HISTORY

A Kangaroo on Dyckman Street

Kangaroo on Dyckman Street

In the Fall of 1909 the battleship Wisconsin sat anchored off of Tubby Hook on the Hudson River preparing for a tour at sea.  On-board was the ship’s mascot, a Kangaroo named Jim Jeffries. In a bizarre event, which certainly captured my imagination, several sailors, or “bluejackets,” took the kangaroo ashore only to have him [...]

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Relic Hunting in Northern Manhattan

Reginald Pelham Bolton

“I chanced to visit an old inn near Fort George some years ago and I noticed a human skull that the proprietor kept among the bottles above his bar.  The man told me he had unearthed it, together with several swords and cannon balls, in his yard.  I offered to buy it, not caring much [...]

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The Undiscovered Country: Northern Manhattan in 1904

Seaman Drake Arch in 1904

In 1904 Inwood’s first modern apartment building appeared on the corner of Dyckman and Broadway (then still referred to by many as the Kingsbridge road). The erection of the Solano and Monida Apartments should have have served as warning that the agrarian lifestyle residents had known for so many generations was  nearing an end.  So [...]

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1943 “Inwood Chatter” Advertisements: Now and Then

Inwood Chatter, 1943.

Not long ago I posted the contents of a June, 1943 issue of the “Inwood Chatter,” essentially a scrapbook put together by local schoolchildren and sponsored by local businesses. While the topic of children living under the cloud of war is a fascinating topic, my attention eventually turned to the advertisement section at the back [...]

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A Civil War Veteran and His Inwood Truck Farm

Inwood Truck Farm post

Imagine yourself a soldier returning from the Civil War. Disoriented. Jobless. Before that bloody War Between the States you had been a farmer.  A New York City farmer at that! But Manhattan had changed much in your absence. You simply couldn’t plant a potato patch wherever you pleased anymore. Gone were the wide-open farms and [...]

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An Amphitheatre in Inwood Hill?

Open Air Theater for Inwood Hill Park

Since the 1880’s various ideas have been floated for how best to use the space we now know as Inwood Hill Park.  From a World’s Fair that never took place to an ambitious plot to build a Coney Island style amusement park called Wonderland, developers, speculators and entertainment promoters long had their eye on the [...]

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The Inwood Pottery Studio: An Oral History with Lorrie Goulet

Lorrie Goulet and the Inwood Pottey Studios

Since launching Myinwood.net I have posted quite a bit on the Inwood Pottery Studios; which once occupied Inwood Hill Park. The pottery, the houseboat community, the idyllic setting of a nearly forgotten era has always fascinated me. So, I was thrilled when I received an email from a former student of the Pottery named Lorrie [...]

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Inwood’s Forgotten Houseboat Colonies

Ship Wheel

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 [...]

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