kingsbridge

“Pop” Seeley: The Old Man of the River

Pop Seeley cabin, Inwood, NYC

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. [...]

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Inwood’s First Public School

PS 52, Inwood New York City, 1905 postcard

In 1858, the year Inwood’s first school was constructed , the area wasn’t even yet known by its current name. Locals, of whom there were few, all referred to the region on Manhattan’s northernmost tip as “Tubby Hook.” Folks downtown hardly even considered the backwater region as being part of their city. So imagine the [...]

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A Band of Gypsies

Gypsy

Today northern Manhattan is home to thousands of gypsy cabs, but step back a century in time and you would find a sleepy little farming community inhabited by, among others, real life European gypsies. As early as 1887, according to a New York Times article, Mr. J. Hood Wright allowed a full blown Romany encampment [...]

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Old Post Road

Mile Marker on Old Post Road in Inwood, New York

Tucked away in a section of the stone wall near the 212th Street and Broadway entrance to Isham Park is an often overlooked survivor of Inwood’s past. The old Albany Post Road mile marker blends into its surroundings, but is hard to miss when you know what to look for. Curved at the top, this [...]

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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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Inwood in Aviation History

Pilot Glenn Curtiss

On December 17, 1903 Orville Wright took to the skies above the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Orville and his brother Wilbur conducted their experimental flight tests in total secrecy.  While obsessed with flight, the Brothers Wright were more concerned with securing their patents. The Wright brothers had true cause for concern.  Fast [...]

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Pat Dunn’s Goat

Goat

In October of 1870 a young Catholic priest named Henry Brann was named Rector to a massive, though sparsely populated, parish that included the whole upper northwest portion of Manhattan and part of Westchester County. In a 1911 memoir, the then Monsignor Brann wrote that his parish included the “Spuyten Duyvil, Kingsbridge, Mosholu, and Riverdale, [...]

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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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