Born in Ireland, Eliza Pratt immigrated to the United States in 1848 and settled in New York City, where she married Henry Greatorex. Widowed in 1859, Eliza relied on her art to support herself and her four children. She studied with William Hart in the mid-1850s and likely traveled with the Hart siblings on sketching trips throughout the Northeast. She was known not only for her oil paintings but also her pen and ink drawings, which were the basis for several publications containing prints of her drawings.

The present painting is based on her 1868 pen and ink drawing of the old Joseph Chaudlait house on Bloomingdale Road in Manhattan. The drawing was reproduced as an etching and published in Old New York from the Battery to Bloomingdale (1875). This painting is one of several by Greatorex that documents a historic building soon to be demolished, a victim of progress in a city that was growing and expanding rapidly in the nineteenth century.

This house is also referred to as the Boggs Mansion.