inwood hill

Tornado on the Hudson

tornado generic

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 [...]

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House of Mercy

House of Mercy. Inwood, New York City. 1932

Starting in the late 1800′s various institutions serving alcoholics, drug addicts, tuberculosis patients, petty criminals, runaways and “women of ill repute” lined the ridge in what is now Inwood Hill Park. Of these bleak fortresses  of infirmity, born of era  when inebriates were often treated with hypodermic injections of nitrate of strychnine and married women [...]

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Civil War Era Inwood: The Brooks Brothers Connection

Brooks Brothers

In the years following the Civil War the Bloomingdale Road, now called Broadway, was an impoverished and often treacherous stretch of dirt and mud where many inhabitants just barely scraped by. In glaring contrast, just to the west, atop Inwood Hill, the rich and famous built magnificent country homes steps from the squalor of the [...]

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Inwood Hill in the 1920′s

Inwood Hill boat colony 1904

There is a turn of the century photo of a small boathouse on the water’s edge in what is now Inwood Hill Park.  The boathouse, run by “Pop” Seeley, supported a houseboat colony far from the noise and bustle of downtown.  It would be many years before these house-boaters, artists and assorted eccentrics were given [...]

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Inwood During the Great Depression

Inwood in the Great Depression, NYC

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 [...]

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Hudson Fulton Celebration Postcards

Hudson Fulton 1909 Celebration postcard

In the summer of 2009 Fourth of July spectators marveled at the wonders of pyrotechnics from viewing galleries and apartment buildings up and down the Hudson River. Normally held on the East River, city leaders moved the spectacular display to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s historic voyage up the North River now bearing [...]

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Late 19th Century Inwood- Part III

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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Tulip Tree Poem

Tulip Tree of old Inwood

In 1933 a bizarre trinity of adventure, history and poetry converged on Inwood Hill Park to celebrate the majesty of Inwood’s fabled tulip tree. Under the auspices of “Indian Day,” an ode to the mighty tulip was commissioned in the form of a “tone poem”– that is a poem set to the music of German [...]

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