Seaman Arch on Broadway and 216th.

On the west side of Broadway, formerly known as the Kingsbridge Road, at 216^th Street, stands a neglected and nearly forgotten monument to Inwood’s past.  The great marble arch, constructed in the 1850’s, once led visitors to the glorious Seaman mansion, which, until the 1930’s, stood on the current site of Park Terrace Gardens on Park Terrace East and 217^th Street.

Just before the turn of the twentieth century the old mansion and surrounding property, built by the descendants of Dr. Valentine Seaman, who introduced the small pox vaccine to the United States, were rented to a group of wealthy equestrians.

What follows is an 1896 description of the new riding club that includes a spectacular sketch of the arch as it was seen before the encroachment the modern infrastructure and apartment buildings, which would soon wipe the mansion, but not the arch, off the face of a once rural little fiefdom.

Harper’s Bazaar
November, 1896

SUBURBAN RIDING AND DRIVING CLUB

The rapid improvement of the annexed district of New York for business purposes has been steadily despoiling the rural drives, which for many years have been one of the chief charms of the metropolis for horsemen.  The closing of Jerome Park two years ago for a public reservoir, and the temporary disuse of Jerome Avenue, due to the building of the new Central bridge over the Harlem River, forced the riders and drivers to seek other roads for reaching the suburbs.  Or many years the Jerome Park clubhouse was, by common consent, the rendezvous for gentlemen who owned and drove fast horses for pleasure, and its abandonment left them without a stopping-place on the east side of the city, save the many road-houses which line Jerome Avenue.

The rapid improvement of the drives on the west side of Manhattan Island, on the other hand, has attracted most of the riders and drivers to that side of the city. And Kingsbridge Road is gradually taking the place of Jerome Avenue.  That it will be the driving centre of the city in years to come is shown by the number of fine drives recently finished, in course of completion, and planned for that section of the city. What better place, therefore, could be selected for the new home of the lovers of horses than this thoroughfare?

A number of the leading spirits in the old management of the Jerome Park clubhouse got together two years ago and formed the nucleus of what is now the most promising organization of its kind within many miles of the metropolis.  The Suburban Riding and Driving Club has met with unusual success and already numbers among its members most of the better class of horsemen in the city.  Its clubhouse at 217^th Street and the Kingsbridge Road is a convenient stopping place for gentlemen driving in or out of the city on the west side, and its comfortable reading-rooms and smoking-rooms, café and restaurant attract a goodly attendance of members almost every bright day.

The Old Seaman Mansion (Source- Harper's Bazaar, 1896)

The Harlem River Speedway, now building and destined for use within a year or two, the new French Boulevard overlooking the Hudson River, and now almost completed, with Dyckman Street, already open for public use, to connect the two great boulevards with Kingsbridge Road, will offer to New York horsemen a circuit of fine drives not to be equaled by those of any other city in the country.  The upper end of the Speedway turns into Dyckman Street just under Fort George Heights, and will pour its steady stream of fast horses into that thoroughfare to seek other avenues of return to the Park and other drives of the lower part of the city.  Dyckman Street, a mile of fine level drive, intersects the Kingsbridge Road at 204^th Street, and connects the new French Boulevard with that and the Speedway, at Inwood, just west of the Kingsbridge Road.  Thus is completed a network of fine public drives, combining opportunity for fast driving, fine views of both the Hudson and Harlem rivers, and complete isolation from the thickly settled parts of the town.

216th and Broadway in 1895 (Source-Harper's Bazaar)

Only half a mile above the junction of Dyckman Street, and standing on a hill a few hundred feet back of the highroad, stands the new home of the horsemen in what for many years was known as the “Seaman Castle.”  The Suburban Riding and Driving Club is as thoroughly secluded as any other spot on Manhattan Island.  The massive arched stone entrance attracts much attention from the passers-by, but the road up to the clubhouse winds around the side of the hill, and thus isolates the building.  Once inside the grounds, the picturesqueness (sic) of the place is perhaps its most noticeable feature.  The property has been laid out with an eye for the landscape effect, and with much success.  Facing the entrance is a small pool with a fountain in its centre, which is supplied from a stream falling over the rocks from the hill above, where stands the clubhouse.   The road bends around through a grove of trees, and finally emerges at the crest of the hill facing the old homestead of the Seaman family.

The building, which is of white marble, faces west, and from its porch and front windows can be seen the silvery line of Spuyten Duyvil Creek, a mile or so above, winding its snakelike course toward the cleft in the hills which overlook the Hudson.  Through this opening the “Rhine of America,” with the Palisades beyond it, can also be seen.  From the back and north end of the building the valley of the Harlem, with the river itself winding through it, is also spread out before the eye as in a panorama.

Southwest of the clubhouse are the stables and sheds for the accommodations, both temporary and permanent, of the members’ horses.  A large white marble stable was found on the property when the Suburban club took possession, but additional sheds have been added.  Near the stables, too, is the great quarry from which was taken the marble for the buildings on the place. The great archway entrance, the “Castle” itself, the stable, and even the walls that surround the property, are built of the fine quality of marble that was found on the land.  On the side of the hill just below the clubhouse are extensive greenhouses, which furnish flowers for the decoration of the rooms, while vegetable gardens on the property supply many of the necessaries of the kitchen.

Main Hall of the old Seaman mansion (Source-Harper's Bazaar, Nov., 1896)

Within, the building has been altered somewhat for its new tenants.  The bedrooms have become private dining rooms; the great dining-hall and parlors are used as a café, public dining room, and reception-room; while an old conservatory at the southeast corner of the “Castle” has been altered for a smoking and “sun” room.  Over $10,000 has been spent in alterations and repairs on the clubhouse and grounds by the members of the Suburban club.

During the winter the wives and sisters of the members make the place attractive by a series of receptions at the clubhouse, while sleighing and driving parties frequently stop there.  A number of other attractive features have been added.  Golf links have been laid out on the big meadow west of the “Castle,” and twenty-six acres of land afford ample opportunity for the sport.

Interior of Seaman Mansion (Source-Harper's Bazaar, Nov. 1896)

Over two hundred members have been enrolled already, and the list is growing rapidly.  The men who headed the movement for the new club, and who have since been elected to the principal offices, are representative horsemen of the better class, and their names guarantee the permanency of the organization.  The initiation fee is set at $25, and the annual dues are the same figure.

Today-Inside the arch looking out.

For another description of the Suburban Riding and Driving Club, click here.

"Pop' Seeley's cabin at the foot of Cold Spring Road in 1893 photograph by Ed Wenzel. (Source: New York Historical Society)

Sometime before the turn of the twentieth century, on the northernmost tip of Manhattan, a folksy, business savvy and somewhat mischievous fellow named “Pop” Seeley set up shop in a quaint little cabin in the shade of a mighty tulip tree on the shores of a then meandering and muddy creek called the Spuyten Duyvil.

Today the location of the tulip tree, allegedly the spot where Peter Minuit swapped the island of Manhattan for a handful of trinkets, is marked by a boulder with a plaque proclaiming: “According to legend, on this site of the principal Manhattan Indian Village (Shorakkopoh), Peter Minuit in 1626 purchased Manhattan Island for trinkets and bead then worth about 60 guilders. This boulder also marks the spot where a tulip tree (Liriodendron Tulipera) grew to a height of 165 feet. It was, until its death in 1938 at the age of 280 years, the last living link between the Reckgawawanc Indians who lived here.”

Seeley cabin in 1906 photo.

A stone’s throw west of the tulip would have been Seeley’s cabin…

Former resident Aimee Voorhees, who would later construct a pottery works a short distance from the Seeley cottage, described “Pop’s” home as a “small white frame house more than a century old. It was built for a retired sea captain seeking a snug harbor. We have never been able to find but his name…but Pop Seeley told us stories about him. Pop lived here until he died.” (Helen Worden, Round Manhattan’s Rim)

Inwood Hill Park, as we know it today, wasn’t even a spark of an idea when “Pop” Seeley moved into the peaceful cove now buried under a soccer field made up of landfill from later subway digs—at the time, Inwood Hill was referred to locally as Cold Spring Mountain.

So who was “Pop” Seeley?  That is truly is a question for the ages.

How or even when “Pop” Seeley arrived on the banks of the Spuyten Duyvil remains a bit of a mystery.  A popular fellow with fisherman and reporters alike, the details of his early life remain somewhat murky.  “Pop,” it would seem, had a different story for nearly every person he encountered. He told some writers his name was Abraham, others Lynch, but his real name, most likely, was Andrew Jackson Seeley.

According to a New York Times article dated July 3, 1910,  “If you are lucky you may run across ‘Pop’ Andrew Jackson Seeley working at his boats along the creek front.  ‘Pop,’ as he is affectionately and familiarly called by most everybody in that neighborhood, is sort of a self-constituted ‘guardian’ of the old tree, and, in his way, almost as interesting.  He doesn’t have a whole lot to say to a stranger at first, but if you can get him to talking he may tell you that he has lived within the shade of that old tree for more than a score of his eighty years.  He may tell you, too, just how much he loves and protects it from vandal hands.”

“The Old Man of the River,” The New York Times reporter continued, “has been most everything—soldier, sailor, fireman.  Fought many a good fight back in 61’, was a member of the New York Fire Department for seventeen years, and as a sailor has been over many a foreign sea.”

“Pop” simply reveled in spinning fantastic yarns—and from there his legend just grew.

Boss Tweed climbs into rowboat before fleeing to Spain. Could the boatman have been "Pop" Seeley? (Frank Leslie's Illustrated Dec 18, 1875)

In 1921 an old-timer would tell reporter Eleanor Booth Simmons that Seeley “was a boatman and a great character, and he always had charge of things in these parts…I’m told it was Pop who rowed Boss Tweed, the Tammany ringster, out to the ship by which he escaped to Spain when he was sentenced to imprisonment for embezzlement in 1875. Pop lived in that old house alone, for he couldn’t get along with his family.”

Something of a curmudgeon, “Pop” was known to complain bitterly about his ill treatment as a non-union man working the docks— but where?  A well-worn Brooklyn directory from the years 1889-1890 lists an Andrew J. Seeley, occupation “boatman,” as being employed by Bush C. Hicks.  Could this have been “Pop?”

Even his time in the neighborhood, if you could call the undeveloped swampland a neighborhood, remains in doubt.

In 1915, the year of Seeley’s death, writers of his various obituaries couldn’t even agree on how long he had lived in his little hideaway nestled between the Hudson and Harlem Rivers.  Had he lived there all of his life or just a “score” of years?  No one seemed to know.  That his obituary was published in no less than three New York papers stands testament to his influence on those who passed through the region—many returning year after year just to have a talk with “Pop.”

Regardless of his sketchy origins, “Pop” Seeley would become the unofficial mayor of the marshy shallows of the area then called “Cold Spring.”

In choosing his homestead, Pop carefully selected a shady spot close to a spring from which once flowed water so sweet and icy-cold that its presence was well-known throughout the region. Seeley would initially list has address as being at the base of Cold Spring Road.

From James Reuel Smith's "Springs and Wells of Manhattan and the Bronx, New York City, at the End of the Nineteenth Century."

On November 13, 1897 amateur historian James Reuel Smith would write, “The ‘Cold Spring’ is some eight hundred feet south of the most northern point of Inwood, and on the east side of it.  It is about one hundred feet from the shore of Spuyten Duyvil Creek, or as it has come to be known as in it’s enlarged and modernized condition, the Harlem Ship Canal.  It is some six feet long east and west, and three feet wide north and south.  Its water comes out from under a piece of rock, and a springhouse is built over it of just the dimensions of the spring and some six feet high.  From this house a pipe runs the distance of some ten feet into a barrel sunk in the ground.  The overflow runs out of the barrel near the top and into the Creek.” (The Springs and Wells of Manhattan and the Bronx, New York City, at the End of the Nineteenth Century.)

But Pop’s oasis had so much more to offer than just crisp and natural water that was fit to drink— it had long been a favorite among anglers who knew the Spuyten Duyvil to be flush with striped bass.  The marshy waters were also a choice locale for oystermen who used the fertile creek to seed their oyster beds before taking the young bivalves elsewhere to mature.

Seeley Cabin in 1904 photograph.

So, it was in this tranquil oasis that “Pop” Seeley had the idea to open a boathouse complete with a modest marina where he would sell and repair old yachts—a marina that would flourish well into the early twentieth century.

Not surprisingly, Seeley’s business endeavors did not end there. In addition to his boat business, “Pop” operated a store on the shore where fishermen and sun-scorched day-trippers could purchase refreshments for steamy summer afternoons on the water spent, rod in hand, swatting flies and discussing the state of the Union.

And, in those pre-prohibition years, it is safe to say that “Pop” Seeley likely sold more lager than bait.

An inset in the below photo, snapped in 1906, indicates that “Pop” was an official distributor for the A. Liebler Bottling Company—which bottled, among other things, a product many still drink today.

Seeley Cabin in 1906 photo. (Note inset with Liebler Bottling Company sign.)

Incorporated in New York City in September of 1887, the A. Liebler Bottling Company, did a brisk business from their plant on 128^th and 10^th Avenue “bottling, selling, and delivering lager beer, soda-waters, and aerated waters, with its name and certain marks and devices blown and impressed thereon.”

At the time, the company’s top-selling product was Yuengling beer.  Still in business today, the popular brand holds the distinction of being America’s oldest brewery.

Turn of the century postcard for the Liebler Bottling Company.

Of course there was the matter of “Pop’s” water supply. Seeley himself, who, by some accounts, would have it plugged, because it competed with his flourishing beer and soda sales, controlled the cold spring.

In June of 1898, Smith, who had visited the spring just a year earlier and described it as “the largest…within the corporate limits of the City of New York,” would lament: “As this spring interfered with Seeley’s sale of soft drinks to boatmen, he put a padlock on the spring house, and filled in with earth the space where the water appeared outside, so that the overflow runs into the creek below the level of the tide.” (The Springs and Wells of Manhattan and the Bronx, New York City, at the End of the Nineteenth Century)

Smith would later describe local reaction to the closing of the well as “incendiary.”

Nevertheless, “Pop” would remain, until his death, a well-liked character despite his many flaws and eccentricities.

Pop Seeley obit The Sun February 13, 1915.

According to his obituary, published in the Sun on February 13, 1915, “Andrew J. Seeley, often referred to as ‘The Old Man of the Hudson,’ since he spent eighty four years on the banks of that river, dropped dead yesterday at a lunch wagon at Broadway and 216^th Street.  Mr. Seeley was one of the most picturesque characters of the Inwood district and was a favorite with many boaters, who visited him yearly. In his heyday he was considered one of the best scullers on the Hudson, often winning the admiration of other experts by his agility in falling out and climbing into a frail scull without upsetting it.  He lived with his eighty year old wife at the foot of Cold Spring road and the Hudson River.”

Pop Seeley obit from the New York Herald, February 18, 1915.

Another obituary, published in the New York Herald would report, “Andrew J. Seeley, the aged boatman of the Spuyten Duyvil and known to everyone in that vicinity as “Pop” Seeley, stepped into a coffee wagon at Broadway and 216^th Street last night and after ordering a sandwich dropped dead.  He was eighty-five years old and it was said his death as the result of general collapse.

Despite his age “Pop” Seeley could row a boat as strongly and skillfully as he did many years ago when he had a reputation as a sculler.  In the last forty years the police have credited him with numerous rescues off drowning persons in Spuyten Duyvil.  Only a month ago he saved a woman and her child.

His specialty was the rescuing of boys who insisted on swimming in the dangerous channel.  His boat was always at the ready for an emergency, and he pulled many of them out of the water.”

What follows is a description of an encounter with Pop Seeley written by a first class passenger on the electric launch Aria after the vessel made a stop at Seeley’s boathouse in 1904.  On October first of that year the account was printed in a periodical titled “Our Paper.”

“On the northern end of Manhattan Island will be found a place marked on the map as Spuyten Duyvil.  Although a part of the great New York city, it has not kept place with the populace’s grand march onward, but retains a great deal of its original simplicity.

Very near here is the King’s bridge of the Revolutionary time, which marked the outer barriers of the British forces and which was very carefully guarded by them.

Spuyten Duyvil Creek, itself, can be entered from both the Hudson and Harlem rivers and is a convenient thoroughfare for the smaller boats.

Here are planted the tiny oysters, and from here, when of the right size, millions of them are taken to larger beds.

No wise person ever attempts to swim across the Creek, as there are many treacherous little eddies and under currents to hamper the swimmer.

The story runs that way back in the time when the Dutch held sway over the island, a German was left by his fellows of one side of the Creek.  When he discovered their departure, heeding no warnings, he threw himself into the water, exclaiming, “I will swim across it in spite of the devil!” and away he went to his own destruction. Since then the place has born the name of Spuyten Duyvil.

On one side of the Creek is the Cold Spring Mountain—so named from the many springs of pure, cold water, which bubble out among and over the rocks.  Here, over the mountain, the Indians used to stealthily approach and make their mightily raids upon the unsuspecting villagers, and then, with a fierce war-whoop, triumphantly return, laden with their spoils.

But, in spite of all the wonderful happenings there in by-gone days, Spuyten Duyvil would be to us but simply a place of interest which we visited, had it not been for two personages whom we met there—known far and near in this region as the ‘powers that be’ of the Creek—Pop and Ma’am Seeley.  They are types of those kind-hearted people one sometimes meets in little out-of-the-way places—ignorant of the ways and workings of the great world, but well versed in local legendary lore and the simple mysteries of their own home life.

It was Pop who met us with outstretched hands, not a haughty New York shake, but a warm grip.  As an especial proof of good fellowship, according to his custom, he first made a pretense of spitting on his hands before extending them cordially.

It was Ma’am who welcomed us no less warmly and invited us to call, treating us with as much consideration as though we had been her especial guests.

A simple, kind-hearted old couple are they, who although not given to worldliness, live quiet, helpful lives, enjoying what pleasures come to them, without trying to seek outside interests.  Although living right in the shadow of New York city, Ma’am solemnly informed us she had never been to a theatre or a picnic in her life.  Her careful training has evidently extended to her daughter, who recorded but one picnic on her list of pleasures, and who, until her marriage, had never seen the inside of a theatre.

Pop seemed to delight a good deal in telling how he escaped the strict clutches of his better half.  Among his escapades was a visit to Coney Island by night, and one to the Aquarium at the battery by day.  He declared that Ma’am lay in wait for him with a broom when he at length stealthily returned.

Pop was a non-union man and gave us quite a spirited talk on the far-reaching powers of that organization.  A large building had to be left uncompleted because its builder did not “belong.” Other buildings put up by independent parties, were injured almost beyond repair.  No boats could get loads unless they were unionists.  He told the story of a thirty five cent pet-cock, which rapidly increased to a dollar and a half because it could not be sold unless a man went along to fix it.

The Seeley home is a small, unpainted house, presenting a better appearance inside than out.  The front commands a view of the wharves with their numerous houseboats, waiting for chance buyers or for some repairs. A little to the right of the house is the inevitable hen yard with its few tenants.

Following the well-worn path, protected by the many trees, you come to one of the famous cold springs and near it—if you please—is a building no less important than the one in which A. J. Seeley supplies his customers with tonics and a few of the luxuries of life.

Here you may find Pop at almost any hour, and here it is that pleasure parties stop to refresh themselves, or eat their luncheon and, as he would tell you, “to see Pop.”

Just back of the store stretches a long line of woods, and pedestrians may find many pleasant and well-beaten paths to take them to the top of the mountain. It is an ideal place to reach on a hot day.

Our memory steals back to the time when we left Spuyten Duyvil and our friends there.

It shows us Pop, leaning over a large pan, with a huge piece of watermelon in his hand.  Next we see Ma’am, with hands upraised and eyes turned heavenward, devoutly thanking God that a boat, stolen while left in her care, had been recovered.  There is Annie, earnestly telling of her miraculous escape from the owls of the wood, and of her thwarting their attempts to pick out her eyes by throwing her apron over her head.  The sleepy, frightened eyes of the tired little boy follow us wistfully.  Last, but not least, we recall the members of the crew returning to the Aria laden with their spoils, watermelon and tonic, so generously provided by the Seeley’s.  Then farewell to Spuyten Duyvil.”

Boats moored in Inwood Hill basin, 1935

During the 1920’s and 30’s an intrepid group of amphibious New Yorkers thumbed their noses at urban living, and high city rents, and took to dwelling in houseboat colonies along the perimeter of the Island of Manhattan.

Two of those colonies, consisting of a ragtag group of artists, electricians and even police officers, were right here in Inwood. One was located on the shore of the Harlem River near 207th Street, while the other was in a boat basin once located at the foot of Inwood Hill along the Spuyten Duyvil.

Like today, there was an east versus west of Broadway debate concerning who had the better digs. House-boaters east of Broadway, along the Harlem River, insisted they had better boats, hook-ups to electricity, city water and other public works as well as easy access to the local shopping district. Conversely, the Inwood Hill homesteaders, who lacked all modern amenities, including gas, water and electricity, considered their plot of shore, shaded by the famous Inwood Tulip, not far from the Inwood Pottery Works, to be the most tranquil and awe inspiring location in all of Manhattan.

Inwood Hill Boat Basin, 1935.

While some of the houseboats in both colonies were no longer seaworthy, their owners having long forsaken aquatic adventures, most were active sailing vessels whose owners lived for the summer months and life on the water. According to a May 24, 1923 account, published in the New York Evening Post which focused primarily on the Inwood Hill colony: “They seem to know that it will not be long before they will be able to forget the boredom of winter and slip away through Spuyten Duyvil into the broad Hudson, or down the Harlem for any one of a thousand places.

The land-bound houseboats, the half-and-halfs, and the floating ones are all alike, though, in feeling the meaning of the spring season. Most of them have already had fresh coats of paint; some are getting theirs now. They look as new as if they had never seen another spring, trim and neat as some old-time sailing craft just from the dry-dock and ready for her owner-master to sail her away across the seas.

Even if the houseboats do wander around five or six months out of the year they are more closely related to the house branch of their family tree than to the boat,” the article continued. Many had gardens, dogs and cats, and access to the old Cold Spring, a reliable source of pure ice cold water that once quenched the thirst of Lenape Indians who previously inhabited the region.

“Of course there are other houseboat colonies around Manhattan. There is a large one down the Harlem only a little way from Inwood with handsomer boats, perhaps, or more pretentious ones that are to be seen along the little cove, but what they lack is Inwood, a perfect background, majestic and colorful.”

What follows is a description of both Inwood houseboat colonies as seen through the eyes of Eleanor Booth Simmons, who, time and time again, turned her reporting to an Inwood that now exists in all but a few fading memories.

The Evening Post
July 10, 1920
By Eleanor Booth Simmons

The Evening Post, July 10, 1920

It was a king of ancient times, wasn’t it, who could be healed grievous illness from which he suffered only by wearing the shirt of an absolutely happy man? And when his courtiers had scoured the land and found the happy man, he had no shirt. Well, I have seen a happy man, right here in Manhattan, and he had a shirt. He was wearing no collar when I met him, but that was merely because he didn’t want to be bothered. He pointed out that this was one reason he was happier than a millionaire; the millionaire had to “dress tight,” as he expressed it, while he could be loose and of comfortable attire.

Houseboat in Harlem River at 204th Street, 1925.

A happy man, you will say incredulously, here in Manhattan with the housing problem to contend with? That is the point. He has no housing problem. He beats the landlord by living all the year round in a houseboat, for the privilege of mooring which on the Harlem River he pays the city $60 a year.

And he has a garden to boot, stretching up the shore back of his boat, in which he raises all the vegetables consumed by his family of a wife and three sons and himself. There is food for the spirit here, too: and my happy man, albeit a cabinet-maker employed in a shop near his boat, has poetry in his soul. He was a seaman before he became a cabinet-maker, and absorbed something of the mystery of the deep.

“There’s nothing so secret as the sea in its ways,” he told me, “but nothing that will talk to you like the sea when you know it. The water talks to me at night when the comes up the Harlem, and this houseboat, that rests on land at low tide, rises and floats with the waves all around it. It has a pontoon bottom and floats like a steamship. It’s mighty pretty then, sitting here on the front deck like, and looking at the lights across the Harlem. Some folks may be coming along that bridge and looking down here will say, ‘What a poor little place!’ but I wouldn’t change with the happiest of them. I wouldn’t.”

Policemen Colony Members

His is not the only houseboat in this little sheltered nook on the Harlem, at 207th Street east of Tenth Avenue. At least fourteen of them are moored there, each with its little garden of flowers and vegetables , and each is occupied winter and summer. They have city water, gas and electricity, and their snug little coal-houses filled against the winter. My happy man assured me that there was never the shadow of trouble among them.

“There’s a policeman living in the boat next to mine,” he said, “and a police inspector in one of the others. But we never need ‘em though,” he added magnanimously; “we’re all good friends with ‘em.”

Houseboat Colony by 208th Street & Harlem River, 1933.

This is one of two houseboat colonies to be reached by 207th Street. The other may be termed the colony de luxe, for the boats are handsomer, there are some artists and such among the occupants, and the surroundings—the winding inlet of the old Spuyten Duyvil, and the vista of the Ship Canal in front, and the background of climbing cliffs hidden in splendid oaks and tulip trees—are as beautiful as could well be imagined. On the other hand, it is further away from the conveniences, and the house-boaters have to depend on kerosene for lighting or generate their own electricity. But they have the most delicious water in the world, cold and clear, from the springs that are everywhere in the cliffs above.

Finding the Happy Man

It was a hot, breathless Sunday when I started out in search of the houseboat colonies. From the Dyckman Street station of the Seventh Avenue subway I wandered north a little way, and found myself in a yard filled with Street Cleaning Department wagons, where two dogs with their foreheads wrinkled with responsibility to the city government made invidious remarks about me, and a good-natured man with a cat on his knees told me to keep on the right around the end of the bridge that spans the Harlem River at this point, and I’d find the houseboats. I did so, and there, looking at his corn and potatoes, with his wife and some visitors from downtown, was my happy man.

Further along the row of boats was Mr. Callahan, another old resident, who was cultivating the geraniums in his brilliant flowerbeds. In front of the boats the reeds, which at high tide are quite covered, waved in the slow breeze. There was a good smell of salt water and fish in the air. The inhabitants can cast their lines from their front porches and catch perch and other small fish, and clams are plentiful. Across the winding Harlem, a little way to the south, rose the buildings of New York University and the Hall of Fame, and all the opposite shore was beautiful with trees and stately red brick institutional buildings.

Harlem River at Dyckman Street, 1937.

The happy man showed me through his houseboat and pointed out the various conveniences. The front room, opening off the porch, was a fair-sized sitting and dining room. Back of this were comfortable bedrooms, which were large enough to hold big beds and bureaus and so on and there was a bathroom with a good tub. A furnace heats the place in the winter, and I was told that even in the coldest weather it was snug as could be.

No More Houseboats Welcome

Its present owner paid $2,000 for this boat several years ago. Now, of course, it is worth more. They say there’s a long waiting list of people anxious to buy into the colony, but it’s a restricted suburb. The residents are determined not to be crowded, and they say there is no more room for any more boats. However, a couple of new boats are being built there now. It is the Dock Department to which one must apply for a permit to enter the colony, but, according to my happy man, he and his neighbors are dead set against anyone else coming in.

Inwood Park boat basin, 1920's.

To reach the houseboats that lie below the Ship Canal I walked along 207th Street, across Broadway, to Seaman Avenue, followed the winding road up the hill and found four or five people working away around a little old house half hidden in the woods, carpentering and beating cushions, and a lady in a cretonne artist’s apron, Mrs. Alma (sic) Voorhees, came to answer my questions about where the houseboats were.

May Waldis in center

An active brown curly dog welcomed me at the first one, the Roanoke II, and its mistress, Mrs. May Waldis, who is a swimmer of note and has no end of cups and medals won in diving and swimming contests at Sheepshead Bay and the Sportsman’s Shows, and so on, took me inside and told me proudly how her husband had built every bit of the boat—and he is not a builder by trade, but an electrician. It is quite a palace of a boat, all brown and white outside, with Colonial-looking pillars, which are really water tanks.

Inside the walls are prettily paneled and the living room, the bedrooms and the kitchen and bathroom are as perfectly fitted up and as roomy as a nice apartment. And everywhere outside is the lapping water, and when Mrs. Waldis feels like a swim she can just dive of her front porch. Yet the Waldises are willing to sell this boat because Mr. Waldis, who is Virginia born, longs for the South again. Mrs. Waldis isn’t keen about parting with the snug little craft her husband built, but she is resigned. There is another fine houseboat there for sale—the “June”—for the owners, who are Swedes, want to go back to the old country.

Boats moored in Spuyten Duyvil Creek in Inwood Park, 1935.

Interested in reading more on life inside Inwood’s former houseboat colonies? Click here to read the story of Bill Isecke’s strange childhood growing up on the Harlem River near 207th Street during the late 1940s and mid-1950s – on a derelict cabin cruiser, berthed in a forgotten boatyard.  This incredible oral history was collected by New York Wanderer Ben Feldman.

A while back I wrote a history of the old Seaman mansion that once stood on the grounds currently occupied by Park Terrace Gardens. Today the only trace of the Seaman estate is the crumbling marble arch located down the hill on Broadway.

Seaman mansion and arch from a distance in 1903.

The following description from 1869 finds the home occupied by its original inhabitants, Mr. John Seaman and his wife Ann. This slice of life shows a happy couple surrounded by fine art and sculpted gardens entertaining admiring friends in the mansion they lovingly called “Mount Olympus.”  (Bewildered neighbors had a different name for the shining white fortress on the hill: “Seaman’s Folly.”)

While Mr. Seaman made considerable money as a drug merchant, he lost his fortune through a series of bad investments. As luck would have it, Ann (below sketch) was a very wealthy, if not eccentric, woman. Her money came from a rich uncle who forbade her to marry “Johnnie” lest she lose her inheritance. As soon as the uncle died the two were married in Europe.

John Seaman lived out his golden years puttering about his gilded palace as his wife collected an ever-increasing army of poodles. In fact, the tombstones mentioned in the below description could be those of her beloved pooches whom she buried with the loving attention one might mourn a child.

The Seamans would in fact die childless. When Ann, who outlived her husband, died in 1878 more than 140 distant relatives contested her will. The lucky winner, nephew Lawrence Drake who was so despised by John Seaman he was forbidden access to the property during his lifetime. Relatives believed Drake had conned the poor, rich old widow out of their rightful inheritance. But that is a story for another time…

Seaman Mansion
New York Herald
August 29, 1869

“Incomparably the finest mansion on the Hudson, and undoubtedly the spot where fortunes have been spent, and well spent is the place of Mr. John T. Seaman, retired drug merchant, who has been the last fifteen years lavishing his extensive fortune upon the grounds that are now universally admired by all that visit them. Not alone Americans, but Europeans and landed gentry seek this spot, and are courteously treated by the venerable possessor, who now nears the sere and yellow leaf. Mr. Seaman is still a fine and healthy appearing man, with well-cut features and a fine stature. His efforts have been tireless to improve his place, and he now has the satisfaction of knowing that he has few rivals along the Hudson. Entering the grand gateway at the northern entrance the slate graveled drive is pursued over an undulating, though ascending, road till a footpath is met coming down at right angles from the northern portico. The steps to this pathway are white marble, and are flanked by two elaborately cut lions, in marble, showing much artistic taste in the sculptor. The way then lies straight ahead, when the drive turns toward the mansion in a southerly direction.  At the turn stands a good figure of “Europe” in marble, resting upon a marble pedestal; and further on, as the drive continues, is a beautifully gilded figure of “Diana,” with her bugle in hand. The white marble statues just on the crest of a hill, sloping off toward Spuyten Duyvil creek, are specimens of substantial architecture, corresponding with the style of the house. To southward of the mansion the drive continues, and a statue of Music is displayed, its spotless white contrasting well with the level lawn.

A small cemetery is observable hidden in a clump of bushed at this point, and the gravestones, white and gilded, shine with a peculiar beauty through the foliage. Following the direction to the westward of the house, under a huge marble porch, the drive brings up before a massive door, shaded by a great arch forming another porch. The mansion is built entirely of white marble, quarried by Mr. Seaman on the spot It is seventy-eight feet deep and in plan is nearly square. It has a main dome reaching a height of ninety feet from the ground, with its top pained a dark maroon color. There are also two smaller domes, whose arches are surmounted by the statues of Love and Music respectively. It is hardly possible to give a correct view of this house—a house that has few equals in the world, and one that is a combination of capacious wings, towering chimneys, vaulted domes, Roman windows and sharply defined, yet not ungraceful lines. If defies classification according to the schools of art, yet it is inferior to none of them, while a combination of all.  The plan of breaking away from what is pure Grecian or Roman is a praiseworthy innovation, and one, which has been followed with triumphant success along the river. From the northern porch the ground assumes a gently declining surface till it touches the drive in continuous groves of beautiful evergreens; from the eastward it descends on eight terraces, along which are constructed the extensive hothouses; from the southward the garden spots and statuary dot the green, and to the southward are the stables and the valley.

Seaman Mansion main entrance (later home to a local driving club).

Let us enter the house. The door is flanked with fine pieces of statuary, and once within a wide and lofty hall, with the usual furniture, is seen. To the extreme south end of the house is the octagonal library, fitted up at great expense. Closets whose doors support long and beautifully gilded mirrors, statues of Scott, Shakespeare, Byron, Milton, Homer, Esculapius, Socrates and Pluto fill niches in the wall, and also the mind from the measures of heroic verse to the eternity of dreary philosophy. Some fine paintings hang on the walls, and the western windows look out into a small conservatory, in which statues of the four Seasons are placed in appropriate positions. These figures are about two feet high.

Seaman Mansion interior near the turn of the century.

The parlors are capacious, with ceilings sixteen feet high, and would do for the throne rooms of a small empire or the east room of a presidential mansion. Venetian mirrors reflect distances and apparently double the size. In these rooms, standing up on a pedestal at the western end, is that well-known statuary, “John the Baptist in the Wilderness,” made to order for Mr. Seaman in Europe. In the reception room he had two busts, of himself and his wife, cut by Mansini; also a statue of the “Flower Girl.”

Ascending the broad oak staircases bronzed figures of the four quarters of the globe stand in alcoves under the main dome in this order—Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. The picture gallery is situated in the western wing in the second story, and there can be seen some very valuable works of art. The original picture of the “Marriage of the Virgin,” by Ludovico Carracci, eight feet square, and worth $20,000, hangs against the southern wall. This picture portrays its subject with a true inspiration, and the touch of genius can be traced in the colors, the lights and shades. The original of “The Shepherds’ Visit to the Virgin Mary,” by Reubens; the original of “St. Martin Dividing His Garment Among the Poor”—a finely colored painting; the “Betrothal of the Virgin,” the “Holy Family,” copy from Raphael, together with his “Madonna” and the “Polish Orphans,” comprise a very rare and valuable collection, in which, it will be observed, no popular daubs have a place.

Seaman Mansion near turn of the century.

The whole house is supplied with water from a large tank on the main tower, which holds 60,000 gallons, and which is lined with lead. The entire upper story and domes are lighted with plate glass let into the roof, and it is also by this means alone that the picture gallery is lighted. From the top of Mr. Seaman’s tower one of the finest, most extensive and varying prospects in this country can be obtained. It should be remembered that his house is located on one of the highest points of the island, and probably as lofty a private dwelling as there is on it.

Looking north can be seen Spuyten Duyvil creek and the rich and fertile acres which it washes; the Harlem river with its torturous course winding like a snake through the tall grass and thick shrubs; a section of the Hudson shining like a lake of molten silver, and tinged with crimson by the setting sun; the misty hills rising from the valley and just perceptible through the haze, the weird glens, the weather beaten crags and torpid mountains. A scene like this is but a portion of what strikes the eye at every point; and this sublime panoramic view has been gazed upon by many eminent Europeans, who declare that nothing equals it in the Old World.

At the entrance to the porch two figures in the dress of the time of Louis XIV stand out in conspicuous prominence, and a statue of America caps the main dome: the interior is frescoed with Cupids. The house is connected from room to room with an alarm telegraph, so, that should burglars aspire to transfer some of Mr. Seaman’s valuables the dial would at once indicate their location and anxieties, when doubtless he would treat them with becoming civility.

Gardener's House on the Seaman Estate, Inwood, New York City

The hothouses are very extensive. They consist of graperies, a pinery and greenhouses. The pinery is fifty feet deep, and is very fruitful. The graperies now groan under heavy loads of their delicious fruit. They are two in number, separated by a plant house, and have a through depth of 212 feet, with a width of 22 ½ feet, with a lean-to quadrant shaped roofs. A steam engine is used to throw the water on the grape vines, which have hothouse peaces just in their rear; and against the wall some rare figs. The whole arrangement of these graperies is a model of neatness. No finer fruit of this kind is grown in America. Every species abounds. There are the black Habburgs, the Victoria Hamburgs, some bunches of which weigh six pounds; the white Nice, the Muscat Alexandrias and the royal muscadines; the Timothy de Burgh, the earliest golden Chasselas, grizzly Frottingaus and white Prottingans. The plant house in winter contains 2,500 pots. The western slope is now broken up for improvements. A small lake is to be constructed; and adjoining, an ice house, so that he can make his own ice.

Entrance to the Seaman Estate, later the Suburban Club. The marble arch still stands on 216th and Broadway.

A new entrance is being built in exact imitation of the Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile standing at the head of the Champs Elysees on a line with the entrance to the Tuileries in Paris. This massive structure will cost $30,000 and is nearly completed. It is composed entirely of white marble and forms a fitting entrance to this empire, which Mr. Seaman has named Mount Olympus. Besides the statuary named, he has Bacchus, Cupid, Psyche and other pieces famed for their beauty and fidelity of design.

Thus has Mr. Seaman succeeded in surrounding himself with the elegances of art, the luxuries of fine flowers and delicious fruits and the comforts of a sumptuous and capacious mansion.”

Seaman mansion sketch from 1895 issue of the New York Tribune.

Click here for more Inwood history.

NY Tribune July 3, 1901

In the summer of 1901 Gotham suffered the deadliest heat wave in New York City history. From June 29-July 6th  at least 989 individuals perished in weather so hot it melted asphalt and drove scores of New Yorkers insane.

For a solid week New Yorkers cursed, collapsed, threw themselves into wells, leaped to their deaths from bridges, overwhelmed morgues and stretched police and hospital workloads beyond their limit.

NY Tribune- June 30, 1901.

Some fell to their deaths while sleeping on rooftops while seeking relief from their stifling, windowless tenements—dizzy, confused, dehydrated–trying to escape the suffocating air inside.

New York Tribune July 1, 1901.

As the death count mounted newspapers began keeping daily tallies of the dead. Grim articles with headlines like ‘Morgue Crowded with Bodies” and “New York Holocaust” spelled out gruesome details of the ongoing catastrophe.

Newspaper readers absorbed the calamity with morbid fascination.

Hundreds of horses lay dead and bloated in the street, preventing ambulance service and removal of the dead. The young and the elderly were particularly vulnerable. Special boats were commissioned to take infants out to sea in hopes the ocean breezes would better sustain life than the oven-like atmosphere in the sweltering metropolis.

The World- July 3, 1901.

New York commerce stood still. The stock exchange shut down. Employers were encouraged to close up shop until the heat wave, or “Warm Wave” to use turn of the century parlance, had passed.

On July 3rd, 1901 Professor Willis Luther Moore, head of the newly formed U.S. Weather Bureau warned New Yorkers that July 4th would be the hottest in recorded history.

Willis Luther Moore- Head of U.S. Weather Bureau in 1901.

“You may say,” said Professor Moore,” that this will be a record breaker, nothing like it ever having been recorded in the annals of the United States Weather Bureau for intensity of heat and the number of deaths it causes. The two days that are to come will be something extremely bad. The death rate will mount rapidly, prostrations from sunstroke being numerous. The coming Fourth of July will be the hottest on record, and this will add much to the average casualties of the day.” (The Evening World, July 3, 1901.)

While the casualty list would skyrocket as the days progressed, three separate thunderstorms on the Fourth of July would prove a brief respite from the heat. Still a balmy 86 degrees, the heat killed only 57 people on the Fourth compared with 317 the day before.

The following day, July 5th, 1901, weary New Yorkers prayed for more rain—if only to cool things off for a short while.

In Inwood, on the northern tip of Manhattan, they received more than they bargained for.

The below article from the New York Illustrated Tribune describes a once in a lifetime meteorological event that played out right here in our own backyard.

New York Tribune Illustrated - July 14, 1901.

“There may have been tornadoes in Manhattan Island before meteorological records were kept, but old inhabitants say that the one which cut a swath of nearly an eighth of a mile wide on the bluff of Inwood on Friday, July 5th, was the first of which they had ever heard. The nearest previous visitation of this character, and the only one remembered within the present limits of New York City, occurred at Woodhaven Junction, in the present borough of Queens, a short time before consolidation.

New York Tribune Illustrated - July 14, 1901

There appears to be little doubt that the Inwood storm of a week ago was a genuine tornado. It was a black funnel shaped cloud, and came with a humming like a swarm of bees, which almost instantly rose to a deafening roar; and before those in its tracks had time to think had done its work of destruction and passed out of sight. It swooped down on the bluff with terrific force, snapping off like matchsticks hundreds of large trees and uprooting others which had withstood the tempests of a century, bounded entirely by the high ground at Fort George and the Harlem River, and then touched down the earth again at Featherbed Lane, across the Harlem, where it mowed another swath through the woods for a short distance, then lifted and disappeared. That no dwelling houses were razed and no lives lost seems miraculous. The burst of wind was followed by a downpour od rain which flooded the stricken district and extended far beyond it in all directions. The water, which descended more rapidly than the sewers could carry it away, rose above the floors in many houses in the valley between Inwood and Fort George, and almost to the ceilings in some houses in the Borough of the Bronx. Hail fell after the tornado had swept by, and broke many windows and skylights, killed poultry and frightened women and children.

New York Tribune Illustrated - July 14, 1901

The tornado first touched the earth on the summit of the bluff between One-hundred-and-ninety-fourth and Two Hundredth streets. Many trees were prostrated on the high ground, and two hundred linear feet of the sheds of Durando’s Abbey Hotel were blown down, much of the wreckage being carried over the steep bluff into the valley below. The cloud rushed down the declivity as if impelled by a resistless weight, wrecking the stately forest trees which had long been the pride of the neighborhood by breaking them off at distances varying from two to twenty feet from the ground, denuding great trunks of their branches and tearing others from the ground by their roots. The destruction on the William H. Hayes estate, where the Abbey hotel is situated was perhaps greater than at any other place. Charles H. Aitken, a game fowl breeder, who livees at the foot of the bluff, was the worst sufferer, except one. His little barn was demolished by the tempest and falling trees, and his two horses were imprisoned beneath the wreckage. They had not been taken out at 4 o’clock last Monday afternoon, although enough of the debris had been removed to enable their owner to know they were unharmed and to permit the animals to be fed and watered.

Two greenhouses belonging to H.L. Battleman, the florist, about three hundred yards out in the valley from Mr. Aitken’s place, were in the track of the whirlwind, and were demolished. Three others were just outside the path of the storm, and escaped.

New York Tribune Illustrated - July 14, 1901

The Kingsbridge Road down the hillside from the Boulevard and Eleventh Avenue was rendered impassable by the rush of water. The Muschenheim place, on the top of the bluff, suffered severely. Many of the trees cherished by A.T. Stewart while he owned the property were uprooted, and nearly all the others were denuded of their branches, or their trunks were broken in two. The L.H. Libby place, once the property of William H. Tweed, was also greatly damaged by the tornado. Among the roadways, besides the Kingsbridge Road, which were badly washed by the flood were the Bridge road, between Tryon Terrace and the Abbey; the winding road from the Abbey to the Kingsbridge Road; Lafayette Boulevard and French Boulevard. All the unpaved streets and paths leading down the hills in the vicinity were converted into brooks by the rush of water”.

Click here to read more Inwood history.

Nagle homestead, "Century House," Spuyten Duyvil, 1861.

In mid-17th century Jan Nagle and Jan Dyckman traveled to the New World and settled in northern Manhattan. For more than two centuries the families farmed the land, raised cattle, planted orchards, built bridges and homes and even intermarried.

And while Dyckman is a familiar Inwood name, largely thanks to the preservation of the post-Revolutionary War farmhouse on 204th and Broadway, the Nagle’s history seems to have been reduced to a street sign.

Of course the ghosts of Inwood’s past can never truly be silenced. The next time you catch the one train at 215th street, take a look southeast to the train yards and shops below the elevated track. Just underfoot are the remains of a once important cemetery wiped clean by modern development.

Nagle Cemetery on 1911 map. (Click on photo to enlarge.)

What follows is a 1909 description of the site.

New York Tribune, March 3, 1909.

“The city is anxious to find the owners of the Nagle Cemetery, occupying about half of the block, bounded by 212th and 213th streets and Ninth and Tenth avenues. Every real estate record which might furnish a new clue to possible claimants of the property has been carefully examined by experts of the Tax Department and the Controller’s office, with the result that the ownership is as much of a mystery as it was when the search was begun.

Nagle Cemetery 212th Street, 1925.

The parcel of land is in a rapidly growing section of the city. Many sites there are being improved with large apartment houses. The cemetery is valued between $50,000 and $60,000, and the person who is able to prove his title to the premises will not be called upon to preserve it, but will have the right to remove the tombstones and also disinter the bodies and place them in a plot of ground within the boundaries of the state.

It is said that there are over two thousand bodies buried in this cemetery, the history of which has apparently been forgotten. The cemetery has a frontage of about 165 feet on both 212th and 213th streets, and a depth of about 132 feet.

Nagel Cemetary 212 Street looking northwest to 10th Avenue, 1925.

Originally, it was considerably larger, its southerly end extending some distance beyond the south side of 212th street. Some months ago the city cut through 212th street and this work involved taking up 212 bodies and replacing them in a plot in another part of the old cemetery. The contractor, Walter R. White, of 213th street and Tenth avenue, placed all the bodies taken from each family plot in one large coffin, so that claimants to the property might be able to later identify the bodies of relatives which years ago were buried in the cemetery.

Nagel Cemetery, 1925.

In taking the southerly end of the cemetery for street purposes the city awarded $1,950 to the cemetery owners for depriving them of their rights on the property. That money is now held by the Chamberlain, and will be turned over to the person or persons who can prove to the satisfaction of the city officials that they are heirs of the original owners.

According to some real estate records, the property was bought about 1736 by John Nagil, who set aside the land for burial purposes. In 1829 Isaac Michael Dyckman acquired control of the greater part of the tracts forming this section of the city, and one of his purchases was the Nagel Cemetery property. Mr. Dyckman was a farmer, and most of his land was cultivated. This section of the city is called after him.

Nagle home, also called "Century House," in ruins in 1904.

It is said that many soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War are buried in the cemetery, but the tombstones marking their resting places are so weatherworn that the inscriptions are no longer legible. The name of the original owner of the property is spelled Nagil in some realty records and in others Nagel. It is known on the city maps as the Nagel property.”

Workers clear site for 207th street subway yard and shops in 1929.

By 1926, the bones that had not been carried away by souvenir hunters were relocated to lot 16150 of Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

10th Avenue between 212th and 213th streets today.

In 1932, after the old cemetery had been wiped clean and replaced with the 207th street rail yards, pangs of guilt began to emerge in the neighborhood.

Monument marking the relocated remains of the Nagle Cemetery in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

Working with the Department of Transportation, local historian Reginald Pehlam Bolton, whose family had once owned a large portion of today’s Inwood Hill Park, solicited bids for a proper monument in Woodlawn Cemetery. Bolton had, in fact, long supported the removal of the human remains from their original site.

Bolton had a personal stake in the old cemetery. One of his ancestors, who died in 1819, was buried alongside both neighbors and unknown numbers of Hessians and Patriots killed during the Revolution. An amateur archeologist, Bolton had once uncovered a mass grave in the largely neglected graveyard. He concluded the unmarked grave likely contained the bodies of soldiers felled in some unrecorded epidemic.

According to a July 15, 1932 article in the Lewiston Daily Sun, “ The monument, which will mark the graves of families whose names are still represented in the streets, avenues, schools and parks of Washington Heights, will stand in the middle of a plot measuring 1,590 feet.”

Detail from Monument marking the relocated remains of the Nagle Cemetery in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

“It will be nine feet high and six feet wide at the base, octagonal in shape, of granite, and will contain a groove for filling records and other data concerning its erection. Of the 417 persons re-interred, 67 have been identified by name.”

“The old headstones, some of them with sentimental verses and aphorisms, were taken up and placed in the new plot. They bear names such as Berrian, Beaumont, Bogardus, Bolton, Childs, Dyckman, Garrison, Grout, Hadley, Hale, Montgomery, Nagel, Oakley, Post, Ryer, Sage, Sherman, Townsend, Vail, Vermilya, Wagner, Warner and Williams.”

Detail from Monument marking the relocated remains of the Nagle Cemetery in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

Delving deeper into Inwood lore, Bolton discovered another connection of amazing historic significance. Likely buried on the Nagel grounds, if not the cemetery itself,  was Tobias Teunissen, the first European to settle northern Manhattan. In the early days of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam Teunissen lived a seemingly peaceful co-existence with the local Native Indian population until he acted as a scout on a Dutch military raid. For this betrayal he was killed by his former Indian neighbors in 1655. His wife and daughter were kidnapped in the raid. The women were released after a ransom was paid to the local Weckquasgeek Indians.

1917 Reginald Bolton Map showing Nagle Cemetery and home (From the American Geographical Society Library, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries).

For years after the attack, the entire region was a no-mans land, considered unsafe for Indians and settlers a like. It was not until an uneasy peace was declared that the Dyckmans and Nagles settled the property in 1677.

Of course, this story likely begins thousands of years earlier. Mixed in with the remains of settlers, patriots and more recent graves, Bolton found evidence of previous Indian occupation on the site.

These original inhabitants are not included on the Woodlawn Cemetery marker which today reads, “About this stone rest the remains of 417, among them early settlers and soldiers in the Colonial and National Wars, interred 1664-1908, in Nagel Cemetery, West 212th Street, Manhattan, the site of which was covered by vast public improvement. Reinterred here 1926-1927 by the City of New York.”

Click here for more Inwood history.

One of the most important if not enduring images of the Great Depression is Dorothea Lange’s haunting portrait of a migrant worker cradling her two young children. Her eyes tell a personal story of quiet desperation, while the photo itself serves as a tragic commentary on a country in the throes of economic devastation so great that even its children were put in harms way.

Less familiar, but of equal importance, at least locally, are the images and stories of Inwood and points nearby, as the Crash of 1929 spread like a cancer through American society.

This is a story of tragedy and hardship, of coming together in time of need, of unemployment, public works, arts and ultimately survival.

While the scope of Great Depression seems unimaginable from a modern perspective, it is important to remember that this nation had been though a series of economic crises before the big crash. In 1907, 1910 and 1921 the nation endured other depressions, though at the time they were referred to as “panics.” To add to the chaos, the whole Kingsbridge area suffered terribly in 1922 when the Johnson Ironworks closed its doors on some 1,200 workers to make room for construction on the Spuyten Duyvil.

And while these “panics” and layoffs had a profound effect on Inwood, the Great Depression was a different animal all together. By 1926, working class New Yorkers had followed subway construction north, carving out a denser, apartment based community, where before existed mainly farmland. The landscape had changed. This time there would be casualties.

4740-46 Broadway at Thayer Street, 1936

Even through the eyes of a child the drawn out day to day downward spiral was evident and terrifying. Lifelong Inwood resident Peter Dongan, who sold newspapers after school to help support his family helps set the scene:

“I developed an acute awareness of the Great Depression in Inwood. I have vivid memories of seeing people’s possessions carried out of their homes and deposited on the curb, and usually without terrible preparation . The Sheriff would appear and say ‘you’re evicted’ and there was no time to pack. So you would have a tearful scene, with people sitting on the sidewalk amidst their belongings.

It was a practice for people to go around the neighborhood and ring doorbells and say ‘we’ve been thrown out of our house,’ and collect a dollar here, a dollar there, whatever people could give, and get themselves moved back in again.” (Source: You Must Remember This, Jeff Kisselhoff, 1989.)

Harlem River and West 207th Street colony, 1933.

But many from in and out of the neighborhood had no such generosity to rely on and set up clapboard shacks, tents or lived in derelict boats along the riverfront.

To the east, along the Harlem River sat one such community. By all accounts this floating Hooverville, in the vicinity of 207th Street, functioned in a fairly civilized manner with neighbors watching each others backs. Some even grew their own vegetables.

Author Helen Worden, who walked the perimeter of Manhattan in the early 1930′s while researching her book, “Round Manhattan’s Rim,” describes Inwood’s east side:

Harlem River and West 207th Street. 1933.

“A curiously individual group they are, these house-boat homes. The personal taste of the people who live in them is reflected in the shape, ornamentations and furnishings of the houseboats. All had porches, many flowers, and one boasted a stained-glass dining-room window.

Harlem River and W 207th Street colony, 1933.

A houseboat costs about eight hundred dollars. Ten dollars a month is the docking charge. The majority have telephones, electricity and water from the city. Year in and year out these boats anchor off Two Hundred and Seventh Street. All have names. Sunny is printed on the life preserver of John Olsen’s boat, and Jennie’s House appears on the side of a neighbor’s dwelling. Sailors handiwork in the form of rope-knotted curtains, carved frames and silk-embroidered flags dress up the rooms.

Harlem River and West 207th Street ,1933.

Jess Thomas is the guardian angel of the houseboat settlement. He is a great, tall, blue-black Negro from Binnettsville, South Carolina, with a friendly smile and a pride in his neighborhood. He reminded me of the descendants of the African chieftains who live on Edisto Island off the coast of South Carolina.

Harlem River and West 207th Street colony, 1933.

It is Jess’s sweet-potato patch and peanut crop that has made a farming community of this locality in a city of six million. ‘Shucks, they told me peanuts and sweet potatoes can’t be grown up here!, he chuckled. ‘But look at ‘em.’ He pointed to the healthy plants. ‘After frost hits the vines I’ll be able to dig ‘em.’”

On the west side of Inwood along the Harlem River stood Camp Dyckman, another Hooverville, this one based on land. By the time Helen Worden visited the camp sometime before 1934 most of its residents, mainly World War I veterans, had relocated south to the infamous Camp Thomas Paine located on the Hudson in the West 70′s. Worden gave this description of what she witnessed looking west from Inwood Hill:

“Below a straggling settlement of shacks and lean-tos fringed the water.
A man swinging an ax hacked at a wood-pile near a house. We watched him with idle interest. A short distance away stood a soda-pop stand tended by a ragged aproned proprietor. Suddenly the wood-cutter stopped, gave a shout, picked up his ax and charged at the soda-stand owner, who dived out from his store like a frightened rabbit and scuttled down the shore-line to a small hut. He locked himself in just as the man with the ax arrived. After hanging around for a few minutes the big fellow went back to his wood-chopping.

Squatters Colony for unemployed workers (Camp Dyckman) Just north of Dyckman on the Hudson, 1934.

‘What is that settlement over there?’ we asked at Captain R. T. Windle’s boat shop when we reached Dyckman Street.

‘Used to be a B. E. F. village,’ some one volunteered.

‘It ain’t much of anything now. Why don’t you walk, up and take a look at it?’

We followed the shore, climbing over the cans, rocks and refuse to the wind-swept group of shacks. A man and a dog guarded the first one, the same man who had wielded the ax. He stared at us through surly eyes, but called to his dog to be quiet when it barked. Just beyond his house was a small tar-papered hut marked head-quarters. From the top of it waved a tattered American flag and posted up on the front in bold letters was this verse:

‘Hoover was the Engineer
Mellon rang the bell
Wall Street gave the signal
Then the country went to Hell.’”

Spuyten Duyvil Boxcar Camp near 225th Street, 1933.

In Marble Hill, just across the Spuyten Duyvil a remarkable woman named Sarah J. Atwood and her daughter Mavis, ran a boxcar village. Atwood, a widowed mother at the age of 22 was no stranger to the plight of the unemployed. A former employment agent, Atwood operated a food kitchen on Ellis Island during an economic downturn in 1914. She spent most of her adulthood espousing the same mantra– handouts only make matters worse–”Provide employment. That’s all. Make work. Make jobs.”

Testifying before Congress in 1916, more than a decade before the Great Depression , Atwood stated: “If there is employment made, and these men are taken and given good, wholesome, outdoor work, portable buildings can be put up, rock crushers can be started. Those men can be well fed, and in 90 days would learn the habit of industry, and some of them, perhaps, might begin a very different life.”

Spuyten Duyvil Boxcar Camp near 225th Street, 1933.

And while Atwood’s boxcar jungle was no walk in the park, it was, by all accounts well run and maintained. The fifty or so men living in the encampment were expected to contribute several dollars a week for room and board. The men slept four to a boxcar. Dinner likely featured Atwood’s signature “Mulligan stew,” a hearty pot of cabbage and other vegetables cooked over an open fire. While ammenities were obviously limited, each boxcar was equipped with a wood stove and nails to hang clothing. Idle hours were simply spent tossing horseshoes.

While running a Westchester railroad labor camp in 1941 Atwood was killed in an automobile accident. By then the 72 year old firebrand had put some one million men to work.

WPA Workers in Inwood Hill Park, 1938.

New York Evening Post, Nov. 30, 1931

In the November of 1931,  Inwood Hill Park benefited from the financial calamity that had befallen the nation.  That fall, among the trees and old Indian paths, a gang of laborers set out to restore the site to its former splendor.  According to an account published in the New York Evening Post: “One thousand men, unemployed heads of families, were assigned to jobs today in Inwood Hill Park.

The work, made possible by Deputy Commissioner of Parks John M. Hart, was arranged by the work bureau of the Emergency Unemployment Relief Committee, and the men will be paid $15 a week, for three day’s work a week, pending arrangements with the City Emergency Work Commission.

The men assigned to the project all have registered during the past month at the district offices of the work bureau.  All are men with families or dependents, who, the work bureau said, were considered the most needy of the applicants for emergency work.

Commissioner Hart explained that the work would consist of clearing undeveloped land, cutting dead trees, grading, laying new trails for the use of the public and repairing old ones.  The work is being supervised by foremen assigned from the Park Department.  Whenever possible, dead trees will be salvaged for firewood to be distributed to needy families of men on the work bureau payroll.”

By the mid-1930′s Parks Commissioner Robert Moses began using W.P.A. funds and labor to build bridges, swimming pools, parks and playgrounds around the city. In Inwood Hill Park labor gangs set quickly to work demolishing old structures; derelict, but once beautiful mansions from a previous gilded age, and began carving out the familiar trails hikers enjoy today. Joining them in the Depression labor pool were workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal public relief program whose workers often included teenagers eager to learn a trade.

WPA Workers in Inwood Hill Park, 1938. (Note Henry Hudson Bridge in background)

In June of 1935 workers began construction on the Henry Hudson Bridge. The bridge, first promised in 1909, was a source of bitter debate and protest. Many felt the bridge would mar the natural beauty of the area, but Moses ignored the local outcry. By December of the following year his bridge was complete. The project came in five million dollars under budget.

Much like the Parks Department, the arts also benefitted from the pool of unemployed talent created by the Great Depression.

Harold Faye, WPA 1938-39 , "Last Train", shows MTA station at Spuyten Duyvil.

Artists including H.A. Weiss and Harold Faye were brought on board by Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) to document the fruits of Inwood’s labor on canvas. They quickly turned their eyes to the Spuyten Duyvil, which was and remains a source of inspiration for countless artists.

"Spuyten Duyvil Bridge" by H.A. Weiss.

While the ill effects of the Depression would be felt until World War II, the residents of Inwood learned to adapt and overcome. In some pockets a barter system was created for the exchange of goods and services.

Inwood Mutual Exchange System coupon from 1933.

Scarred, a little battered, but otherwise intact, Inwood had survived the Great Depression.

Author’s request: If you or someone you know have depression era stories you would like to share I encourage you to leave a comment below.

Herb Maruska with Ford Station Wagon in 1968

Frequent MyInwood contributer Herb Maruska grew up in Inwood.  His memories of post World War II Inwood are as detailed as they are fascinating.

This time around Herb takes us into the kitchens, basement and furnace of his childhood home located in 157-159 Vermilyea.  He calls this piece “Coal and Soap.”

Thanks Herb for this peek into a life before many of the modern conveniences we now take for granted.

Coal and Soap

Written by Herb Maruska:

The apartment house at 157-159 Vermilyea Avenue was built in 1910, so coal was originally used for heating the building. Although in the years following the Second World War, many buildings in the neighborhood slowly converted to oil heat, Mrs. Lichtenstein, the owner of the building, did not want to spend the money necessary for conversion to oil. So even in the 1960’s, the building continued to rely on coal.

157-159 Vermilyea Avenue in 1964

The coal was delivered from the Weber-Bunke-Lange Coal Yard on the Harlem River at 203rd Street. The coal was brought to the yard in barges, and dumped into a huge pile of coal on the shore. Coal was delivered to various apartment houses in coal trucks. When the truck arrived at 157 Vermilyea Avenue, it needed to come up on the sidewalk so that the coal could be dumped into the coal bin in the basement using a slide. The first apartment on the ground floor on the left side of the building served as the coal bin.

Weber-Bunke-Lange Coal 203 Street and Harlem River in 1935

On the day when the delivery of coal was scheduled, Harry  “Wujeku” Konopka (Wujeku means uncle in Polish), the super, would line up garbage cans in the street to prevent a car from being parked where the coal truck needed to cross over the sidewalk. When the truck was in place, he would open the front widow of the apartment and the coal chute would be set at the back of the truck, ranging through the window. Then the truck driver would raise the hopper and let the coal slide into the basement.

The coal then needed to be moved through the building to the furnace. A wheelbarrow was employed for this task. Konopka would use a shovel to fill the wheelbarrow with coal, and then he had to maneuver the load though the hallways back to the furnace. This was not an easy job for an elderly man, but he persevered. He would then open the heavy front door of the large cast iron furnace, and pitch the new load of coal into the flames.

Vermilyea Avenue- View from window in 1965.

Coal was not the only fuel that was burnt in the furnace at 157 Vermilyea Avenue. All of the garbage that tenants sent to the basement in the dumbwaiter cabinet was also burned. Remember that the functioning dumbwaiter was located in the back end of the hallway, near the rear apartments, and you just loaded your bags of trash and pulled the rope to send the trash downstairs. Wujeku would unload each bag and critically examine the contents, looking for small valuable items such as alarm clocks and food scraps for his guard dogs. But then, what was he supposed to do with the undesirable garbage? Why, he dumped it all into the furnace! The garbage served to supplement the meager coal rations which Mrs. Lichtenstein purchased from Weber-Bunke-Lange.

Burning garbage is actually quite unpleasant. Typically the supply consisted of many copies of the New York Daily News. The pages would all catch fire in the furnace, but then the strong current of hot air would lift the flaming pages up through the chimney. Yesterday’s Daily News pages, all blackened around the edges, would then flutter slowly back down to the ground in our courtyard. But if there was a gust of wind at just the right moment, a page or two would drift into our apartment through an open window. My father would not read the Daily News: he was too intellectual. He read the New York Times. But as a kid, I enjoyed being able to read the simpler stories in the Daily News which were delivered a day late through our kitchen window.

Weber-Bunke-Lange Coal at 203 Street and Harlem River in 1935.

Old burnt newspapers weren’t the only effluent from the coal furnace which wafted through the kitchen window. We also got coal tar. Naturally the ancient coal furnace had no scrubber system. Whatever chemicals were generated from burning the filthy coal just went up the chimney. Coal is not a clean source of heat. It contains all sorts of junk, including pieces of ferns and dead dinosaurs. So when the coal was being burnt, black smoke puffed out of the chimney. The chemicals quickly cooled in the atmosphere and forming tiny black droplets of tar, which sank back to earth, much like the Daily News pages. This coal tar would slowly but surely make its way in through our kitchen window. A coating of black slime would be deposited on the window frame, the window sill, and on Aunt Vera’s plants. These evergreen plants came originally from Dr. Manisoff’s house downtown, where Vera worked as a housemaid when she originally arrived from Slovakia.

Little Herbie Maruska in a tree, October, 1948.

After awhile, the green leaves of Aunt Vera’s plants would turn black and get slimy from the coal tar. The kitchen window region needed a thorough cleaning to remove the residue of coal tar. But first, how did the coal tar residue get inside the apartment?

From somewhere back in the 1800’s until around 1950, homes were supplied with coal gas to provide lighting, heat, and cooking gas. The process for turning solid chunks of coal into gas was originally developed in Germany around 1780. Basically, in the processing plant they burn coal while spraying water onto the fire. You get the following basic chemical reaction:

C + H2O -> CO + H2

This reaction reads:  C (coal) + H2O (water) yields CO (carbon monoxide) and H2 (hydrogen). The carbon monoxide and hydrogen mixture was then funneled into a pipe and sent to an enormous gas storage tank. The gas storage tank which was located on Fordham Landing Road and Cedar Avenue just across the Harlem River from Inwood is shown below. Carbon monoxide is extremely toxic. At a concentration of 1% in the air in a room, a single breath is instantly fatal. At a concentration of 4% in room air, hydrogen can detonate. Good grief! And this deadly gas mixture was routed from the cast iron storage tank into all of the apartments in the neighborhood. What if the stove leaked? How did we survive?

Coal Gas Storage Tank on Fordham Landing Road

The answer to survival in case there was a deadly gas leak from the kitchen stove was to keep the kitchen window open at all times. Summer or winter, rain or shine, our kitchen window was always open.

Parakeet on kitchen windowsill in 157 Vermilyea Avenue.

You see, both carbon monoxide and hydrogen are lighter than air, so the gas molecules would tend to rise up and float out the window. Some birds might inhale the fumes and fall out of the sky, but at least we were all safe. But since the kitchen window was always open to allow the carbon monoxide to exude from the house through the window, this open window also provided an ingress for coal tar emanating from the chimney. A dangerous health trade-off! But coal tar, like the tar from cigarettes, leads to a slow death later in the future, while carbon monoxide promised instant death. So my parents chose to leave the window open.

So how was my poor mother, Emma Maruska, supposed to clean the slimy dark coal tar off her window frame, and especially off the leaves of her Sister Vera’s plants which were living in our apartment. This task required Grandma’s Lye Soap. Julia “Ciotka” Konopka provided facilities for manufacturing Grandma’s Lye Soap in the basement of 157 Vermilyea Avenue. The Lye Soap was created in a large steel vat which had been produced originally by Wujeku. The vat was square, maybe four feet by four feet in area, and maybe with sides two or three inches high. To make lye soap, you needed lye and lard.

An Example of Grandma’s Lye Soap.

Women from the Old Country tended to fry most of the meat which they prepared for the family dinner. So, for example, pork chops would be fried in a pan on a top burner of the stove, with the pan filled with gobs of Crisco. The heat was produced by burning the coal gas.

Emma, Herbie, Betty at 214 St 1946

Afterwards, a prudent lady like Emma would pour the molten lard, flavored with pork fat, into an empty jar. Of course, Julia Konopka and a few other ladies in the building would also save all of their used cooking fat in little jars. When there were sufficient jars of used fat, they were taken down to the basement. Julia provided cans of Draino, which is lye. The fat and the lye, along with some water, were all loaded into the Grandma’s Lye Soap vat. Julia Konopka had a secret recipe from Poland so she knew the exact ratios of the components which were needed. All of the ingredients were carefully stirred together with a large wooden spoon. The vat was placed on four old red bricks and heat was supplied from below. The soap was brewed for several days. Finally it became a smooth yellow mass, spread evenly throughout the vat. Now the heat was removed, and the lye soap was allowed to cool. Afterwards Ciotka took a large carving knife and sawed the soap into convenient pieces, about two inches wide, and four inches long. The soap bricks were stored on a shelf. Then Emma could come down to the basement and get a bar of lye soap, which in addition to cleaning tar off the kitchen window, was useful for cleaning pots and pans, and doing the laundry in the kitchen sink.

Grandma’s Lye Soap was popular throughout the land. In fact, in 1952 Johnny Standley made a hit record about Grandma’s Lye Soap which spent two weeks at number one on the Billboard Pop Music Survey:

It’s in the Book
By: Johnny Standley

Do you remember grandma’s lye soap
Good for everything in the home?
And the secret was in the scrubbing
It wouldn’t suds and couldn’t foam

Then let us all sing right out of grandma’s lye soap
Used for, used for everything on the place
For pots and kettles, the dirty dishes
And for your hands and for your face

Little Herman and brother Thurman
Had an aversion to washing their ears
Grandma scrubbed them with the lye soap
And they haven’t heard a word in years

Then let us all sing right out of grandma’s lye soap
Sing all out, all over the place
The pots and kettles, the dirty dishes
And for your hands and also for your face.

Mrs. O’Malley, out in the valley
Suffered from ulcers, I understand
She swallowed a cake of grandma’s lye soap
Has the cleanest ulcers in the land

Then let us all sing right out of grandma’s lye soap
Sing right out, all over the place
The pots oh, the pots and pans, oh the dirty dishes
And for the hands and for your face.

There was I, eight years old, roaming around Inwood Hill Park, warbling this delightful song. I especially liked the part about Herman and Thurman getting their ears washed with lye soap. No, my mom never washed my ears with the stuff!

Thanks again Herb. I think we’ll all have this song stuck in our heads for some time to come.

If you’d like to read more about Herb and his Inwood childhood, click here.

Much of what we know today about the history and pre-history of  Inwood and Washington Heights is due largely to the turn of the century work of amateur historians, self taught archaeologists and close friends William Calver  and Reginald Bolton. Starting in the 1880′s Bolton and Calver began exploring northern Manhattan with picks and shovels, chronicling their discoveries along the way.

What you are about to read is the third and final installment of an essay written by William Calver in 1932 describing those early days before the urbanization of Northern Manhattan. The original draft, written in fading pencil on lined legal paper is housed in the archives  of the New York Historical Society.

This is part III of a three part series

Read Part I

Read Part II

“Recollections of Northern Manhattan”
W.L. Calver
3-10-1932

We have referred to these two local reminders of man’s mortality-white and black but in close proximity to these we had previously noted what suggested the “staff of life.” This was the last crop of grain grown on Manhattan Island, True, the grain proved to be the prosaic rye intended for the sustenance of live stock but with all that crop marked the closing of an era in the Island’s history, and was remindful of the figure which grain and products thereof had cut in the affairs of the colony. Flour and baked bread were important articles of export.

And when the growing of tobacco was found to be more profitable and thereby the price of bread soared a law was passed compelling the farmers to plant two acres of grain to one of tobacco.  The flour barrel founds its place on the City seal in 1688; it is there yet. We photographed the grain field. In recent times, that is to say in the ultimate grain field days, that field was part of the Isham estate; of old it was “part of the Nagle farm.  With the passing of the Nagle residence-”the Century House”-in 1904-(shown above) we got the chance we had waited for to explore the sloping ground between the homesite and the Harlem River shore.

1904 dig at site of old Nagle homestead

We reckoned that here would be found the discarded household and personal material of the Nagles, and mementos of the British officers who would probably have occupied the house. Our guess was good; we discovered all we could have hoped for, but in the Autumn of 1907 as we were journeying toward the subway after a days work at the Nagle dust heap we made a find conspicuous in the Archaeology of the Eastern United States.

Site of Iroquoian Indian jar discovery

On the bankside of the newly graded 214th Street and near to 10th Avenue-right here in the Metropolis we spotted a massive and complete specimen of an Iroquoian Indian jar-the finest yet discovered. Although the pot was nearly duplicated in its dimensions and symmetry by a similar find which we made at the opening of 231st Street, we believe our first great find will never be equaled.  That vessel was, miraculously barely exposed by the grading of 214th Street and was noted by us as it lay interred, just safely below the plow line, in the soft earth of the field. Probably at the departure of the last Aborigines from Manhattan Island the jar had been buried on a campsite against the day when those poor exiles would return. That day alas, for them, never arrived.

Years before that early familiarity with the region to which we referred at the commencement of these “recollections” we looked into the longing eyes over the strictly private areas of Inwood as we passed up or down on the New York Central trains. The grassy meadow bordering the Harlem and the rocky ridges to the westward appeared by us ideal in the advantages they offered to the red man whose footprint as it were-we
ultimately discovered thereabouts. It is not too much to say that with its stretches of probable Maizeland, its oyster beds, and fishing grounds; its watercourses-fowl and small game; its still waters for canoeing, along with the natural rock shelters North Manhattan was unmatchable in the features possessed for the accommodation of primitive life.

Exploring the Indian caves

The Indian cave or “rock-shelter” now fortunately within the bounds of Inwood Hill Park, promises to be preserved-forever a memorial to the original occupants of Manhattan Island.

Doubtless the rock shelters, before the coming of the red man was the home of the bear and the wolf, and two score years ago a family of “wild dogs” that had quarters beneath some massive rocks above the Indian cave were the subject of newspaper stories for a while causing some little excitement among the residents of the valley, for those who investigated by day saw nothing, but much barking was heard in the vicinity of the rocks by night. The “wild dog” excitement never quite subsided at Inwood, and along about the year 1915 when the furor became acute all stray dogs were regarded with apprehension. The newspapers featured the matter again, so we decided we would investigate. There were plenty folks at Inwood who declared that an actual past of savage dogs existed. Hair raising stories of the nightly depredations of degenerate curs were told. The brutes foraged at night for their rations almost to the very hearths of the, then, sparse population of the valley. Children were attacked and erstwhile faithful, home loving, dogs were lured away from regular feed, and cozy kennels, to revert to primitive conditions and a vagabond life. There was, however, some little foundation, as we found, for the stories current of dog life in the hinterland of Manhattan. To verify, or squelch the stories we fared forth and made a complete survey of the infested region, all possible natural shelters, or potential dens, were inspected, and residents of the valley, and high places, were questioned without positive results. One day as we had completed a lengthy jaunt we sat down upon a rock-one of a great mass of stones removed for the cutting of Thayer Street, and almost immediately there arose a distinct growl coming from the other rocks a few yards away. The growl was of such a volume as to convince us that it did not proceed from a lapdog. With camera in hand we retired a few paces and awaited developments. Presently one sizable puppy, and then others to the numbers of five, or six emerged from their den.

The puppies of old Inwood.

These puppies were exceedingly shy, but we managed to get four of them in characteristic attitudes exhibiting curiosity, suspicion, or resentment. The mother dog we may suppose was a victim of circumstances having been abandoned by her master as folks moved to other parts , she was compelled to care for herself, and resorted to such shelter as could be found as a refuge by day, while she foraged for sustenance by night. From neglect and abuse she probably developed a savage temper, and some trivial exhibition of ill will on her part may have been exaggerated to such an extent as to make her the terror of Inwood. A young man living nearby made a grand rush one day and captured one of her puppies, this puppy, we subsequently learned, grew up to be mild tempered, everyday sort of dog.

Only a few years have elapsed since the last cow was kept on northern Manhattan, but the last actual herds of that region appear in our photograph of the Inwood farmlands. The very last porker reared on the whole extent of Manhattan Island inhabited an old fashioned sty on the site of the present day “Baker Field,” near to Spuyten Duyvil Creek. The owner of the sty poured the floor of the sty with asphalt blocks expropriated from supplies for city streets , but as may be seen in our photographs this era marking animal left no stone unturned. Those who have scrutinized early drawings of New York street areas, and have recollections of the figure cut by swine in the annals of Manhattan will understand what we mean when we refer to the individual we have photographed as “epochal.”

Previous to the cutting of the ship canal a curious phenomenon presented itself in the ebb and flow of Spuyten Duyvil Creek; for owing to the sinuosity and shallowness of that strait, its tides rarely kept pace with the larger volumes of water in the Hudson, and Harlem which it connected. To some extent this tidal peculiarity still exists. If we remember rightly an advantage to be gained by the construction of the canal would be the partial forestalling of a possible blockade of the New York Harbor and the passageway it would provide in a day of need for United States war vessels. Towards the last stages of its completion disaster befell the canal for abnormal high tides wrecked the bulkheads at the Kingsbridge Road and destroyed the temporary roadway that compromised the bulkhead. The canalling was completed by dredging-for the bulkhead was not restored. Two features of “interest” in natural history were disclosed by the cutting of the canal. One of these was the extensive lamination of peaty vegetable matter revealed in section to a considerable depth; the other was the exhuming of a mastodon’s tusk from the bed of an ancient bog. This was in the year 1885. The tusk is now in the American Museum. That particular remnant of a prehistoric kingdom is not, however, the only such of which Inwood can boast, for portions of the head of another Mastodon was unearthed-rather salvaged we should say-from a boy on the north side of Dyckman Street at the junction of Seaman Avenue when excavation work was carried to a depth of 21 feet below the sidewalk for a footing for the foundation of an apartment house. The tusks and skeletal remain of the mammoth still rest, perhaps, below the basement floor of #2 Seaman Avenue.

The name “Marble Hill” as applied to the extreme north portion of Manhattan Island forty years ago was derived from the character of the rock of which the hill is composed. A Revolutionary earthwork crowned the hill in a position to command the Kingsbridge. This work was known as “Fort Prince Charles,” its site and the marble of the hill are shown in a photograph taken by us in 1928.

In its passing from the rural to the urban we have witnessed the last appearance of certain forms of wildlife on northern Manhattan. The probable last foxes-there were two in 1892-one was minus a portion of his tail; the last mink we have his hide; and possibly the last raccoon we have noted, yet there are those who will, no doubt, be surprised to learn that wild rabbits still inhabit north Manhattan, and that opossums have been seen alive or dead at Kingsbridge, and Fieldstone within the past five years. All of these were oddities in their way-likely as the deer to be seen in unsuspected areas.

Seaman and Payson Avenues near turn of the century.

That section of Manhattan Island to which our recollections pertain has, of late, aside from its use as a place of residence for a vast population been the scene of at least five great developments, three of which in combination assure the maintenance of some of the original natural features of the locality. These are the parks bordering on the Hudson River and the ship canal. They compromise a continuous stretch of City owned grounds where areas may, in their development, prove and invaluable asset to the community at large. With the parklands may also be included the Baker Field, but opposed to these the extensive yards and shops of the new subway and a potential backset to an otherwise well formed region.

…and that’s the end of this three part series by William Calver.

For more Inwood history, click here.

Bottles, cans, Christmas trees…you name it. It all gets recycled in the Big Apple. But did you know near the turn of the century the City of New York recycled the old Broadway Bridge on the northern tip of Manhattan?

1902 scene of Kingbridge looking north before relocation.

Take a look at this photo. If the bridge looks familiar, it is, but you likely know it by its current name, the University Heights Bridge. What’s truly confusing in the century old photo is the geographic placement of the bridge. If you look closely you’ll notice the bridge sits atop the Spuyten Duyvil and not the Harlem River.

In 1906 a team of engineers literally  floated the old Broadway Bridge down the Harlem River and planted it at the foot of 207th Street, thus connecting Inwood with the Bronx at West Fordham Road..

So why move a perfectly good bridge?

According to the New York Department of Transportation, the single-deck swing bridge designed by Alfred P. Boller, initially opened for business in 1895. But within a decade, advancements in public transportation rendered the bridge obsolete. “Within years the original span had to be replaced by a double-deck swing span to accommodate the extension of the subway, and the old one was floated downstream to become the University Heights Bridge.”

And a memorable ride it must have been for the dozens of roughneck workers seen sitting on the skeleton of floating giant.

Old and new bridges pass on the Harlem River, June 14, 1906

The newly christened University Heights Bridge opened to the public on January 6, 1908.

Between 1989 and 1992 the bridge underwent a complete makeover to the tune of thirty-five million dollars. But as you can see, today’s bridge, which serves more than 46,000 vehicles daily, looks nearly the same as when it was floated down the Harlem more than one hundred years ago.

Click here for more Inwood History.