schermerhorn died on June 23, 1852, and during the next decade the Jones and Schermerhorn cousins soon discovered that though they had retained possession of their landscaped estate, the pressures of the city's inexorable northward growth soon hemmed them on two sides. Casual pilferage of fruit from their orchards and the presence of German beer gardens along the Post Road at the gates of their shaded country lane encouraged them to lease a portion of the land for a commercial picnic ground and popular resort hotel, the Jones's Wood Hotel; the hotel extended the old Provoost house,According to , by 1872 the house was a dilapidated ruin, according to (noted by ). adding a dance pavilion, shooting range and facilities for other sports. Jones's Wood became the resort of working-class New Yorkers in the 1860s and 70s, who disembarked from excursion steamers and arrived by the horsecars and then by the Second Avenue Railroad, to enjoy beer, athletics, patriotic orations and rowdy entertainments that were banned by the prim regulations of the city's new Central Park.; the "moral park" p. 25f.
