Another reason North Richmond Hill was slow to develop was the difficulty in obtaining water - a problem remedied in 1880 when Albon Man built a reservoir on that Hill named Richmond. The first house in North Richmond Hill went up in 1872 at the corner of today's Metropolitan and 83rd Avenues. Its owner was Joseph Lyman, agricultural editor of the New York Tribune, who was stricken with small pox and died in the house before it could be finished.