Cockloft Hall Gouverneur Street, Mt. Pleasant Avenue, Ogden Street Images

Cockloft Hall stood on the northeast corner of Gouverneur Street and Mount Pleasant Avenue with the property extending eastward to Ogden Street (now McCarter Highway). It was built shortly before the Revolutionary War. The entrance faced Mount Pleasant Avenue and the rear had views of the Passaic River with farms lining the banks of the river. Tradition says that George Washington was entertained there in the late fall of 1776.

The property was originally owned by Isaac Gouverneur and named Mount Pleasant Estate. It descended to Gouverneur Kemble and was renamed Cockloft Hall. Around 1807 and for a time thereafter Washington Irving was a frequent visitor wrote about the area in the Salmagundi Papers (a 19th century satirical periodical).

The home passed out of the Kemble family around 1824. Winslow whiting purchased the home in the late 1850's and it stayed in the family until it was sold to Edward M. Waldron (the contractor who built City Hall) in 1912. In 1911 a novel by Mary Dillon entitled "Miss Livingston's Companion", had two chapters devoted to fictitious goings on at Cockloft Hall.