inwood hill

“Recollections of Northern Manhattan” by William Calver

William Calver

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, [...]

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Inwood’s Indian Life Reservation

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In the winter of 1926 Inwood historian and local archeologist Reginald Pelham Bolton began work on a curious and eclectic exercise, the creation of an Indian reservation in Inwood Hill Park.   Bolton’s vision was not to be a true reservation, but rather a recreation of what a Native American encampment might have looked like. “The [...]

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The Inwood House of Rest for Consumptives

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“No patient is ever sent away from this hospital by reason of the advanced condition of his or her ailment.”  -Motto of the House of Rest for Consumptives In April of 1902 a real estate advertisement in the New York Herald caught the eye of Woodbury G. Langdon. Langdon, a member of one of America’s [...]

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Inwood in 1903: The Subway Cometh

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Inwood. 1903.  Farmers tend to flowing fields of wheat.  Children chase pigs down muddy ruts that appear as streets on maps many residents have likely never seen.  For more than a year now that strange elevated skeleton of steel and wood has crept ever northward like a serpent. Change is on its way. The arrival [...]

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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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From Dyckman Street to Treasure Island

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Near the beginning of the last century, Mrs. Addison J. Rothermel faced both an agonizing loss and a difficult decision.  Tuberculosis had taken her husband and doctors warned that her two teenage boys, Addison Jr.  and Royale Valray, might also succumb to the “white plague” if they continued to live in the cramped and unventilated [...]

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Kate and Arabella Visit Inwood in 1910

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In the summer of 1910 two young girls, Arabella and Kate, boarded a subway car with their mother, and made the passage uptown to Manhattan’s northern rim.  Inwood, at the time, was little more than a wilderness of trees, cattle and working farms connected by meandering country roads. Upon returning home, Kate penned the following [...]

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Trapped in an Inwood Hill Cave

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Sometimes, as an adult,  I find myself lost in the nostalgia of childhood.  I imagine myself running a wooded trail, chased by my younger brothers, exploring the forests, creeks and sewers of 1970’s suburbia.  Every day in the forest was an adventure and anything seemed possible.  Still fresh are the memories of searching for an [...]

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