Since launching MyInwood.net I’ve read thousands of century-old news accounts regarding all things Inwood, but the following article, written in 1916, is one of my favorites.

Isham Hill article, New York Herald, September 26, 1913

The account contains so many elements from my little corner of the neighborhood—The Seaman Estate, Isham Park, the still-standing Hurst house on Park Terrace East and 215^th and the 215^th Street stairs—all frozen in a unique turning point in Inwood’s history.

While poorly written, the article, published in the New York Herald, captures the Park Terrace area as Broadway developers ascend the 215^th Street stairs to discover a lush and unspoiled paradise they knew was ripe for urbanization.

New York Herald
Sunday, September 26, 1913
ISHAM HILL, A BEAUTY SPOT, OPENED TO PUBLIC TRAFFIC
Gift of Park Site and 215^th Street Station Stairway Encourage Further Developments

Is Isham Park and its environs at the threshold of a new era in the development of this noble and long neglected area of the westerly heights section of Manhattan?

Three years have elapsed since when, in September 28, 1912, there was held a civic celebration of the gift of Isham Park to the city of New York by Mrs. Julia Isham Taylor and Miss Flora E. Isham.

215th Street stairs, New York Herald, Sunday, September 26, 1913.

In the interim the park has grown into a place of quiet rest and beauty, a somewhat long double flight of steps has been erected from 215^th street and Broadway to the crest of the hill at Park Terrace East, the Daughters of the American Revolution, Fort Washington chapter, have been placed in possession of a quiet nook in the old Isham family mansion, an additional gift of land has added to the area of the park, Seaman avenue has been opened, regulated, graded and curbed, with sewers now being set and to be completed in about six week’s time, the work of opening Park Terrace East, 215^th street and a section of Cold Spring road (Indian road) along the banks of the Ship Canal is progressing toward completion.

Isham Mansion, New York Herald, Sunday, September 26, 1913.

Also, afternoon tea, toast and crackers are being served by Mrs. Frank Glynn in the stately old dining hall of the Isham homestead, and John Connolly, faithful park keeper the last four years, continues to watch over his bit of grass, flowers and “darlint” trees in the constant fear that ere long a few of these, his friends and boon companions, will be pulled up by their roots by the giant “Progress” to provide an uninterrupted way for still another lateral leading westerly from Park Terrace East, thence connecting with Broadway by steps, or some form of circuitous hillside route yet to be constructed.

Isham street on the south, 218^th street on the north, Broadway on the east and the Ship Canal on the west mark the physical boundaries of the small area of the delightfully located and overlooked Isham Hill and Park, the key to the future of which is the 215^th street subway station, a few hundred feet east of the staircase continuation of 215^th street.  Another factor of the future that, however, is to be reckoned with is the inevitable trend of automobile traffic from Broadway north from Isham street ad south from 218^th street, into Seaman avenue and along the Isham hill ridge the instant these improvements are fully completed.

There cannot be even the shadow of a doubt that the natural attractions of this and the Inwood-Hudson region then will prove sufficiently strong in their appeal to effect a division of at least a goodly percentage of the more leisurely automobile traffic that now clings to Broadway.  The advent of this traffic will mark the day when the builder of the higher grades of apartment houses will discover Isham Hill and its advantages.

Home of

Rich in romance and historical data, Isham Hill is the location of the Isham, Dyckman, Seaman (Dwyer) and other homesteads of the earlier years.  At the top of the 215^th street stairway, however, are two modern dwellings of high cost and attractive appearance.  One is the home of William H. Hurst, president of the Stock Quotation Telegraph Company, vice president of the New York News Bureau Association, and prominent in other corporations the other, the home of Gerald S. Griffin, a civil engineer.

Old Seaman Mansion, New York Herald, Sunday, September 26, 1913.

To the north of these rises the stately home of Thomas Dwyer, known formerly and for many years as “Seaman’s Folly.” This has direct entrance to Broadway, and commands superb views of all the surrounding country.  In the same neighborhood is the residence of John Mara, and the old Dyckman mansion, now occupied as St. Phillip’s Home, lies just beyond. The next lateral north of 218^th street is 225^th street, which emphasizes the seclusiveness of the Isham Park neighborhood.

New York Herald, Sunday, September 26, 1913.

Isham Park, the original deed of which—the gift of Miss Julia Isham Taylor—was dated July 17,1911, extends from Broadway to the Ship Canal, parking the centre of the hill, east to west, between 213^th and 214^th streets and park frontage for the greater number of all the remaining Isham Estate lots.  The park also has a most advantageous strip of additional frontage along the entire westerly side of Cooper street, the southerly extension of Park Terrace East, to Isham street.  On April 15, 1912, the area of the park was considerably enlarged by a gift of land from Miss Flora E. Isham.  The estate of William B. Isham controls the remaining lots.  Some easy and adequate means of reaching the crest of Isham hill, except by climbing the long flight of steps provided at 215^th street, where an escalator would have solved the problem, is all the region needs to bring it well within the scope of the demand of just such builders as have improved the better parts of the Fort Washington avenue and other Washington Heights sections.

Mute evidence of the correctness of this forecast is the trend of apartment builders along the lower and less attractive level of Broadway.  Here, at No. 5,000 Broadway (212^th street), Grenville Hall, an elevator apartment house, has been a distinct success.  Further north, in Broadway, at the southeast corner of 215^th street, and comprising the southwest corner of Tenth avenue (the route of the elevated-subway line) two new five story non-elevator apartment houses are being completed by Charles Flaum, a builder who sold them several weeks ago to Thomas E. Loughlin, an investor.  These houses contain fifty apartments of three, four and five rooms, at $8 average monthly rent a room, and are fifty per cent rented, although unfinished.

Of the eight stores (seven in Tenth avenue and one at the Broadway corner), six have been rented at $600 to $2,000 each for those in Tenth avenue.  Knap & Wasson, the agents, say they are not making concessions.

In the opposite (west) side of Broadway the Reville-Siesel Company is completing a fifty foot non-elevator house, containing twenty-four apartments of three rooms and bath in the rear and four rooms and a bath in the front, and four stores.  Eighteen of the apartments are stated to have been rented at $7 to $8 a room average monthly rental, and three of the stores.  McDowell & McMahon are the agents.

These rentals are in no way indicative of the prices builders might expect to obtain for higher grade elevator apartments atop Isham Hill, but serve merely to indicate the trend of the demand to districts north of Isham street.

"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.”

Aftermath of Fire on 207th and Broadway (photo taken: January 4, 2012)

A massive fire ripped through a building on 207th and Broadway last night.  Above are before and after photos of the devastation.

For news and additional photos click on this news link from DNAInfo.com.

Princess Naomi and her grandchildren in 1930's photo taken by Reginald Bolton (Source:NYHS)

Since moving to Inwood  I’d heard stories of an almost mythical figure known only as Princess Naomi, who, in the 1930’s, took up residence near the old tulip tree in Inwood Hill Park. The site of the tree, which was felled by a hurricane in 1938, is now marked by a boulder with a plaque claiming to be the spot where Native Americans sold the entire island of Manhattan for a handful of trinkets. But for years, or so I’d been told, the shady spot along the Spuyten Duyvil, belonged to Naomi.

The story of Naomi fascinated me and I decided to make a trip to the National Museum of the American Indian to make an inquiry. What I received was an earful and an education on the public’s romantic notion of Indian life as presented in both history books and popular culture.  “First of all,” I was told, “there is no such thing as an Indian Princess.”

“Have you ever heard of an Indian King or Queen or Duke?” the woman asked in an unabashedly mocking tone.

“No,” I apologized, not meaning to offend.

Soon a rational discussion began, but the helpful staff of librarians and historians could find no mention of Naomi, sometimes spelled Naomie, in their records.

So the hunt continued—but gradually I began to stumble on bits and pieces of Naomi’s life and times in Inwood Hill.

Her real name was Naomi Kennedy.  She hailed from New Orleans.  And, if the stories are to be believed, she was of Cherokee descent.   (The original inhabitants of the area had been the Lenape.)

New York Evening Post, 1935.

According to a 1935 column in the New York Evening Post, titled “A Good Time on a Quarter,” tourists, curious New Yorkers and children could take the subway to 207^th Street and “lunch with an Indian with a gold tooth.”

The Indian, of course, was Naomi.

According to the article, in order to reach Naomi, one had to “walk west into Inwood Hill Park and take the plainly marked trail to the Tulip tree where Hendrick Hudson stepped ashore to barter with the Indians.”

And while the writer of the Post article, one Henry Beckett, may not have had a full grasp of Hudson’s voyage nor the politically correct vernacular of the modern age, he had met Naomi under the tulip tree in 1935 and left behind a description for the ages.

Tulip tree and cottage, 1913. (Source: Library of Congress)

According to Beckett, “Just beyond the tree, now dying at last, is a small brown house with green shutters. Go around to the front porch.  Unless unlucky, Indian braves and squaws in rocking chairs making souvenir trinkets of bright beads. Speak boldly, for there’s not a tomahawk on the premises, and ask for Princess Naomi.”

“Okay friend,” she said, using the Cherokee word for “righto,” when I requested a pow-wow. “Step inside and have a chair while I get my specs.”

Although her skin is coppery, the princess has a smile that is literally golden because of a gold tooth.  She wears Indian clothes decorated with much beadwork.

Boxer Bill Kennedy; record: (His boxing record: won 19 (KO 3) + lost 28 (KO 10) + drawn 10 = 62)

“Cherokees,” she said, “don’t have much show around here, so I am lucky to have this place.  I come from Oklahoma and my tribe used to live in Georgia, where they learned to speak English.  Well, I always wanted to come to New York, but my son, a boxer—he goes by the name of Billy Kennedy—told me I couldn’t stand an ordinary house, with steam heat, so he put in an application to get me the post of caretaker here.”

Thus it happens that a Cherokee princess is now queen of the Vale of Shora-Kap-Pok, a glen where the Weckuaesgeek once lived.

Naomi then went on to tell the reporter that she had held the post for the past six years.

“I must be the goods,” Naomi said.

Princess Naomi in front of Indian caves in Inwood Hill Park. (New Yorks Times, Nov. 15, 1936)

“All of the Indians in the city, about 600 of them, members of fifty tribes, come to see me.  Some make baskets, bracelets, and moccasins. Those on the porch now are Iroquois.  I get along with them all—Algonquians, Mohawk, anything.  I’m vice-president of the United Indians of America, a Brooklyn organization.  September 29 is Indian Day up here.  Big Doings.”

Naomi went on to tell the reporter, “Back in the woods a bit is what’s called an Indian cave, but between you and I and the gate-post, I don’t believe Indians ever lived there. It leaks.  Oh, here comes Chief White Eagle. My tribalman.”

“The chief,” the article continues, “who lives at the Y.M.C.A. and is a CWA recreation leader, wants to establish a real Indian village, with tepees and more substantial houses, all in Indian style.”

Interviewing Chief White Eagle, the reporter learned more of the plan for an Indian village in the park: “Indians would come here from all over.  Railroads could advertise it. Grand publicity.  I have a general plan for the village, but in order to lay it out right I must first fly over the ground in an airplane.”

Following up on Chief White Eagle’s comment, the reporter wrote: “The Chief’s countenance was as solemn as a Chief’s face should be. If the idea of using an airplane to lay out an Indian village struck him as incongruous, he did not show it.”

In summary, the Post reporter wrote, “The attractions of Inwood Park include glacial pot holes, with boulders maybe 50,000 years old, a shell heap indicating hundreds of years of Indian feasting, the pottery studio of Harry and Aimee Voorhees and the Dyckman Institute with its collections.

You too dear reader can lunch with an Indian princess on the shore of the Spuyten Duyvil (Harlem Ship Canal to you). Bring your own lunch.

EXPENSES: Subway: 10 cents. Large root beer served by princess: 10 cents. Bead trinket: nickel.  Total: Two bits.

Princess Naomi, Utica NY Observer, 1932

But Princess Naomi was much more than a local curiosity.  She was part of a growing neighborhood of which she truly seemed to care about.

Niagara Falls Gazette, Dec. 24, 1932

Several years before the article in the Post, Naomi saw a group of nearly thirty Inwood kids sliding and playing on the then frozen Spuyten Duyvil.  According to a 1932 article in the Niagara Falls Gazette, Naomi warned the children that the ice was dangerously thin; but kids being kids, they failed to heed her warning.

A short time later the ice gave way.

Naomi and her son Bill were helpless to stop the unfolding tragedy as they watched the kids take the icy plunge from the window of their cottage.

As the wet and shivering children scrambled out of the Spuyten Duyvil many likely made their way to Naomi’s cottage, described as a wooden shack directly across from the old Isham Park Yacht Club.

Unfortunately one child, ten-year-old James “Red” McGuire, who lived on Cooper street and attended Good Shepherd, drowned in the tragedy.

Of course there are other sources that mention Princess Naomi including the oral histories collected by author Jeff Kisseloff in his book “You Must Remember This.”

In one section Kisseloff  interviews Dorothy Menkin who moved to Inwood from the Bronx in 1933.  In the book Menkin describes the Inwood Hill Park of her youth: “There were two peach trees at the very top overlooking Dyckman Street.  The kids used to eat them, and of course they got sick.  Then there was the famous tulip tree.  It was almost dead then.  They were propping it up with cement.  The Indians would come in September and dance around that tree and sing their songs.  Princess Naomi had her little gift shop next to the tree.  She was some character.  She was in costume all the time, but come Sunday she took the costume off and walked around 207^th Street with high heels and everything.”

Another former Inwood resident, Mary Devlin, who was born in 1900, also had fond memories of Princess Naomi.  From her description to Jeff Kisseloff: “I used to take my children up to Inwood Hill Park every day.  There was a big spring right by Princess Naomi’s shop.  I would bring my empty milk bottles, fill them with water, and bring them home.

Princess Naomi was lovely.  My children were crazy about her.  She had a little museum with trinkets and things.  On Labor Day weekend, they had pow-wows every year.  The Indians came from all over, and they pitched their tents.  Then the men would put up a platform, where they all did their dances, and they had Indian contests.”

Annual Indian Day Festival in Inwood Hill Park, New York Times, October 1, 1934

But while these staged gatherings were thrilling events for the children of Inwood and the surrounding region, the participants themselves often had misgivings about the performances.

Native American Gloria Miguel, who lived in Brooklyn, dreaded the subway rides to Inwood.  Half Algonquin and half Cuna (a Central American tribe), young Gloria, who answered to Bright Moon at home, described her childhood experiences to Jeff Kisseloff:

“When I went up to Inwood, it was like a big spotlight on me.  I went along with my family because they took me, but I was very shy about it. I didn’t want people to look at me or take photographs of me.  It wasn’t until later that I realized that my background was something to be very proud of and that those people were just ignorant.

I had a North American outfit that my mother made for me.  It was a little dress made of cloth with some fringe on it.  I had moccasins and a beaded headband.  It was just a show outfit.  It wasn’t from the background of my people.  Since my parents did this for show business, they dressed according to what the show was.  They both had authentic costumes at home.  I just sat in my costume and watched.

Indian festival day in Inwood Hill Park, 1930's. (Source: Public Places of Childhood, 1915-1930, Sanford Gaster)

With the pow-wows (where she met Crazy Bull, the grandson of Sitting Bull) they were grasping onto the culture, trying to be proud in their way.  That moment was there for them before going back to welfare and their own neighborhood.  It was their way of holding on.”

Robert Moses

By 1938, Robert Moses, as part of his development plan for the park, evicted all of the residents, legal or illegal, of Inwood Hill.  There were house-boaters, potters, squatters and of course Princess Naomi and her son Billy Kennedy, a featherweight boxer who helped build and paint fences in the park when he wasn’t in the ring. (His boxing record: won 19 (KO 3) + lost 28 (KO 10) + drawn 10 = 62)

Years later, Moses would say of the eviction process, which included chopping down what was left of the tulip tree: “There were other trees, many decrepit. In the middle was a kiln where an Indian princess taught ceramics under dubious auspices. She had a son who didn’t work. Both were on relief, and the relief checks were delivered to the princess at a mailbox fastened to a tree. The hullabaloo about disturbing the princess, the kiln, the old tulip tree, and other flora and fauna was terrific.” (Public Works, 1970).

Where Princess Naomi wound up after her unceremonious eviction in a mystery to this writer, but hopefully someone reading this article can help fill in those missing pieces.

Broadway near Academy Street in 1925.

This holiday season, like many of my Inwood neighbors, I chose to remain home when I would really rather have been sunning myself on just about any faraway sandy beach.  So, instead of climbing the walls, I took several walks in a convenient oasis just several blocks away—Inwood Hill Park.

The brisk hikes reminded me of an article I read not long ago in the New York Herald which advised cash strapped New Yorkers that they need not stay at home—that natural wonders lay just a short hike away.

While the below piece was written in 1912, it holds as true today as when it was written a century ago.

New York Herald, July 21, 1912

New York, Herald
July 21, 1912
Vacations “on the Half Shell”

"The Dyckman House," by Ernest Lawson, 1913.

“The stay-at-homers solved the vacation problem.  Instead of moping because they cannot go to the seashore or the mountains and spend a ‘wad’ of money, they smile optimistically and take their vacations ‘on the half shell.’  Furthermore, they declare it a great sport.

Within the borders of Manhattan alone, unappreciated because unsought, the stay-at-homes are finding the beauties of the South of France and rural England, the romance of the Riviera and the serenity of a Swiss valley, each in capsular form and waiting to be taken at the rate of one a day.

A five-cent fare, either by the Broadway surface car or the subway brings you to Dyckman street.  Here you can take the open highway.  You may be inclined to loiter under the shadow of the towering oaks and elms of Inwood, and to spread you picnic lunch on the huge boulders along the way, not knowing the beauties further on. But wait!  A short block from Broadway to Prescott Avenue there is an abrupt turn, and you enter picturesque Bolton Road.

It seems like a bit of rural England, and looks it, too, with a dash of the Isle of Wight, the River Thames and the Embankments thrown in.

From the brow of the hill nearby there is a marvelous view of the Palisades and the Hudson.  A bit further and you come to the forbidding walls of the circumspect Magdalen Home on the river side.  To the right is a deserted mansion commanding a splendid view of the Palisades and the river.  Further on is atypical countryseat.  It would cover many city blocks and extends from Bolton road down to the Hudson.

Straus residence on Bolton Road.

A little further on is the old Isidor Straus country place, the last house on Manhattan Island.  From every point at this end of the island are extended views of the Hudson and Harlem rivers, Fordham Heights, the Hall of Fame, Bronx Park and the uplands of Long Island, while directly opposite are the Englewood cliffs.

A few paces beyond is a strange formation of rock which is the Mecca of many a geological class.  It is the product of some pre-glacial period.

The James McCreery home on Inwood Hill.

The return trip may be taken by the roadway close to the river, past the McCreery and numerous other old Knickerbocker mansions that will have passed when the City takes over this section as a park.  One of these old homes now furnishes the background for a well know moving picture concern, where ‘Wild West’ pictures by the score are produced with no other mountain scenery available than the Palisades.  The river road, though less secluded than Bolton road, is nevertheless quaint and picturesque, and a bit more like Normandy than cosmopolitan New York.  St. Michael’s Villa, which stands high on the opposite cliffs, makes the illusion complete.

Having made the detour to the upper portion of the island, the foot of Dyckman street is reached.  Here the motor ferry may be taken to the Palisades side, but that is really another day’s jaunt.”

Happy Holidays Inwood!

James Reuel Smith

Today, when a New Yorker wants a glass of water, feels like a shower or needs to wash the dishes; the act is as easy as turning on a tap.  But, before the turn of the twentieth century such simple tasks took a bit more effort—especially in the then undeveloped land of northern Manhattan, where the infrastructure simply didn’t exist.

Gathering even a pail full of water was a laborious task and typically involved a walk to the nearest spring or well.

Luckily, for early residents, Inwood was blessed with some of the freshest and coolest drinking water Mother Nature could provide—and for early settlers, those water sources were plentiful.

But, as time marched on, most of these naturally occurring water supplies were plugged up, paved over and simply forgotten.  If not for the writings and photographs of an obscure author named James Reuel Smith, even the memory of these springs and wells might have been forever lost.

Beginning in 1897, Smith began bicycling around the then rural areas of northern Manhattan and the Bronx, with a camera and a notebook in hand, interviewing old timers about ancient drinking holes and taking snapshots whenever possible.

Springs and Wells title page

Born in 1852 in Skaneateles, New York, Smith understood, as the dawn of a new century approached, that he would likely be the last person to photograph the bubbling springs before they disappeared completely—as had already happened in lower Manhattan.

While the image of a grown man on a bicycle photographing water sources, some no larger than a puddle, might seem eccentric, especially for a married man, Smith offered no apologies.  He had no children and a considerable amount of family money, so why not indulge in a hobby?

And write he did.  Sometimes he would spend an entire afternoon in the shade of a dying cherry tree writing about the sweet taste of the fruit while speculating about its origin.  Was it once part of a larger orchard?  Like so many amateur historians, his curiosity was as much endearing as informative.

While Smith would never live to see his work published—he died in 1935—he left his notes and photographs to the New York Historical Society, which, in turn, published his papers in 1938 in a rare book aptly titled The Springs and Wells of Manhattan and the Bronx, New York City, at the End of the Nineteenth Century.

In his notes, Smith would write, “A city spring frequently possesses all the beautiful surroundings of a rural one, and besides exciting that pathetic interest aroused by something pleasurable which will shortly cease to exist, it is, for the meditative, a link which connects the thoughts with the past.”

What follow are several photos and descriptions of the wells and springs once located in the Inwood are that were captured by Smith in 1897 as he rode around the neighborhood on his bicycle.

Dyckman Street Between Nagle and Post Avenues: Plate 47a

Plate 47a from James Reuel Smith's "Springs and Wells of Manhattan and the Bronx, New York City, at the End of the Nineteenth Century"

September 25, 1897.  Some three hundred feet north of Dyckman Street, there is a spring at the base of a vertical of rocky ground covered with a thick clump of trees. Dyckman Street was formerly called Inwood Lane.

Northeast of Dyckman Street and F Street (Payson Avenue) Plate 47b

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

September 25, 1897.  At a point about three hundred feet northeast of the intersection of F Street and Dyckman Street is located what is probably the most generally known spring in the city.  Its water has been demonstrated by numerous analyses to be the purest on Manhattan Island.  It is situated at the base of a perpendicular wall of rock sixty feet in height and as many in width.  A little brick coping has been built out from the face of the rock, making a basin some five feet long and two feet wide.  The water is about fifteen inches deep.  It is on the Gantz property and is called “the white stone spring.”

Cooper Street and West 204^th Street: Plate 48 and 49a

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

May 18, 1898.  Hawthorne Street (West 204^th Street) and Cooper Street were built up some twenty feet above the natural level of the land with many pieces of white marble from the quarry.  Cooper Street runs over the original site of this spring, but the owner of the ground insisted on having the spring preserved, so a semi-circular well of marble was built around the western half of the spring.  The water is very cool, although the sun, during the first half of the day, shines down full upon it.  The milkman, William Drennan, who lives on the Kingsbridge Road (Broadway) just above, and his brother, a plumber, made the connection to carry the spring’s water to its present location.  They disconnect the pipe in the winter to prevent freezing. To the right of the pipe is a culvert through which a brook runs through the meadows farther west, and joins the water flowing from the spring.  The two streams, united, run under the little dark red house below.  The Drennans never had a well built but used this spring when it stood in front of the French-roof house now facing Cooper Street and not far from it.  They still keep milk in the little house over the brook, in a large box through which the water runs. (They have Croton water at the house.)

Cooper Street is about two hundred and fifty feet west of, and parallel to, the Kingsbridge Road, from which the spring and the little house over the brook are plainly visible.  In the photograph (plate 48) the red wooden milk house may be seen in the lower left corner; in the center and left of the center are two houses on Cooper Street, and above, along the heights of Inwood, are several homes along Prescott (Payson) Avenue.

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

On Line Of 213^th Street East Of Line Of Ninth Avenue (The Nagle or Century House) Plate 49b

May 18, 1898.  In 1736 John Nagle built him a stone dwelling on the banks of the Harlem River at what is now 213^th Street and he built so well that the house is standing and occupied today.  It is now resplendent in a new red roof and suit of clapboards given it by its owner.  The house is at present occupied by a man named White.  In 1861, it was a house of entertainment known as Post’s Century House.

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

The spring well of this house is about seventy-five feet west of it, and about three hundred feet east of the line of Ninth Avenue, which has been laid out this year.  The water is about six feet below the level of the ground and is three feet deep and not very clear.  There is no cover over the well, which is curved with loose stones at the top.  Down below it is some five feet across. The pail is one of tin; it is well rusted and leaks.

West of the well is an old graveyard with some forty graves in it.  The oldest decipherable date is 1825 and some of the names are Vermilye, Harris, Lockwood, and Smith.  Near the graveyard is an old orchard of considerable extent, with apple, plum, and other fruit trees.  It is the largest orchard left on Manhattan Island.

Isham Estate (Isham Park) Isham Stable Spring: Plate 50a

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

June 9, 1898.  Along the easterly border of a marshy meadow, which stretches to the Harlem Ship Canal, there is a fence on the Isham property, near the stable. Twelve feet east of the fence, sixty feet east of the back part of the meadow, and about 500 feet from the Canal, there is a spring.  It is at the foot of one of four little fruit trees, which, with two others a short distance away, are all that is left of what was perhaps long ago a flourishing orchard.  The tree behind the spring looks like a peach tree.  Buttercups grow around it.  Wild birds sing in the four fruit trees and drink at the spring.  Their piping song mingles with the whistling tugs on the Canal.  The Isham’s horses and three cows come to the spring about noon for their drink, the cows respectfully giving precedence when a thirsty horse approaches by rising lumberingly and moving away with dignified alacrity.

The spring rises at the base of a small rock.  It is eighteen inches deep and about twenty inches across.  Natural rock forms the back of its basin, and in the front a piece of white Kingsbridge marble, which has become slimy and yellowish-brown.  Bubbles rise from the bottom, which is somewhat sandy and over which a conical fungus grows.  The water is not cold but cool. Although exposed to the direct rays of the sun.  I drank from it, and found it a trifle salty.  The overflow runs into the marsh.

Isham Estate (Isham Park) Isham Meadow Spring: Plate 50b

June 29, 1898.  About twenty-five feet southeast of the Isham stable spring, and on the other (or west) side of the fence, there is a spring.  It bubbles up freely like champagne at the southwestern end of a small ledge of rock that crops out from nearly the lowest level of the marshy meadow by the Spuyten Duyvil Creek.  The rocky ledge forms one third of the basin, the rest being made of bricks laid in mortar. The spring is about three feet from side to side and two feet from back to front.  The water is about two feet deep; although the outlet pipes still projecting up, and some pieces of brickwork, show that it was once a foot deeper.  The curbing has probably been trampled down by the cows that pasture in this meadow.  The bottom is sandy, and the same brown fungus that grows in the stable spring grows in this one.  The water is cold and nice, although it is completely open to the sun.  There is a frog in the spring.  In the bottom there is a piece of iron pipe about two inches in diameter, which leads away in the shape of an “L” to the southwest.  The pipe perhaps follows the path of least resistance in the ground and supplies a pump in the barn, for there is no house on the meadow, nor would its boggy condition lead one to suppose that there was ever a house there.  The overflow from this spring runs away into the marsh, as does that of the stable spring.

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

This is, I think, one of the most pleasantly situated springs of all.  It is not only pretty in itself, but is picturesquely located.  From it there is a view across the meadow, through the opening where the Spuyten Duyvil Creek empties into the Hudson, of the Palisades on the opposite side of the River.  The surrounding scenery is dominated on the west by the towering cliff of Inwood, and enclosed on the south and east by the rolling slopes that run back to the Kingsbridge Road (Broadway).

Between Broadway And Spuyten Duyvil Creek, South of West 218^th Street- The Seaman-Drake Estate: Plates 51 and 52

June 29, 1898.  West of the Kingsbridge Road (Broadway) and Northeast of the Isham estate, is the magnificent Seaman-Drake estate.  The property contains twenty-six acres, and as formerly owned by Valentine Seaman.  Its large white marble entrance arch (said to have cost $30,000) is within a few hundred yards of the northern end of Manhattan Island, opposite West 216^th Street, and is just “twelve miles from New York” according to the old brown milestone set by the roadside, just south of the arch.  This arch has for half a century challenged the admiring observation of every traveler entering or leaving New York City by the Hudson River Railroad.

The grounds are a specimen of old-time gardening, laid out in the Italian style with statues, walks and driveways.  Scattered about are small pieces of marble statuary on pedestals, representing Europa, Euterpe, and other classical characters.  Where the walks lead down a slope there are marble steps, with figures of lions at the sides. The dwelling itself is of marble and has ampelopsis vines trailed over its south side.  By those who live within sight of it, it is familiarly called “the marble house.”  This mansion is said to have cost $150,000.  From it there is a fine view of Spuyten Duyvil Creek towards the Hudson on the north and of the Harlem River towards the south.  The chief man now in charge has been there only eighteen months but the man under him has been there or in the immediate neighborhood some thirty years.  He lived near the Inwood Cold Spring sixteen years and built the basin for it.

Near and north of the marble entrance arch there was a fishpond, fed by a spring, which within the last month has been filled in by Mr. White who occupies the Nagle House.  Some of the gold and silver fish that used to be in it were eight or ten inches long, the caretaker says.  So many fish were taken from it that the neighborhood still smells of their decayed bodies.

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

The road from the entrance arch winds through the grounds up a gradual ascent to about sixty feet higher than the Kingsbridge Road level.  At this point, about three-eighths of a mile in, there is a well with a lattice arbor, south of the mansion.  (Plate 51a)  It is reached by a broad path on which there are a few stone steps ornamented at the sides with two large mortar vases prettily carved, and containing century plants.  The well is eighty-five feet deep, four and one half feet across, and curbed with stones.  It is latticed over, and is in good preservation.  It is fitted with a pump, of which the sucker was too dry to work, when I first visited the well, in May of this year 1898.  The pump was not used while the estate was leased by the driving club (which was until about a year ago.) The caretaker has since, however, poured water down the tube and got it working, and now, in June, he drinks nothing but this water.  He even carried it with him, for I found him making hay with a jug of this water carefully placed near him in the shadow of a haycock.

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

The gardener’s house, a stone structure, stands some five-hundred feet from the Harlem Ship Canal, and is shown in two of the photographs (Plates 51b and 52b).  There are large trees about its eastern front and ampelopsis vines growing over the wall at the back.  It has a one story extension with a roof shingled with wide cut slates.  Two gutters, one in front and one at the rear, conduct the water by two pipes down the southern end.  The two pipes join near the ground forming a large “Y,” the stem of which carries the water to a circular cistern with a wooden top and a trap door.  The cistern is full today (June 29, 1898).  A pipe leads from it to a pump in the gardener’s house.

There is a smaller cistern at the barn from which (when needed for the horses) the water is pumped into a large block of stone that has been symmetrically hollowed out as a trough.

North of the mansion there is a well which is now flagged over.  It used to feed the house pump, which has since been connected with the Croton system.  Water used to be pumped from the cistern near the mansion to the top of the edifice, to supply a fountain in the grounds.  As the house is some forty-five feet high, sufficient pressure was thus obtained to give a stream with considerable play, when water was turned on at the fountain.

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

The mushroom house on the estate is dug into the side of a hill.  It is some twenty-five feet wide and deep, and twenty feet high.  The back of it is formed by the natural rock of the hillside.  The front wall is two feet thick and is entered by a narrow and high doorway.  The door has fallen to decay.  In front of the house is a planked space some six by fifteen feet; the caretaker says the spring rises under this planking.  The water of it is first visible, however, some three-hundred feet away in a field, in a barrel (sunk in the ground and almost hidden from view in the tall June grass), to which a pipe leads from the mushroom house spring. (Plate 52a)  A few feet away is a box that formerly stood over the barrel.  Nearby, a line of white daisies marks the direction of a winding path that was once upon a time used from the gardeners house north to the stable.

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

West of the gardener’s house, and about forty feet from the edge of the Harlem Ship Canal, there is another spring. (Plate 52b) It is in the angle of a fence corner, about eight feet from the fence and near a gate that leads to a dock on the Canal.  The spring is two feet in diameter, and its basin is a large piece of cement pipe stuck in the ground.  The curbing of the spring is about four inches higher.  The outlet is through a slit in the cement curbing, and the water runs from it through the grass and into the creek.  The spring has a sandy bottom.  The land hereabouts is practically flat, and the ground nearby is marshy.  The caretaker says that the spring sometimes goes salty.

When they began to dredge the Harlem Ship Canal, the men took water from this spring for their boilers, but Mr. Drake objected. So they dug a hole about three feet deep in the ground on the other side of the fence, about twelve feet north of the spring, and thus took the overflow of the spring and obtained sufficient water.

West Of Broadway, North Of West 218^th Street (Baker Field Of Columbia University) The Isaac M. Dyckman Well: Plate 53a

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

June 29, 1898.  The (Isaac M.) Dyckman house is west of the Kingsbridge Road, north of West 218^th Street.  Its well is just north of the porch at the west end of the house.  This is a latticed well, built something like the Seaman-Drake well, but having a rope and bucket instead of a pump.  The rope runs over an iron pulley at the top.  Its use was discontinued within a year or so apparently because one of the buckets broke, and there is Croton water in the house, there was no urgent need for replacing it.  The well is about twenty-five feet deep.  It has a trap door, which is now down.  There is a spout at the side, and a stone slightly hollowed out to catch and carry off the water without having it dig a hole into the ground.  The entrance to the well is within three feet of the house, almost facing the house, so that it is not easily photographed by daylight.

This well is just about opposite the power house on the Kingsbridge Road, and west of it about four hundred feet.

North Of West 218^th Street, Near Spuyten Duyvil Creek: The Dyckman Ice Pond: Plate 53b

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

June 29, 1898.  The Dyckman ice pond is about one hundred and fifty feet north of the gardener’s cottage on the Seaman-Drake estate.  It is a beautiful object.  The pond is about three hundred feet long by seventy-five feet wide and for the most part is cut out of the natural solid rock.  Heavy trees and foliage and vines surround it, and I came within a foot or two of walking into it over a bluff twenty-five feet high! A swallow was busily engaged skimming for insects on the pond and it darted about dipping into the water with a swishing splash every now and then.

The southern end of the pond is made of small blocks of Kingsbridge marble and there is a sluice cut to let the water out into the creek a few hundred feet away.  Near this sluice is a wooden platform with two long planks extending out into the pond.  It was made to haul ice up when it is cut from the pond.  They did not cut ice here last year.  These planks, worn quite smooth and white, were covered with a thousand tadpoles, and from the other end, every few moments, came the deep note of a full-grown bullfrog.

At the north, the shore of the pond slopes steeply upward with a bend, forming a ravine, which is crossed by a rustic bridge.  On the pond is a small red rowboat with a small anchor as if it were used for fishing in the pond.

This pond is supplied by springs, although there is Croton water laid into it also.  It takes two or three days to fill the pond when it has been drawn off for cleaning.

Just north of the pond is a hill, covering about three acres of ground, made from the white stone and stuff taken from the Canal, and for which the United States are paying Mr. Dyckman $2000 a year rent.  What with rain and settling, it is so solid a mass that Mr. White, the man who filled the Seaman-Drake fish pond, found it cheaper to go a good deal farther and get earth to fill with.

Near Spuyten Duyvil Creek, Inwood: The “Cold Spring”: Plates 54a and 54b

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

November 13, 1897.  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 spring house 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.

This is the largest spring within the corporate limits of the City of New York.

With the exception of the cottage of an old boatman, Abraham Seeley by name, there is not a house within a mile of this spring, but it pours forth as copious a stream as though its duties were to supply a city’s needs.

May 21, 1898.  The man on the Seaman-Drake estate lived at Cold Spring sixteen years and made a basin for it.  He says it discharges six gallons a minute, which is about three times as much as the flow from the usual bathroom faucet.

Near Cold Spring are two others, one nearly hid at high tide and cut out of a white rock.

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

June, 1898.  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.

On Tuesday, June 28, 1898, Murray’s house back of Seeley’s caught fire from frying fish, and burned down at four in the afternoon.  The fire engine had such a time getting there that it did not reach the place until half past four!  Even the next day many believed that it was Seeley’s house which had burned, and the cause of the fire was said to be incendiary resentment over Seeley’s having closed the “cold spring.”

Inwood Hill, East Side: Plate 55a

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

June 9, 1898.  This spring is about one hundred feet down from the road that, after resolutely winding its way through the forest of Inwood on the east side, finally when it is within half a mile of the northern end goes about and retraces its course towards the south again, although somewhat west of its first course.  The spring is some fifteen feet above the level of the Spuyten Duyvil Creek and within fifty feet of it.  A walk three boards wide leads to it from a little house nearby and towards the east.  It rises in two barrels side by side south of the walk.  One of them, for drinking purposes,  is covered with a hinged wooden flap, and the other, for ablutions is open.  The water is said to be a little hard for washing, unless soda is added, so rain is used for laundry purposes. The water appears to be muddy, but this is only the color of the sides of the barrels, for when water is dipped out, it is found to be crystal-white, as well as cold and very nice to the taste. The board walk is on the north side of the spring.  On the south side there is a board platform to stand on, as the ground is wet and soppy from little trickling streams.

If there is pure spring water anywhere on Manhattan Island, it should be found here, as there is only one house within four hundred feet of it, a second about seven hundred feet away, and no other within half a mile.  The primitive forest surrounds it without anything to contaminate the soil.  Immense tall trees, thick green foliage, and tiny rivulets, trickling down the sides of the hill are the characteristics of the place.

Inwood Hill, West Side: Plate 55b

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

May 18, 1898.  This spring is reached by following the road from Tubby Hook north along the Hudson.  It is about seventy-five feet from the river and forty feet above its level.  A basin has been scooped out of the nearly solid rock for it, and the sides of the basin slope conically upwards very symmetrically so that the periphery of the water at the surface is nearly a perfect circle.  A dome of stones is arched over the top almost exactly reversing the lines of the sloping walls of the basin below.  The dome is open in the front and the contour of the inside is that of a perfectly formed lemon.  The periphery of the basin at the surface of the water is cemented to make it perfect in form. The water is about two and one half feet deep and about three and one half feet in diameter.  The top of the arch is about three feet above the surface of the water.  The water is cold and good to the taste, and so crystally clear that the sides and top of the dome are reflected in it as in a mirror.  The overflow disappears down in a channel made in cement.

Two short converging gravel paths lead up to the spring from the road, and there is a house on the property about three hundred feet northeast of the spring.  Above the spring stands a sign reading “No Trespassing Allowed.” Round and about are large trees.

Inwood Hill, West Side: Plate 56a

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

May 18, 1898.  The last house on the Bolton Road is Mr. James McCreery’s.  One eighth of a mile south of this house, about two hundred feet from the Hudson River, a pump comes up through a slab of blue stone four feet square.  The handle is broken off near the top and the pump is rusty; it has evidently not been used for some time.  The pump is on a terrace some fifty feet above the level of the Hudson, and there are several terraces above it, which appear to have to have once formed a serpentine road to the river but now are so grass grown that they look merely like sloping lawns.  There is a pretty view of the river from here although now it is disfigured with shad poles, and the fishermen are inspecting their nets.  Wild birds are singing in the large forests round about and no sound is heard that is foreign to the country.

A maid in spectacles offered me a drink of distilled and boiled water as they have no well or spring and use Croton water.

Inwood Hill, Northern End: Plate 56b

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

June 19, 1898.  This forest well is nearly the highest point of Inwood and just beyond it the hill slopes down to the Spuyten Duyvil Creek.  It is the last natural water supply source on Inwood ridge and is nearly  a half a mile from any habitation.  The water is about five feet from the top, and about a yard in circumference.  It is symmetrically curbed with stones, and is covered with two flat heavy stones, one of which I could hardly move, and the other not at all.  The water is perfectly clean on top as the stones protect it thoroughly. Although it is within two feet of the pathway, it would never be noticed by a stranger as the covering stones look perfectly natural.

Seeley told me about it and said it was twenty-five feet deep.  Afterwards the man on the Seaman-Drake place told me that he measured it on a bet with McCreery’s gardener, and that it was thirty-four feet to the bottom.  He said it once supplied McCreery’s house.

Where does the water come from that rises to within five feet of the top of almost the highest point in Inwood?

A little brooklet appears about three hundred feet away and loses itself in some underground passage on its way to Spuyten Duyvil Creek.

Seeley’s son says that not far from here were found battle axes and other relics, and a cave that had been made by Indian braves.  He got a piece of British money from the cave but when he went to find the cave a second time there was no trace of it.  There had been a landslide, and hundreds of tons of stone concealed the place.

Author’s note:  After reading Smith’s account, myself, Cole Thompson, my partner on all things Inwood history related, Don Rice and his sons, James and Alan, took to Inwood Hill for an exploratory mission of our own.  To our amazement, we think we may have located the final well described by Smith (Plate 56b above).  The description and location felt right to us, but who knows.  Check out the Youtube video below and judge for yourself.

Bad Girl by Vina Delmar

In 1928 pulp fiction author Vina Delmar burst onto the publishing scene with “Bad Girl,” a shocking and scandalous exploration of pre-marital sex and pregnancy. At the time of its publication “Bad Girl” was considered so racy it was banned in parts of the country. The petite 23-year-old with porcelain skin and lustrous black hair worn in a bob, seemed perplexed by the controversy surrounding her first novel. “I spent three years and a half working on the book. I wrote it about people I know because I lived among them and saw them daily,” she would tell one critic.

The controversy however, proved extremely profitable. Before the book hit the shelves the young author was given a $10,000 advance.

Vina Delmar

The following year, Delmar, born Alvina Croter in New York City in 1904, published two more lurid tales of modern women living in the big city. Both “Loose Ladies” and “Kept Woman” explored the sex lives of pent up New York women.

“Kept Woman,” for the most part, was set in Inwood, and its pages included descriptions of familiar streets including Dyckman, Vermilyea, 207th and Broadway. Avon Publishing described “Kept Woman” as “a great novel of the life of the ‘other’ woman.”

Kept Woman by Vina Delmar

According to the book jacket, lead character Lillian Cory “was flattered when well-to-do, good-looking Hubert Scott fell in love with her, but she found herself faced with a painful decision when she learned he was married and could not be divorced. Should she suppress her emotions and turn away from him-or should she give in to their love and become his mistress?”

In one scene two cheating couples are making dinner plans when Lillian, the heroine of the story, suggests, “How about the Arras Inn?”

“Why the Arras Inn?” a member of the party asks.

“Because nobody else seems to have thought of a place and the Arras Inn is in my neighborhood and I can duck right home after I’m fed,” Lillian responded.

The book continues:

“The ride back to Inwood was the same as the one to the roadhouse…Hubert drove at twenty miles an hour and Lillian smoked and thought what she would order at the Arras Inn. Lobster for choice. But suppose they didn’t have lobster? A club sandwich, maybe. Or a chicken salad.

When the couples arrived at the Arras Inn, Delmar continued:

The Arras Inn was on Broadway, a few doors off 207th Street. It was a long, narrow place with latticed walls and colored lampshades. There was music, singing, and once or twice a fire to vary the monotony.

There was lobster. Everybody ordered lobster. Little talking was done as the party chewed small, thin claws and delved hopefully into large, fat claws. Hubert had mayonnaise all over his mouth. Lillian didn’t think it very becoming. She wanted to tell him to use his napkin, but she was afraid it would make him angry. She kept her eyes resolutely turned away from him.

The waiter came and carried away the shells. Lillian ventured a look at Hubert. There was still some mayonnaise down in the corner of his mouth. May came to the rescue.

“Big Boy,” she said, “wipe your mouth and if your nose needs blowing for God’s sake blow it before it starts to show.”

Hubert wiped his mouth.

Everybody lit cigarettes.”

And so ended an imaginary dinner in an imaginary restaurant on the corner of Two Hundred and Seventh and Broadway—as far a most readers unfamiliar with Inwood would assume.

Arras Inn ad NY Evening Telegram July 1913

But the Arras Inn was a very real place indeed. After all, Vina Delmar was an uptown girl and had likely dined at the Arras Inn on a number of occasions.

Arras Inn 1925

For several decades, beginning not long after the turn of the century, The Arras Inn was considered one of the finest dining establishments in northern Manhattan—and Delmar’s description of the restaurant, when compared to old advertisements, news clippings and vintage photographs, seems completely accurate.

Arras Inn interior from vintage postcard

Located at 4928 Broadway, a few doors south of 207th Street, currently a pawnshop, the Arras Inn provided city dwellers with not only fine food, but also music and entertainment. A 1913 advertisement in the New York Evening Telegraph boasted “dollar fish dinners” and a menu that included crab, steamed clams, chicken gumbo, planked sea bass, soft shell crabs, squab, chicken, corn on the cob, grilled sweet potatoes, Virginia ham, hot corn muffins and cantaloupe.

Arras Inn Interior, 207th Street and Broadway.

Arras Inn New York Evening Telegraph, July 1916

Arras Inn ad in the New York Evening Telegram, July 29 1922

New York Times, 1922 Prohibition raids

After the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919 the management of the Arras Inn thumbed their noses at Prohibition and became one of the better-known speakeasies in the developing young neighborhood.

With a wink and a nod, stealthy bartenders would pour real beer into twelve ounce ceramic mugs emblazoned with the phrase “I’m on the water wagon now.”  To the casual observer it would appear that these lawbreakers were sipping cups of coffee.

In late September 1922, according to the New York Times, a team of Federal and local agents known as “The Dry Squad” raided the Arras Inn where “they said they found 120 bottles of real beer.” Before the team departed they issued summonses to owner Paul Boehn and a waiter named John Cronan who resided at 537 East Thirteenth Street.

New York Times, 1928

On February 11, 1928, after closing for the evening, a fire broke out in the kitchen of the Arras Inn. As smoke billowed from the building a man named Joseph Klein, his wife and two young children were in a deep slumber in their apartment on the second floor.

On Broadway, patrolman Louis Schwartz  reacted without a thought for his own safety and sounded the alarm before running into the smoke filled building to rescue Klein and his family.

Firemen responding to the inferno raised ladders to the window and were able to lower Klein, his wife and two young daughters to safety before the flames engulfed the entire block. Seven other storefronts, including a vegetable store, a tailor and a grocery were completely destroyed in the blaze.

And while the file closed the book on the Arras Inn, Vina Delmar went on to a long and distinguished career as a Hollywood screenwriter.

Arras Inn in 1926

While her books were banned in Boston, her work titillated Tinsletown producers. Even in the late 1920’s, the studios well knew that “sex sells” and treated Delmar like visiting royalty.

Loose Ladies by Vina Delmar

While Delmar would achieve critical acclaim in Hollywood, she was nominated for an Academy Award in 1937 for her screen adaptation of “The Awful Truth,” she found life on the west coast dull and tedious. ‘It’s not a fertile field for a novelist,’ she would once say of her work in California. Like a character in her romance novels, Delmar was a New Yorker through and through and longed for her former haunts in the Bronx and northern Manhattan.

Delmar would later explain that the real life inspirations for her characters were found on the streets, barstools and subways of the only place she had truly felt comfortable—the New York City of her youth.

Women Live Too Long by Vina Delmar

“‘I came to know, first hand, the girls who go to Coney Island, who pack the medium-sized movie theaters and write fan mail, who chew gum, work for a living, put on lipstick in crowded subways, and try to live on $1.60 a day. Some of them are tough and some of them are not. I grew up with these people, and when I decided to write, I wrote about them. It seems to me that if you’re going to write, that’s what you have to do. Don’t wander into strange lands, but write.’”

While pockets of the nation were horrified by Delmar’s graphic depictions of the sexual proclivities of fictitious big city women, no offence was taken in Inwood where the raven-haired enchantress of urban pulp became an unlikely local hero.

In the fall of 1929 O.O. McIntyre wrote in his syndicated New York by Day:

“Inwood, which is the uptown Dyckman Street section glorified in Vina Delmar’s “Kept Woman,” evidently does not resent the chiffon chimera of the ladies in love with love which the novel created. A drug store heralds the Vina Delmar sundae and a little gown shop is to be called The Vina Delmar. Inwood, it might be added, is chiefly a community of self-respecting people with a neighborly flair, and is not hard boiled.”

Vina Del Mar passed away in Los Angeles on January 19, 1990.  She was 86 years old.

Arras Inn, undated photo.

Location of the former Arras Inn, currently a pawn shop.

“Dum vivimus vivamus”
-Motto of the Hoboken Turtle Club

According to legend, as the history of most social clubs is so often based, the Hoboken Turtle Club was founded in 1796. It is reputed to have been the oldest social club in the United States.

The club was the brainchild of John Stevens, a former Captain in George Washington’s Continental army. An inventor, lawyer and treasurer for the State of New Jersey, Stevens amassed a fortune through shrewd real estate investments, the invention of a screw-driven steamboat capable of ocean navigation and marriage into an extremely wealthy family. Among Stevens’ holdings was the Stevens Castle, currently the home to the Stevens Institute of Technology.

But, despite all of Stevens’ accomplishments, he had a problem. Turtles.

According to an 1878 New York Times article, Stevens’ riverfront Hoboken, New Jersey estate was plagued by conniving cold-blooded reptiles, which often poached his prized European chickens.

One day Stevens hired a local shepherd boy to go down to the riverbank to investigate. As the chickens dug for clams on the muddy shore, the boy sprawled out on the ground nearby engrossed in a romance novel.

Suddenly, according to the Times “a huge turtle, with an arched back completely covered with moss, crept out of the river, seized an unsuspecting hen by the leg and dragged her off to his felonious retreat on the river bottom.”

Ever the soldier, Stevens declared war on his hard-shelled nemesis in a most ingenious manner. He summoned a group of wealthy Manhattan businessmen to cross the Hudson to dine on turtle soup. “He was remarkable in his selection of great eaters.”

Hoboken Turtle Club medal.

The Times described the members of the newfound Hoboken Turtle Club as “one of the weightiest assemblages of solid men to be found between Wall Street and the Treasury Department.”

Their motto: “Dum vivimus vivamus,” Latin for, “As we journey through life, let us live by the way.”

The feasts often went on for days and, after several years, the Hoboken Turtle Club had devoured the local supply of turtles.

Soon these powerful men who had been duped into pitching tents on the Jersey side of the Hudson numbered several hundred. Before long they would move their annual feast into the city. By 1878 Tammany Hall was hosting the event. A giant turtle shell emblazoned with the letters “H.T.C “ hung from the balcony.

As the years passed, entrance to the club became one of the most coveted memberships in town. In an 1896 speech marking the 100th anniversary of the Turtle Club, the organization’s president, William Sulzer, noted that Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Burr and Clay had all been Turtle Club members.

By the 1890’s, the Turtle Club had fallen on hard times. Membership was down. Still the party went on. Manning the soup kettle for the latter half of the 19th century was a man named John Tarbell; described by many as stout, clean-shaven and secretive. Tarbell’s talents were renowned among turtle aficionados. His turtle soup recipe, a “state secret,” was shared only with the president of the organization. Two days before the guests arrived Tarbell would enter the cookhouse with his turtle, “its flippers tied and its eyes abulge with apprehension.” Forty-eight hours later the turtle would “emerge in a soup that is fragrant, palatable and nutritious.”

Hoboken Turtle Club photographed after relocation to Kingsbridge. Note the Seaman Mansion in the background. (Image courtesy of Don Rice)

In June of 1893 the Turtle Club found a new home in the old Kingsbridge Hotel, once the site of Hyatt’s Tavern; an important drinking establishment dating to the days of the Revolution. William Sperb, a veteran member and turtle enthusiast purchased the old hotel to ensure the club’s survival.

There, on the Spuyten Duyvil, members achieved truly remarkable levels of excess unheard of even in the Club’s early days. It was not uncommon for a man to drink ten cocktails before breakfast, but the amount of alcohol consumed was hard to measure, because, as a bartender at the King’s Bridge Hotel told one reporter, “the veterans drink their cocktails from pitchers.”

Breakfast was served at 8:00 a.m., and, according to a Times article published that year, “consisted of cocktails, stewed eels, fried eels, baked and fried bluefish, porterhouse steak and turtle steak.”

Members of the Turtle Club were not simply there to dine; they were expected to participate in the preparation of the feast. Famous members, including “such men as John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr adopted the rule that no one could partake of turtle unless he had taken some part in its preparation.” Dinner was served at 4:00 in the afternoon and consisted of boiled eggs, brandy and, of course, turtle soup.

Frank Leslie's Illustrated September 7,1889.

Surprisingly, the secret to a good turtle soup is not turtle. In 1878 Tarbell confided to a reporter that, “You see, this is turtle soup of the best kind, but there’s not much turtle in it. It wouldn’t do you know. Too much turtle spoils turtle soup…If 1,500 turtles made any better soup than six; we’d have the 1,500. But they wouldn’t; they’d spoil it. It would be so rich, nobody could eat a cupful of it.”

Tarbell’s hearty concoction was so famous it was reportedly served to French General Lafayette when he visited America.

The main ingredients, Tarbell told the reporter in a hushed tone, were vegetables including: potatoes, turnips, cabbage, radishes, peas, beets, tomatoes, cucumbers and cauliflower. Of course there were other ingredients Tarbell refused to divulge.

So what does turtle soup taste like?

Dr. I. I. Hayes, a polar explorer and Club member, compared the taste of turtle to fried seal’s liver and walrus bacon. It was said the soup was so rich that no man could eat more than two plates, but of course, members had consumed a huge breakfast. Not to mention a superhuman number of cocktails.

While many had never tasted seal’s liver and walrus bacon, the 1887 Times article provided this description:

“To receive a turtle soup you must first chop a hard boiled egg very fine in the bottom of your plate. Then you squeeze into the egg the juice of half a lemon, and pour into it, also, a teaspoon full of mellow old Otard brandy from a bottle, which furnishes you a drink at the same time. The egg is to prepare the plate, and the drink is to prepare the stomach. Then your plate is filled with soup, and while the egg struggles from the bottom to float on the surface, you lay aside all earthly thoughts, forgive all your enemies, and forget all your creditors and put a teaspoon full of it into your mouth. Then you remove the spoon and shut your eyes, and your soul, on the wings of sensuous thought, passes outward into lotus land, and for a time you are lost in a dream that is so still, so perfect, and so all absorbing that you wish, lazily and sadly, it might never end. But you swallow the soup and open your eyes, discover that the face of nature is unchanged, and then, your intellect having reasserted its sway, you conclude that the turtle, like the swan, yields its only perfect symphony in its death.”

Unfortunately the Hoboken Turtle Club, whose name had been changed in 1892 to the New York Turtle Club, would once again resume its nomadic existence.

Kingsbridge Hotel in turn of the century postcard by Charles Buck.

On October 27th, 1903, the Old Kingsbridge Hotel was destroyed in a fire that swept through the Kingsbridge area. At least twenty other buildings were destroyed in the inferno.

By 1938, the Club was meeting in the Rathskeller of Manhattan’s Terminal Hotel, where inscribed above the door, a sign read, “When you enter this cellar, you meet a good feller.”

Shortly thereafter the former Hoboken Turtle Club faded into memory.

Read more Inwood history here.

As summer winds down, I thought it might be fun to share a photo of an old swimming hole that used to be a source of great fun and entertainment near the turn of the last century.  The area, on the bank of the Hudson River at  Dyckman Street was called the “Inwood Bathing Beach.”   This not so little oasis in those days before air conditions was one of several installations to dot the local waterways during the summer months.

Inwood Bathing Beach, NY Tribune, July 15, 1906

According to the 1906 account from the New York Herald, “A novel resort far uptown on Manhattan Island is the Inwood Bathing Beach, at Dyckman (206th) street and the Hudson River. The clean sandy beach, the fine stretch of water and the bathing houses have combined to make this especially popular. It is only three minutes walk from the Broadway cars and there are accommodations for 1,500 persons at a time. A lifesaving crew is at hand for the protection of bathers, and swimming masters afford instruction to those who are not competent swimmers. Boats may be secured for rowing, and refreshments are served in the pavilion.”

For the curious: The building in the upper right of the photo is the original Jewish Memorial Hospital.

Tubby Hook today

Recently, MyInwood.net reader Frank Yannaco wrote in to tell me about the concession stand his family once owned and operated inside the Isham Street entrance to Inwood Hill Park.

Inwood Hill Park Concession stand on the corner of Isham and Seaman in 1977. Louise & Frank Yannaco pictured with merchandise in the background.

We soon began a dialogue that included a promise of photos and descriptions of his life in Inwood.  True to his word, Frank soon emailed me photos and descriptions from Inwood’s not so distant past.  I would like to thank Frank for his valuable contribution and encourage other readers to reach out and do the same.

Yannaco family poses for photo in front of the concession stand in 1977.

"Joe" and Frank Yannaco, 1960

According to Frank, “Joe’s” Concession Stand was located in Inwood Park on Isham Street across the street from Good Shepherd Church. My Family owned the stand from the mid 1920′s when the Presbyterian Medical Center was built.  It was given to my Grandfather James Pupley and his brother Peter by the NYC parks department when they arrived in this country from Greece in the 1900′s. They went to the Parks Department with the idea to sell snacks in the park. His original stand was on the site of the Presbyterian Medical Center. They asked him what park he wanted to relocate to and he chose Inwood Park.

Joe (his real name was Pete) sold candy, soda, hot dogs and ice cream. Frank and Louise, his niece, took it over in 1971 and remained until 1988. It has since been torn down. All the original owners – James, Pete, and Frank and Louise (my parents) have passed away.”

Along with his description of the concession stand, Frank also included this ode to Inwood in the 1950’s penned by his wife, Mary:

Mary Tolfree (Yannaco) and sister Eileen TolfreeSherman Avenue on Easter Sunday, 1957

Inwood in the 1950′s we did not
have a TV much less the Internet.
You got together at friends homes
to watch a show in black & white.
There was not many “networks” or “choices”.
A phone I don’t think so.
The stoop was the meeting place.
Your relatives were down the block
or a bus ride away to the Bronx.

Our Family went to St Jude’s Chapel
on Sundays and said the Rosary
as a family every night.
Our friends waited on the stoop for us
to come down.
{The Bazaar was held for many years
to make money to build the church.
Before that, mass was held in the movie theater.}
Then you were Proud to be a Catholic,
bless yourself in public when
you passed a Church,
and bowed at the name of JESUS.

All the stores were closed on Sunday.

Regina's Bakery, 1958-Eileen Tolfree

Except for Regina’s Bakery.

The Tolfree kids on Academy Street next to Moe's Candy Store in 1957 (four of seven children in the family)

My mom Eileen worked there back in the 50′s
In Washington Heights there was a bakery
called Home Made Pastry on 188th
and St. Nicholas Ave. She worked there for years.
On Sunday that was servile work unless
you had to feed your family.

Our family The Tolfrees lived at
584 Academy Street.
We 3 boys and 4 girls have 24 children; with
grandchildren we total around 92 decedents of
Herbert and Eileen Tolfree.

We lived across from Moe’s candy store.
Remember the egg creams and cokes in
the paper cone and metal holder cups.
The stools that spun and Moe.
We lived near the corner and there was
a “Meat Market” at 584.
Outside in the nice weather Pop with his umbrella cart would sell hot dogs and orange drinks.

Mary (right) and her sister Rita Tolfree on Academy Street looking east down Sherman Avenue

I moved from 584 in 1959.
Went to Saint Jude’s School till
3rd grade 56-59.
Remember 1st grade Sister Mary Magellan
and Miss Scott from kindergarten.
All of my family went to either St. Jude or Good Shepherd.

First Friday Mass at St Jude’s Chapel.
Remember the luncheonette near St Jude.
We would go there for breakfast after
First Friday Mass before returning to school because we had fasted from the night before.
Those were the days.
Navy Uniforms white shirts and beanie hats.
Back then women and girls would wear hats, then scarves, then doilies and then tissues.

Now we don’t wear hats at all!!!

Louise & Frank Yannaco working the concession stand in May, 1977.

Across from Good Shepherd in Inwood park
there was a octagon stand that sold hot dogs, candy and soda.
The man’s name was Joe, so they called him.
His real name was Pete.
He was my husband Frank Yannaco’s uncle.
Then he retired and Frank & Louise
Yannaco took it over.
It was in the family for 40+ years.
They gave up ownership in 1989.
Louise also worked at Miramar pool in the 50′s.
near the pool was a luncheonette on 210 St
and 10th ave.
Frank’s grandfather owned that in the 50′s.

Tolfree Girls at the Academy Meat Market on Sherman and Academy in 1959

Remember the fish store with the live fish.
The Bazaar and Miss Rinegold.
The stoop we sat on and
the gutter we kept out of.
(They had nothing to do with rain.)
Connecting roofs we climbed over.
Fire escapes we use to hang out on.
Both my husband and I were born in
Jewish Memorial hospital.
Re-named in 1936 in honor of the
Jewish Soldiers who died in WWI.

Inwood for me was a real
neighborhood back then.
In the heart of NYC zip code “34?.
Even though I did not know it then.
My neighborhood was special.
The “Super” would wash the floors
every Saturday and polish the brass
handrails and mailboxes.
On Saturday everyone
would clean their house.
Nobody worked on Sunday because
you went to mass and had a special
dinner to prepare for the family.

Rita Tolfree on confirmation day, Academy and Sherman, Moe's Candy Store, 1952

Neighbors you could turn to by just
yelling out the window or down the alley.
The place many of us yearn for now.
I think Inwood is still that place,
my building is still standing and
I’m sure 50 years later people are still yelling out
the windows to their neighbors….

Nugents Bar, 1979

There was a time not so long ago when Inwood had a thriving bar scene.  Up, down and between Dyckman Street and 207th, there were some 100, mainly Irish, bars. While a few bars, The Piper’s Kilt, The Liffy, Irish Eyes, as well as a few others still remain, most disappeared as the demographics of the neighborhood changed in the 1960′s and 70′s.  In his tome to the neighborhood, “The Inwood Book,” John F. McMullen paid tribute to the taverns and pubs of  his generation in a poem entitled, “The Bars.”  What follows is McMullen’s poem accompanied by a series of photographs and advertisements of the Inwood nightlife of McMullen’s generation.  I hope this post sparks more memories and generates more photographs from an Inwood bar scene of not so long ago.

The Bars
Reprinted with the permission of John F. McMullen-aka “JohnMac The Bard.”

I grew up in an Irish/Jewish neighborhood.
The Jewish lads went to school and studied;
the Irish went to the bars.

To be sure, many of us also went to school
and played sports and went out with girls
(no sex, though).
But we went to the bars
underage
after games
after dates
after softball games
before and after dances
to watch the Sunday football game
and for every other damn reason.

The Broadstone
the Willow Tree, Erin’s Isle
Chambers’, McSherry’s, the Inwood Lounge
Doc Fiddler’s, Cassidy’s, Jimmy Ryan’s, Keenan’s Corner
Dolan’s, The Pig n’ Whistle, Freehill’s, Terminal, Old
Shilling
Markey’s, McGolderick’s, Carmor, Rooney’s, Grippo’s,
Minogue’s.
Well, you get the idea.

We knew the bartenders by name.
George Lynch, Pat Gallagher, “Sunshine,” Georgie Costello,
Chris, Fred, Tommy, Mara, Dan, John, Joe, Kathy-in-Erin’s
and they all bought back. “The next one’s on me, Mac”
(and you never leave after a buyback).

We hung out there
we talked
we laughed
we sang
we sometimes fought
…and we drank.

But we didn’t just drink in the bars
we drank in the park
we drank at parties
we drank at football games
we drank at dances (from a hidden flask).

Many slowed down as they grew up
many stopped altogether
and some were stopped only by the grave.

“The drink” was a macho factor.
If you told a fellow he had diabetes,
he’d stop taking sugar.
If you told some of my friends that they shouldn’t drink, they’d say
“What do you mean? I can hold my liquor.”

They planned to drink until they died
and they did.

I still think we had more fun
than the Jewish guys
(unless they were getting laid).

Burnside Pub 1978- 4742 Broadway Near Dyckman- Heights-Inwood Newspaper

Burnside Pub

Burnside Pub, Broadway Between Dyckman and Thayer

Garry Owens, Corner of Dyckman and Vermilyea

Hedgehog Inn, Academy and Broadway

HedgeHog Inn

Melody Lounge 1974- Heights Inwood Newspaper

Wigwam Inn, 75 Sherman Avenue, 1960

Archie's Pub ad, Heights-Inwood, July 7, 1976

Donemay Pub ad, Heights-Inwood, March 28, 1979

Donemay New Years-1979, Heights-Inwood newspaper

Fort Tryon Seafood, Heights-Inwood, July 7, 1976

Salt and Pepper, Heights-Inwood, March 28, 1979

The Last Stop, The Washington Heights Citizen & The Inwood News, March, 1990

The Last Stop, The Washington Heights Citizen & The Inwood News, May 1990

The Last Stop, The Washington Heights Citizen & The Inwood News, May, 1990

The Last Stop, The Washington Heights Citizen & The Inwood News, Sept., 1990

The Melody Lounge, Heights-Inwood, April 29, 1981

The Melody Lounge, Heights-Inwood, July 7, 1976

Melody Lounge 1974- Heights Inwood Newspaper

Keenan's, 1979

Hitching Post 1975 Heights-Inwood Newspaper

Garry Owen, 1979

Emerald Tavern, 1979

Donemay Pub Broadway and 213th 1980 - Heights Inwood News

Again, thank you to John F. McMullen for sharing his poem. “The Inwood Book” can be purchased on Amazon. Also a special thanks to Claire Anne Gray of the Piper’s Kilt for providing the wonderful vintage photographs.

I encourage all readers to share their own memories of Inwood’s bar scene of old by using the comment box below. If you have any photos you would like to share please let me know. I will be happy to add them to this post.

Cover of January, 1944 Inwood Chatter

In this January, 1944 edition of the “Inwood Chatter,” produced by the students of P.S. 52 in Inwood, New York City, the nation remained locked in the grips of the Second World War.  It must have been a trying time for the children of Inwood as funerals of returning dead, war rations and talk of battles in far off lands dominated local conversation.

The students of P.S. 52 were all too aware of the war that raged around the planet.  In this issue, students wrote about sacrifice, death and their wish that the war would soon end.

On page 32 student Doris Kessler contributed the following poem:

WAR FEVER
Why must I think of war again
Of that bloody and sickening battle
Of the children’s cry and the wounded man’s sigh
Of the people who are driven like cattle.

Why must I think of war again
Of those cruel and tyrannical men
Of the Nazi’s sneer and the people’s fear
Of the hundred imprisoned as ten.

Why must I think of the war again
Of those slanty-eyed men of Japan
Who slaughter and mangle and torture a being
Not caring that he is a man.

Each day I stop and think of this
And am ever so grateful and glad
That a free people, a happy people
Are stopping these leaders so mad.

What follows is the complete edition of the “Inwood Chatter” from January, 1944. If you have any old copies of the Chatter that you’d care to share, please let me know. This particular edition is from the collection of Inwood resident Don Rice.

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Inwood Chatter, June, 1943

My grandmother used to have a saying: “Use it up.  Wear it out.  Make it do, or do without.” She had learned the expression during World War II and it stuck with her for the rest of her life.

In June of 1943, the students of P.S. 52 in Inwood were learning similar expressions, or, at times, just making them up. On page 28, eighth grader Sanford Locks writes: “These are the times that try men’s soles.  Look at mine they’re full of holes.”

Another eighth grader, Gloria Petrilli wrote of the precious ration books that saw the folks back home through the war. “Oh ration stamp of pink How you make my mother think! And precious little stamp of blue Please tell her to make the most of you.”

What follows is an image gallery of the June, 1943 students of P.S. 52.

This edition, I should mention, is from the collection of Don Rice.  I thank him for his contribution.

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1925 Photo of George Hadley's Grave

Not long ago, a descendant of George W. Hadley contacted me.  She was working on her family tree and had seen her ancestor’s name in a post on this website.  I told her that George Hadley had been buried in an old cemetery on 212th Street east of Broadway, but that the graves had all been moved to a plot in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. About a year earlier I made a trip to Woodlawn to see the monument to Inwood’s founding fathers. I even sent her a photograph of the new marker bearing Hadley’s name.   Still, I was curious and did a bit more digging. What I discovered was a scene right out of Poltergeist; with children using the burial site as a playground. What follows is a report from a 1921 edition of the New York Evening Post that might not be for the faint of heart.

New York Evening Post Headline, June 21, 1924

The text of the article reads: “A graveyard for a playground! Children romping over age-worn tombstones and digging up for their playthings the skulls and crossbones of the early settlers.

This situation, condoned by mothers in the Inwood section because “there is no other place for them to play” came to light today on 212th Street.

The graveyard is the old Nagle burial ground. Once in its soft sandy soil under marble tombstones were buried such aristocrats as the Vermilyeas, Sages, Chapmans and Hadleys, pioneers of north Manhattan. Today these stones may still be found, some bearing dates as far back as 1814. Some are under tangled masses of underbrush. Others form hobby-horses for restless youngsters.

Skulls Carried on Parade

There is no definite information on the point of the number of pioneers who still are buried in the cemetery. Recently, for instance, some of the bones were carried “on parade.” Children had unearthed them, put them atop rude poles and were holding a ghastly saraband of their own.

This spectacle so aroused Arthus Coleman, janitor of a nearby apartment in which sixty-six children live, that he telephoned the Health Department to determine what could be done about it.

“It’s not in our jurisdiction,” came a voice at the other end, according to his recollection. And then the receiver clicked, indicating the complaint wasn’t wanted in tat city department.

“The children have been playing in the graveyard ever since I can remember,” said Mr. Coleman today. “Sometimes the policeman on the beat chases them out, but they go right back the next day.

“When the children aren’t in there, the mothers are, hanging up clothes.  I don’t know who owns it, but I understand it is owned privately. I understand that some of the best old families in this section are buried there.”

The Real Estate Directory of Manhattan lists the property as belonging, since 1878, to Jane V. Claflin et al., Westport, Mass.

Among the tombstones decipherable today are the following:  Robert B. Chapman, died 1865; Eliza Titus Chapman, died 1869, Jacob Vermilyea, died 1828; Rebecca Vermilyea, died 1828, Joanna, wife of Gardner A. Sage, died 1842; Emily, wife of William H. Sage, died 1844, Joseph Clement, died 1814,  Christiana, wife of Robert W. Chapman, died 1867, George W, Hadley, died 1859 at eighty-one years old; and Mary, wife of George W. Hadley, died in 1880 in her one-hundreth year.

New York Evening Post, June 21, 1924

Bones Thrown Into River

The names mean nothing to the children who were found there at play today.

“Wait’ll we get some bones,” said one of the boys who were plating there.  ”The men took away some and throw ‘em in the dump near the Harlem River. Pleanty of bones, though.  I’ll get a shovel and we’ll dig some.”  His enthusiasm subdued only when hs suggestion was refused.

“Oh, c’mon, let’s,” another, even younger boy pleaded.  ”It’s a cinch, mister.”  Deep holes in the ground indicated other demonstrations had been given.

A group of girls about the same age seemed willing to participate.  the children joined in the search for bones that might be on the surface, scurrying through a maze of quilts, towels, and clothing which waved little majesty over the dignified tombstones.

Mothers of the neighborhood know of no way to stop the procedure.

“It isn’t very nice, is it?” said Mrs. Thomas E. Alwaise, mother of three, whose apartment overlooks the plot. “But there isn’t any other place near here except the dangerous street and the dump lots.  They’ve been playing there six years that I know of  and nobody pays any attention to it unless they dig up skulls.  Then they get spanked–some of them.  Thank goodness, mine are too young to dig,”

Mrs. F.J. Handechuch, another mother of two, who lives near the graveyard, said:

“Why it’s been going on for years.  The police pay no attention if they don’t catch the children parading with skulls on sticks. Only the other night my husband went out and stopped the boys from digging up a grave over there,” she said, pointing to a spot not fifteen feet from her sitting room window.  ”He didn’t like the idea of digging up graves and, besides, he didn’t want them to leave such a deep hole for the smaller children to fall into.”

Inwood Chatter

In January of 1943 America, Inwood and much of the globe were transfixed by the horrific battles of World War II.  That very month, as Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill sat down for their famous meeting, allied forces were finally able to force Japanese troops off of Guadalcanal.  The news from this far off spit of land in the Pacific was certainly a moral booster, but so many lives had been lost.  Nearly every family was affected by the war.  They had lost loved ones, they had endured food rationing; it was as if the whole world had been turned upside down.  But still, patriotism persisted.  And when Inwood lost one of its native sons,  Navy Lieutenant John James Powers, in a bombing raid over the Coral Sea the previous year, the students of P.S. 52 dedicated an issue of the school’s “Inwood Chatter” to Power’s heroic sacrifice.  After all, Powers was an alumni.  He had attended the school as a youth and later went on to George Washington High School after graduation.

Before the suicidal raid, Powers told his men, ”Remember the folks back home are counting on us. I am going to get a hit if I have to lay it on their flight deck.”

Lieutenant John James Powers

After posthumously awarding Powers the Medal of Honor, President Roosevelt, in a national radio address, delivered these stirring words: “He led [his squadron] down to the target from an altitude of 18,000 feet, through a wall of bursting anti-aircraft shells and swarms of enemy planes. He dived almost to the very deck of the enemy carrier, and did not release his bomb until he was sure of a direct hit. He was last seen attempting recovery from his dive at the extremely low altitude of two hundred feet, amid a terrific barrage of shell and bomb fragments, smoke, flame and debris from the stricken vessel. His own plane was destroyed by the explosion of his own bomb. But he had made good his promise to ‘lay it on the flight deck.”

After her son’s death, Power’s mother, who later christened the USS John J. Powers, came and spoke to the children of P.S. 52.  Her talk, and the thought that he, like them, had wandered the halls of the school they knew so well, had a profound impact on the youngsters.

This is the story of the children of Inwood in time of war.

Scroll through the below gallery to see the entire January, 1943 edition of the “Inwood Chatter”.

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Modern day Inwood is likely the most dog friendly neighborhood in all of Manhattan.  But, there was a time when man’s best friend instilled terror in the hearts of the few residents of northern Manhattan.   Below is a 1919 account of the hunt for a pack of wild dogs and a young boy who unwittingly set foot in their den:

Wild Dogs Headline, The Sun June 16, 1919

“It was on Saturday afternoon that Jimmy Gail made his thrilling discovery, stumbling into the lair of the wild dogs that have coursed at night, savage and fierce tongued, over the great sweep of ravines and hills and forests rising northward between the ramparts of the Hudson and Broadway from 181st street to the rock pinnacle which juts out over Inwood Valley on a line with 202nd street.

That was forty-odd hours ago, but the widely separated residents of the Rockefeller Park and the former Bennett estate, who know what it is to leap from bed in the middle of a bitter winter’s night to fire vainly at gray wolves marauding in the heart of New York City, were still talking yesterday about Jimmy’s adventure, hoping that it means the end of probably the most extraordinary plague of wild beasts that a city ever knew.

Sculptor George Grey Barnard

The whole district, which is roughly a mile long and from a quarter to half a mile wide, is the wildest and most naturally beautiful in all New York and above 188th street, as one approaches the studio of George Grey Barnard, the Cloisters, and the Sacred Heart School, on the other side of Fort Washington Avenue, there are scarcely a dozen houses in the primitive expanse.

Tryon Tower, on the site of the old Fort Tryon, the former mansion of C.K.G. Billings, overlooks the tract of wild land, and still further north, hidden among the gigantic boulders and the tall trees, is Hill Cottage, the country home of G. Axson Jones, manager of the Harlem branch of the United States Mortgage and Trust Company; the Abbey Inn, overlooking the Hudson at 200th street, and finally, on the pinnacle overlooking Dyckman street and the Inwood Gorge, are the greenhouses of A.N. Kinney, Captain, U.S.N. retired. And among these few and far separated houses are woods and gullies and cliffs as rude and untamed as northern Maine or the Adirondacks, alive with small game and a happy hunting ground for dogs gone wild and reverted to savagery.

VEXED AND OFTEN ALARMED

Sculptor Barnard, Mr. Jones, Capt. Kinney and others living in the tract have been vexed and often alarmed by the night prowlings of the pack whose long hidden den was found on Saturday by Jimmy Gail, and they long ago lost count of the blue ribbon chickens and prize ducks, not to mention pet dogs and cats, and even a calf, that have been snatched by night from coop and dooryard. Mr. Jones, the banker, mourns a dozen fine white ducks, which the wild dogs made off with last month, while he sent bullet after bullet after them through brush and timber.

There have been times when there was greater cause for alarm than the safety of cherished fowls. More than once as guests of Capt. Kinney or Mr. Jones have struck out over the snows on winter nights to make their way down hill toward the Dyckman street subway station they have seen dim shapes slinking ahead of them, circling like wolves; and once, only a few weeks ago, a gaunt, gray brute more resembling a timber wolf than any dog that ever gnawed bone made a sudden rush at Mrs. A.E. Hetzner and the man escorting her as they hurried along the Hudson bastion just north of Hill cottage. The man happened to be carrying an automatic pistol and let drive with it, but he missed in the dark and the dog wolf was over the cliffs toward the river rocks out of sight almost before report followed flash.

The Abbey Inn, Fort Washington Avenue and 198th street

Policemen have fired at the pack innumerable times, usually without result, but Mr. Jones, a first rate shot with pistol or rifle, and Capt. Kinney, whose navy experiences taught him something about the swift, accurate handling of firearms, have had better luck. The banker has bagged four dog wolves, one a mighty brute apparently half collie, half mastiff, and the Captain has five to his credit. Hugh Pechar, manager of the Abbey Inn, has shot three at long range by the trick of hiding out at night in the timber and patiently waiting until he could draw a bead on the night prowlers.

HAD MANNER OF WOLVES

Wolves they are, whatever of dog blood is left in them, and they begin their coursings every night after the manner of wolves, their leader, a great brute which has never been hit, though he has been fired at a hundred times, beginning with one ringing call to the pack, a midnight chorus of howling which echoes till dawn. How many are left in the pack can only be surmised by the vexed residents of the park, but there are at least a score in spite of the good shooting of Kinney, Pechar and Jones.

But Jimmy Gail’s exploit and adventure may mean the end of the pest, for luck gave the kid a chance to uncover the den where they have been hiding and breeding. Jimmy is a town boy who knows a lot about tame dogs, but who has a good deal to learn about dogs gone bad, otherwise he would never have poked his stub nose into the cave which runs back among the rocks and woods in the precipitous hillside between Bennett and Fort Washington avenues, a stone’s throw north of “The Cloisters.”

He went with his big sister Jane from their home at 160 Madison avenue on Saturday to visit his godmother, Mme. Marie Herbet, and her son-in-law and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, at Hill cottage. In the early afternoon, while sister was sketching from the cliffs behind the Billings garage, Jimmy wandered downhill and southward in a tangle of underbrush and small trees that clung somehow to the crags behind “The Cloisters.” He started a rabbit and was pursuing cottontail with whoops of glee when his ear caught the queer melody of sounds—whinings and short barks—coming from the hillside only a few feet from the hole into which the indignant bunny had dived.

The kid promptly investigated, following the sounds, and presently broke through a small. Close clump of briars, which had concealed a three-foot opening to a cave in the rocks. Without a thought of possible danger Jimmy crawled into the hole and saw the sight of a lifetime—thirty or forty puppies in various stages of growth romping, snarling, biting at each other, complaining from hunger, all scatted over the bed of broken sticks and dead leaves which carpeted the shallow cave.

OLDER PUPPIES HOSTILE

The older puppies, a few of which were a third to a half grown, were distinctly hostile and showed their teeth at Jimmy, but the littlest bundles of fluff climbed all over him and fought to lick his cheeks. He was having a lot of fun when a shadow darkened the cave mouth and he looked up to see a big and angry mother dog, which snarled menacingly. Jimmy threw sticks and stones until mother backed away and whisked out of sight, and then he, too, with a puppy in each arm, scrambled out of the cave and ran for sister Jane.

Later in the evening, when Mr. Jones came home from the bank and heard the news, he called Capt. Kinney by phone, and the pair, with revolvers, went to the cave guided by the excited Jimmy and his no less excited sister. When they got there they found that more than half of the puppies were gone, the larger ones, but fifteen were still romping and frisking among the sticks and the dead leaves. Both men had suffered enough from the depredations of the pa’s and ma’s of these babies to warrant lethal action, but they couldn’t bring themselves to shoot. The puppies were too pretty. Several seemed to be almost pure collie, but the most were cross breeds of half a dozen blood mixtures, in which bulldog, setter, mastiff and plain hound showed clearly enough.

So Mr. Jones and Capt. Kinney gathered up the puppies and took them home after first blocking the cave entrance with big rocks, and yesterday they were wondering just what to do with their prizes. They may keep two or three of the best looking breeds, and they expect to give away a few, but, in the end, one supposes, painless execution will be the fate of the unfortunate offspring of the outlaws.

MAY HAVE FLED IN ALARM

The important thing is, however, that the lair of the wolf dogs has been found, though why it was that more of the big hunters were not in or around the cave when Jimmy blundered into it is a mystery. Probably the half dozen or more of the brutes that may have been in the den when Jimmy came along crashing through the brush and rocks took alarm and fled when they heard him approaching. But the discovery means very likely the wiping out of the wild pack.

Mr. Jones and Capt. Kinney told a reporter for The Sun yesterday that they will ask permission from the agents of Mr. Rockefeller to organize a wild dog drive, which will take in the whole district, and if that sporting event comes off it will be the most exciting wild animal hunt in these parts since the effort was made two or three years ago to drive deer on Shelter Island.

Estate of C.K.G. Billings

Where the dogs came from originally is something of a puzzle, but Capt. Kinney told yesterday one story he had heard of their origin. Five or six years ago a woman was motoring in Fort Washington avenue, near the Billings mansion, and with her in the car was her collie, a splendid specimen of his breed. She stopped the car to look about at the scenery and suddenly the collie sprang from the car and was gone in a flash over the east side of the road and down among the rocks and underbrush. She called vainly to him for hours and came back day after day to hunt for him, but it was never any use. That was the last she ever heard of Laddie. He was a lost dog from that day to this. Capt. Kinney and Mr. Jones reason that Laddie just went wild for some reason that human beings simply cannot fathom, and that as time went by he established a family and, perhaps, became the leader of the pack. They think that the big wolf dog they have often seen slipping like a ghost over the snows and among the trees, the leader they have sent many a bullet after, is none other than the lost collie.”

Inwood Pottery, 1926, Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

In the early part of the twentieth century a pioneering woman named Aimee Le Prince Voorhees and her husband Harry built a pottery works in the shadow of Inwood hill.

In this pastoral setting, lacking any modern conveniences, Voorhees created a world-class pottery studio and inspired a future generation of artists, ceramicists and sculptors. Among the students who studied under Mrs. Voorhees as a child was Lorrie Goulet who went on to become one of the most prominent figures in American sculpture.

What follows is a 1926 portrait of Aimee Le Prince Voorhees captured in her studio located within the current Inwood Hill Park.

On a personal level, I find myself fascinated by the pottery and the surroundings that inspired not only the Voorhees, but also countless artists from Ernest Lawson to current Inwood artist Sky Pape.

To all artists currently practicing their craft in the creatively inspiring neighborhood of Inwood, I salute you.

For more information on the Inwood Pottery Works click on either of the below links:

The Inwood Pottery Studio

A Potter’s Lament

Brooklyn Daily Eagle
“Practices Ancient Art in Virgin Forest”

Studio of Mrs. Aimee Voorhees Hidden in Little Known Part of Manhattan Island

By Esther A. Coster

Inwood Pottery, Mr. and Mrs. Harry Voorhees.

Mrs. Aimee Le Prince Voorhees, creator of a new idea in pottery, is a living example of the truth of Emerson’s saying about the path being worn to the door of anybody who would make a fine article, even though it be a mousetrap. Mrs. Voorhees has hidden her studio in the virgin woods, and only a seeker for the place could ever find it except by accident. But there is a well-worn path up the steep hill to her studio.

Let me give you a picture of this most unusual retreat of two artists, Mrs. Voorhees and her husband, Harry, who work together in the studio and play together in their cruiser. The Thyra is moored at the foot of the dooryard in the little harbor made by the original channel of the old Ship Canal in upper New York City, no longer used by larger craft.

This studio is perched on the side of a hill, with the buildings rising one above the other, with the steepest of steps to connect them. To reach it you walk along West 207th Street, Manhattan, to the end of the street and still farther to the end of a cinder road. Then you take a steep wooded path up the hill until a sign, “Indian Life Reservation,” greets you. Just beyond this is a small rustic gate with the very modest shingle of the studio.

Mr. and Mrs. Harry Voorhees, Inwood Hill Pottery

The mistress of the domain, dressed in a blue smock and comfortable slippers, greeted her visitor with a cordial handshake and insisted on tea before we began our interview. We sat down to a round rustic table, the most primitive sort of stand, with rustic chairs, all set out in the woods in front of the studio.

Mrs. Voorhees is not a bit the stereotyped artist type that is supposed to be connected with kilns and pottery and crafts. A well-built woman, past thirty years, she was dressed in skirts longer than the style calls for now, and with long golden-brown hair piled high over her head in a big coil. She talked freely and simply about her work, used none of the patter by which less genuine artists try to camouflage their attempts at art expression, and was very proud of her home and its unique environment. How she might dress when visiting “the city” is probably another story.

Brooklyn New York Daily Eagle, Inwood Pottery Works

“As you see, we live the most primitive life,” she said, “but we do not lack a single comfort. We have no electricity up here, but we get fine light from gasoline lamps. We have no heat, but our coal stoves keep us warm on the coldest days. We have no city water piped to our home, but we the purest water, ice cold, from springs that are at least one hundred years old. We are surrounded by the inspiration of nature and the traditions of the Indians who made their homes here hundreds of years ago. What more can anybody ask?”

Mrs. Voorhees and her husband, for it is impossible to write of the hostess of the studio without including the host, have two deep-seated enthusiasms that have influenced their entire work. They love the sea and they love Indian lore. From the sea they have drawn many of their designs and on the bowls and vases the seahorse, shells and other nautical motifs occur constantly. When the Half Moon of Hendrik Hudson was in the “orick,” as they call the strip of water below their dooryard, Mrs. Voorhees made studies of the ship and has embodied them in a doorstop interpreted in pottery.

Inwood Pottery with Indian design

These people are also devoted to Indian traditions, and it is from Indian art that their chief inspiration has come from a unique type of Pottery. We will let Mrs. Voorhees explain for herself:

“We have been interested for years in Indian history and art,” she said, “and have studied deeply into the subject. The Indian Museum has worked with us. As you see, I draw inspiration for many of my shapes from the Indian pottery, adapting them to modern ideas without spoiling the purity of the primitive form. The designs, when we add decoration, are authentic Indian designs, with only such changes as are necessary to fit the shape decorated. In the finish of the pottery I use two methods. For table service I use glazes. For pieces that do not have to be used for table service I use the method of the Indians as closely as I have been able to follow it. I cannot make true Indian pottery, for I do not know what clays they use and I do not use the same sort of colors for the under glaze decorations. But after these decorations are fired I finish the surface with wax, rubbing it into the body until a smooth dull finish is obtained. The pieces will hold water, but I do not sell them for table service like plates or cups. I use as many Indian designs as I can. See this little Indian frog? I love to make frogs, they have such a humorous look.”

Inwood Pottery Fish plate from old Newark Museum catalogue

Right here Mrs. Voorhees unconsciously gave away one of the deep secrets of her success. She has a keen sense of humor and it shows in all her work. She models small animals for whistles that you can’t help smiling at, they are so full of happy thoughts. Her seahorses that climb up her lamps or serve as handles to her bowls are almost alive in their gaiety. Surely here is a woman who finds life happy and cannot help putting it into her work.

Of course, we wanted to know how our hostess came to take up pottery and how she happened to choose such an ideal spot for her work. The lady of the manor flashed her brilliant smile and settled down for a chat, meantime keeping her eye on her kiln, in which were precious pieces for an exhibition in the Woman’s Exposition of Arts and Industries.

Inwood Pottery, Harry Voorhees at the wheel.

“I inherited my love for art work,” she said. “My mother and father were both artists. They conducted the League School of China Painting in England, where I absorbed the art almost by instinct. On their coming to this country my mother founded the New York Society of Ceramic Arts and the National League of Mineral Painters. At the first exhibit of the New York Society at Carnegie Hall the crowd was so great the police and fireman were called. Can you imagine that now at an exhibition of porcelains or pottery? I studied porcelain decoration with my mother and at the National Academy of Design and Teachers College. I also for a time conducted a private school. When I married, fifteen years ago, my husband was also an artist, and we dreamed of establishing a colony for craftwork. But little by little this has been displaced in our interests by the pottery, so that now our chief work is right here with the wheel and the kiln.”

Inwood Hill Park Boat Basin in 1920's

Then she shifted to the story of how she came to settle on the Inwood hill. “We were cruising ten years ago,” she said, “and our engine went dead just in this little harbor. We moored her and started exploring and were fascinated by the primitive beauty of the hill. There was an old house, all tumble down, occupied by ‘Pop,’ an old boatman. Six years ago we found it vacant and bought it. We remodeled it, put in floors and added to it to suit our needs. The other buildings we have added as the work expanded. We do not own the land, as it is park property, but the buildings are all ours. We had painting parties, fencing parties and all sorts of parties till we got that house fixed. It was the best kind of fun.” And you should have seen her eyes twinkle as she told of those groups of city folks trying to paint floors and put up fences.

Mrs. Voorhees is original even in her tools. She uses the regulation potters wheel, but the motive power is certainly unique. She cannot draw on electric or steam power, so she has gone back to the ancient foot power. She has taken an old motorcar tire, filled it with cement and Inwood rocks and placed flat circular pieces of wood on each side for the lower wheel. It is placed on ball bearings and when touched lightly with her foot it whirls the wheel above as perfectly as the most approved electric plant. It is also much more in keeping with the studio.

Example of the whimsical and nautical nature of some of Voorhee's work.

Even the showroom of the studio is unique. It was originally the cabin of a canal-boat which was, somehow and sometime ago, hitched to the old house. By cutting an added window it makes an ideal showroom and fits the spirit of the house, which has a nautical atmosphere.

The tiny, compact kitchen is fitted up like a ship’s galley, with brass bands on the edges of the shelves and everything spick and span in the smallest possible space. The living room has as its chief decoration a ship model, given to the artists by a seafaring friend.

The love of nature that permeates every corner of Mrs. Voorhee’s soul crops out in her work at every hand. She took up a small glass jar and exultingly said:

“Just look at this. I found this in our woods. Did you ever see such wonderful design as those wings.”

Inwood Pottery stamp

And what do you think she had carefully kept in the jar? The largest mosquito I ever saw, larger than anybody’s imagination could picture. It is known as the “stork mosquito.” The artist will use that design on one of her bowls or pitchers, and everybody will wonder where she found it. Her talent has also been used for scientific purposes. A set of models, heroic size, of three varieties of mosquitoes, is now in the Sesquicentennial. These were made originally for the Board of Health.

Inwood Pottery, Replica of Iroquois vase

Near the studio are the famous Indian caves, in which hundreds of Indian relics have been discovered. Mrs. Voorhees, like all artists handling mineral glazes, feels the fascination of the art, because once a piece is in the kiln one is never sure what will come out. She showed two bowls of turquoise blue glaze mottled in a most unusual manner with brown. “That was pure accident,” she said. “I wish I knew what caused it, for I would like to use that effect again. The accidents are the most fascinating part of pottery, for one can never duplicate accidental color effects.”

Mrs. Voorhees has the distinction of having the only pottery in Greater New York except a studio in Greenwich House, which turns out a few pieces for pupils, and, so far as known, the only pottery in any large city. But to visit the studio one feels that one is in the far wilderness. Nothing could be harder to realize than that “this is New York,” when virgin trees are all about, there is no sound except the noises of the woods, and nowhere are there evidences of those adjuncts of city life that we have come to believe essential to happiness. “If I lived in a city apartment or house,” said Mrs. Voorhees, “I know I could not do the work I do now. It is the close contact with nature that gives me inspiration. When I look across the water and see that great tulip tree that is the tallest tree in New York State and is two hundred and forty years old, I realize the Indian art that flourished on this hill centuries ago and it makes me very humble. But I love this work and hope to some day realize more nearly my ideals.”

But, with a longing look at the river where the Thyra lay moored, she said, with a glance across at her husband: “Some day we hope to be able again to enjoy the long cruises we both love. At present we have been too busy to spare the time.”

A black kitty and a white doggie added the last touch of domesticity to an ideal combination of home and profession.

In 1895, on the same spot where George Washington and his band of Revolutionaries defended a British assault after the Battle of Brooklyn, a glorious and magnificent amusement park rivaling Coney Island opened near the northeastern end of Manhattan. The Fort George Amusement park was located in what is now Highbridge Park between 190th and 192nd Streets and Amsterdam Avenue.

Fort George Amusement Park in 1909

During its heyday this Gotham wonderland would boast two Ferris wheels, three roller coasters, nine saloons, a pony track, several hotels, a casino, five shooting galleries, a tunnel boat ride, two music halls called the Star and the Trocadero, fortune tellers and more frankfurters, peanuts and pretzels than you can imagine.

Fort George Amusement Park, 197th Street and Amsterdam, 1906.

Located at the end of the Third Avenue Trolley line, the park was a natural and popular destination for locals and residents throughout the city. While the children rode the massive Ferris wheel or took to the Toboggan slide adults could gamble the night away before renting a room in the Fort George Hotel and Casino to celebrate their winnings, or more likely, mourn their losses. There were even areas in the park where, for a fee, Mom and Dad could drop the kids off in a supervised playground setting, while they went off to enjoy “The Human Ostrich” or “The Cave of Winds.” Initially a loose and disorganized strip of sideshows the park became something truly spectacular under the leadership of Joseph Schenck (left) and his brother Nicholas. The brothers, Russian Jews who immigrated to New York from the ancient Slavic settlement of Rybinsk in 1893, first came to the park as curious visitors. Realizing the fortunes to be made they quickly invested in a beer hall called The Old Barrel.

The Old Barrel bar once located in Fort George.

It was in the Old Barrel that the Schnecks likely met another entrepreneur named Marcus Loew (right) , a park regular who had already amassed a small fortune with a string of theaters and penny arcades. (Loew would later become a Hollywood power-broker heading a theater chain that still bears his name.) Borrowing money from Loew, the brothers Schneck were soon able to open several thrill rides in an area of the park known as Paradise Park.

In a June, 1941  edition of Liberty Magazine, found by New York Wanderer Ben Feldman while rummaging around in a Tennessee junk shop, details of the early days of the park begin to emerge:

“One hot Saturday afternoon in 1905, Joe Schenck, then about twenty-six, took a trolley ride up to Fort George, the highest point on Manhattan Island. That was quite the thing to do in those days–ride to the end of the car line up there to cool off. When Joe arrived he found more than a thousand other New Yorkers strolling about enjoying the breezes. He noticed that there were a beer parlor or two, a couple of shooting galleries, and some tintype stands, and he quickly concluded that this was insufficient entertainment for all those people. He began to talk to some of them, inquiring if they would come up nights, as well as Sundays, if Fort George offered a dance hall, a merry go-round, and other attractions like those at Coney Island. Everybody he questioned said “You bet!” or words to that effect.

Joe took a lease on a small one-story building at Fort George that could be reached only through an alley. He constructed a cheap dance floor in the rear and turned the building into a saloon. He hired an orchestra and an unknown singer named Nora Bayes, put tables around the dance floor, and then waited. But the people just wouldn’t go through the alley, not even through a big sign that proclaimed: “Beer and Dancing in Rear.”

What would be most likely to entice the public? It was brother Nick who suggested that a picture would be better than printed words. Joe hired a man who painted scenes on mirrors behind the bars to make a garish-colored wooden cutout of a huge beer schooner with the foam on the amber contents. The schooner, lighted up at night, could be seen from a distance, and it drew the thirsty in droves. The result was that by summer’s end Joe Schenck had cleaned up several thousand dollars.

Fort George circa 1900.

Early in the spring of 1906 Joe and Nick began construction of what they called Paradise Park. On a Saturday afternoon in May, they were all set for the opening. They weren’t as enthusiastic as they might have been. After the merry-go-round and the other equipment had been installed, mostly on credit, they had realized, to their horror, that it would be necessary for the public to climb fifty-six steps to get to the park after leaving the trolley cars. They had been so engrossed in building the park on a high, cool spot that they had entirely overlooked that seeming drawback.

The brothers held their breath as the first of the Saturday-afternoon crowd began to spill out of their cars. When the visitors saw thhe amusements up there ahead of them, many were so eager that they took the fifty-six steps two at a time. The next day, Sunday, the same thing happened, and the Schencks knew that their fears about the steps had been unfounded. “And so,” Joe told me, “when we found the public didn’t mind the steps, we put a turnstile in–quick–right at the fifty-sixth step, and charged them ten cents admission. We hadn’t dared do that before.”

Fort George Amusement Park in 1911 postcard

Some New Yorkers had such fond feelings for the park that it became a popular spot for wedding proposals. In fact, in June of 1907 nineteen-year-old Susan Pierce and Raymond Barrett went so far as to tie the knot on the skating rink where they met. The bride, bridegroom and minister all donned roller skates for the nuptials.

It was a first for the park and likely a first for New York. After exchanging vows some 500 couples joined Susan and Raymond on the rink to skate to the popular “Love Me and the World is Mine,” before the happy couple skated off to Atlantic City for their honeymoon.

But as the years passed, neighborhood sentiment towards the park soured.

Initially a boon for the local economy, local residents and real estate developers grew tired of the noise, the drunken crowds and the crime that came to be associated with the park.

Then, on December 10th, 1911, an arsonist took public sentiment into his own hands and attempted to burn the park to the ground. According to news accounts high winds fanned the firebug’s torch destroying the Star Music Hall, the old Fort George Hotel, the dance hall of Paradise Park, a popular tavern and several smaller buildings. The damage, estimated at $25,000, could have been much worse if not for the daughter of truck farmer Nicholas Ceramer whose cries of “Papa, look at the fire,” allowed her father to sound the alarm. Ceramer emerged from his cottage across from the park just in time to “see a Man about 5 feet 9 inches tall, of stocky build, wearing a black hat and overcoat, run out of the lower floor of the music hall to the south. He gave chase, but failed to overtake the man.” Two years later, still healing from the scars of the arson attack the park suffered a fatal blow at the hands of another suspicious fire. On June 9th, 1913, a fire described as “the most spectacular ever seen,” engulfed the Fort George Amusement Park. At around two in the morning, Dominick Barnot, the night watchmen for Paradise Park saw that the dance hall was on fire. Barnot ran for help, but within ten minutes the fire, fueled by a strong westerly wind, had become an inferno. One-hundred foot flames seen as far south as 42nd Street were reported that night. Firemen and concerned volunteers descended on Fort George, but “the firemen quickly saw that it was their duty to save the property near by and let the park burn…One by one the play places were consumed. The roller coaster was quick to go, and then the Ferris wheel. And after the wheel the merry-go-rounds, the roller skating rink, and all the other things the Schneck Brothers had installed for the entertainment of the public.”

Fort George Amusement Park, 1900

Fort George Amusement Park circa 1900.

Down, but not defeated, the Schencks moved their act across the Hudson River, where they soon opened the wildly popular Palisades Park in New Jersey.

Fort George Amusement Park, 197th Street and Amsterdam, 1906.

And, while Paradise Park was never rebuilt, a generation would remember the glory days and smile knowing they had witnessed a now forgotten piece of New York history. Click here to read more Inwood history.

“There were other trees, many decrepit. In the middle was a kiln where an Indian princess taught ceramics under dubious auspices. She had a son who didn’t work. Both were on relief, and the relief checks were delivered to the princess at a mailbox fastened to a tree. The hullabaloo about disturbing the princess, the kiln, the old tulip tree, and other flora and fauna was terrific.”

-Robert Moses,” Public Works,” 1970

Below editorial from:
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
December 13, 1936

Inwood Pottery Article-Brooklyn Daily Eagle

“Perhaps the Park Department will take great care to preserve the Indian relics. Perhaps the Pottery will function more effectively in its new and modern quarters. But somehow Inwood Hill Park will never be the same with new, paved paths to replace the Indian trails along its sloping landscape, with the Pottery and the tulip tree gone, with the cove straightened out, and with a great steel bridge sprouting from its side to connect it with the Spuyten Duyvil.

Rising above an enchanting little cove in the Harlem River at the most northerly tip of Manhattan Island, Inwood Hill Park has, until recently, managed to escape the inroads of a brick and steel metropolis. Though virtually a stone’s throw from upper Broadway, it has remained miraculously unaffected by the changes that have taken place all around it.

One of the oldest homes of the aborigines, it is said to have been the very last bit of Manhattan relinquished by the Indians after they sold that famous Island to the Dutch. And now, centuries later, as if in deference to the wishes of its early red-skinned inhabitants, that sylvan abode still stands, the contours and paths of the ancient village of Shora-kap-kok unchanged.

On the side of the hill is a cave that is believed by anthropologists to have been the earliest human habitation on Manhattan Island. Near it have been found all sorts of utensils and tools that belonged to many different generations of Indians, from prehistoric hunters to seventeenth century warriors, who, according to legend, fought the crew of Henry Hudson’s Half Moon.

Near the cave stands and old and dying tulip tree, in the shade of which Henry Hudson is said to have held a powwow with the Indians that ended the hostilities. And not far from the tulip tree is the Spouting Spring, from which the ancient Indians drew their water.

Princess Naomie

Until last month, the cave was inhabited by Princess Naomie (Mrs. Naomie Kennedy), an educated Cherokee Indian, who was brought to New York some seven years ago from New Orleans by the Dyckman Institute to live in the cave in the style of her ancestral cousins and thus preserve the historic atmosphere of the place. Surrounded by her chickens and her rabbits, and dressed in authentic Indian costume, she did much evoke for visitors the spirit of the ancient Weckquaesgesk Iroquois.

On the side of Inwood Hill overlooking the Harlem River, an old whitewashed frame building nestles near the cove, partly hidden by the shrubbery and the hill. For many years this century-old cottage, equipped with neither gas nor electricity, has been the home of Mrs. Aimee LePrince Voorhees and her husband, the late Harry Voorhees. They discovered the cove and the cottage some 20-odd years ago—they were out cruising, and their engine broke down and then drifted into the Harlem River cove.

The daughter of two prominent ceramists, and herself a sculptor and a connoisseur of Indian arts, Mrs. Voorhees, and her late husband (whose interests were in harmony with hers) were so captivated by the beauty of the place, and the Indian ceramics all around it, that they leased the deserted cottage and remained there, devoting the greater part of their time and fortune to the study and advancement of Indian crafts, particularly the forms and decorations derived from ancient Iroquois pottery.

Inwood Pottery, Harry Voorhees at the wheel.

In 1923 they founded the Inwood Pottery, housed in a crudely constructed wooden building, beside an old Indian trail, just a few steps away from the cottage. Beginning with just a kiln, a bench, a bin and a wheel, the studio has grown bit by bit, as its work has expanded. Here, inspired by the lore of the Indians who inhabited the place, mixing their clays with water from the pouting Spring, just as the Iroquois had done centuries before them, sculptors and potters, hobbyists and professionals, grown-ups and children have come to make vases and book-ends, and other art objects, many of which have pound their way to some of the leading museums in the country.

Inwood Pottery, 1926, Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

In fact, so definite a niche has the Pottery carved for itself in the educational setup of New York that work done there is credited by the Board of Education, Hunter College and the Board of Regents. Branches have been established at various schools and Y.W.C.A.’s throughout the city, including the Central branch of the Y.W.C.A. at 30 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn.

Much of the educational work carried on by Mrs. Voorhees at Inwood Park has been done under the auspices of the Dyckman Institute, an historical society interested in the preserving of landmarks and folklore of upper Manhattan.

Brooklyn New York Daily Eagle, Inwood Pottery Works

During Mayor Hylan’s administration, the city bought for the park purposes all the land at Inwood Hill, including the plot on which stood the Voorhees cottage. The Dyckman Institute requested that it be assigned the care of the land along the shore of the cove, consisting of about 16 acres and covering interesting Indian remains, and asked that Mr. and Mrs. Voorhees be allowed to remain and take charge of the educational work of the institute.

The Hon. Francis Gallatin, commissioner of Parks, welcomed the proposal and issued a one-year permit to Mr. and Mrs. Voorhees to remain in their cottage and carry on their work, a permit which has been renewed from year to year by succeeding Park Commissioners.

Thus everything at Inwood Hill Park ran along smoothly and serenely, a world within a world, an oasis of bygone simplicity, undisturbed by the hustle and bustle of twentieth century complexity—ran along smoothly until the advent of the PWA, the NYA, and Robert Moses as Park Commissioner. Now that adventitious combination has succeeded in blasting the tranquility of even Inwood Hill. Now beauty is to yield to utility, tradition to expediency and sentiment to logic.

The War Department, with funds released by the PWA, got busy straightening out the bend in the Harlem Ship Canal. The Spuyten Duyvil side of the “U” curve is being dredged and the Inwood side, which formed the picturesque cove at the foot of Inwood Hill, is going to be filled in.

This improvement has been loudly lamented by sentimental boatmen as an unnecessary hardship on the already diminishing number of boat enthusiasts. But the members of the few boat clubs that still dot the Harlem River shoreline do not complain. Harry Edwards of the Nonpareil Boat Club, who has been rowing and yachting in that vicinity for 30-odd years, says that whatever is being sacrificed in scenic beauty and a cozy haven will be more than compensated for by the elimination of the whirlpool that used to hamper boatmen near the point that is being dredged.

Inwood Hill Park Boat Basin in 1920's

The Park Department, moreover, is planning to leave a portion of the old cove unfilled, so that it may eventually build a boat basin for small craft at that spot. But boat basin notwithstanding, Inwood Hill Park will never be as lovely without its cove and natural shoreline.

What seems an even greater heresy to those who dote on sentiment is the fact that the ground immortalized by Washington Irving is soon to become just another bridge approach with the completion of the largest hingeless bridge in the world, connecting Spuyten Duyvil with Inwood Hill Park.

As for the park itself, despite the criticism that has been heaped upon the Park Department (Mr. Moses has been accused of anything from converting a place of historical interest into a baseball field merely to indulge a whim, to filling up the Harlem River just so as to be able to change the map), little change in contemplated.

In spite of reports to the contrary, no new baseball or other athletic field is to be built. In Commissioner Moses’ own words: “This plan provides for the preservation of the natural features of the site…to make the park area available for those seeking quiet relaxation.” The plan, however, includes the laying of new paths and the paving of old ones—some of them old Indian trails; the planting of new trees and the cutting down of dead ones—not excepting the tulip of Henry Hudson fame.

Henry Hudson Bridge, Brooklyn New York Daily Eagle, 1936

In accordance with the belief of the present park administration that no private or semi-public institution, however worthy, has a right to be on park land (Robert Moses believes that even the Metropolitan Museum of Art should never have been built in Central Park), and, consistent in its policy of reversing the parks for purely recreational purposes of an outdoor nature, the Dyckman Institute, the Pottery and Princess Naomie have had to go. The Dyckman Institute hopes that eventually the Park Department will build a fine museum for it to replace the building recently demolished. But in view of the present policies of that department, the prospect seems unlikely, and the institute will more probably build its own new headquarters or share those of the Dyckman Cottage, the city museum at 204th Street and Broadway, originally preserved under the auspices of the Dyckman Institute.

Inwood Pottery, Mr. and Mrs. Harry Voorhees.

The Inwood Pottery, however, has fared much better than the institute. What at first seemed a calamity has turned out to be a blessing in disguise. When Mrs. Voorhees was given just 25 days notice early in October that she would have to get out by November 1st it seemed as though all she had accomplished in a lifetime of effort was being heartlessly wiped out. For moving the kilns hastily and carelessly and disrupting the classes—assuming she could find another site so quickly—would have proved disastrous.

But Commissioner Moses agreed to stay the eviction order until December 1st. And in the meantime a group of ceramists and art lovers formed the Inwood Pottery Association to help Mrs. Voorhees’ Pottery continue its work. The new society, which was formed on October 28th at an emergency meeting called at the American Women’s Association, has in the short period of its existence greatly added to the strength and prestige of the Pottery.

Due to the efforts of the new association, Mrs. Aimee LePrince Voorhees and her staff will be ready to begin work on January 1st in the new and spacious quarters at 503 West 168th Street. With more commodious classrooms, better equipment and greater accessibility that it ever enjoyed before, the Inwood Pottery will undoubtedly march on to new achievements and even greater renown.

But no matter what its fame and influence, it will lack the glamour of its setting in the glen at Inwood Park.

Nor will Inwood Park ever be as glamorous without the charming, little, romantically dilapidated barrack that housed the Pottery.”

Click here to read more about the old Inwood Pottery and to see examples of their work.

The below article originally appeared in the New York World on December 26, 1886. While much in Inwood has changed since this description was first set into type, much has remained the same.  The original clipping is housed the the genealogy room of the New York Public Library.

New York World, December 26, 1886

“Few New Yorkers are familiar with the charming scenery of the extreme northwest section of the city, although the picturesque hills of this region, covered with woods and dotted with beautiful residences, form one of the most attractive features of the great city. A ride of twenty minutes from the Hudson River Railroad Depot, at Thirtieth Street and Tenth avenue, brings us to a station called Inwood. Its distance from city hall is about eleven miles, and the ride in itself, is enjoyable, skirting the edge of the river all the way, in full view of the Jersey shore and the Palisades. Arriving at the station you step almost immediately from the platform of the car into a tract of beautiful woods, intersected here and there by country roads. In a few moments you have been transported from the feverish activity of the city into a region of delightful solitude and repose. You are indeed still within the city, and there is a satisfaction of knowing that the busy mart and crowded thoroughfare are within hailing distance, so to speak. Yet their oppressive features are left behind. The term road is exchanged for that of street, and boardwalks are substituted for the handsome flagged and graded avenues of the city proper. The houses are with few exceptions frame structures of old-fashioned pattern, and are generally perched on the summit of a rocky hill which commands a view of the country for many miles around.

Between Two Hundred and Sixth street and Spuyten Duyvil Creek there are precipitous hills covered with dense woods, and the latter, though somewhat thinned by the necessities of man, are still solitary and impressive, recalling the primeval grandeur of Manhattan Island. The imagination is quickened as one passes along the narrow footpaths over the rocks, and one pictures the experiences of the early colonists in the days when Wall street was the northern boundary of New York and these woods were peopled by wild beasts and savages.

"The Old Willow Stump" from 1886 New York World

At the junction of Two Hundred and Sixth street and the old Boston Road are the decaying stumps of two huge trees, relics of a pair of magnificent willows that many years ago marked the entrance to the property of Samuel Thomson. Mr. Thomson died in 1850, leaving a large fortune, and is remembered as one of Inwood’s most munificent citizens. Within the quaint little church nearby, which he materially aided in founding, a tablet on the left of the chancel commemorates the purity and generosity of his character. An unfrequented road diverges from Two Hundred and Sixth street leads us by a winding route along the brow of a rocky ridge, which towers 200 feet above the Hudson. The whole of this beautiful hill, a mile long from Two Hundred and Sixth street to Spuyten Duyvil Creek, was once the splendid property of a single family, but the vicissitudes of a quarter of a century have removed the original proprietors, and their fair acres are now divided among a score of wealthy New York Bankers, merchants and professional men.

"The Thomson Mansion," New York World, December 26, 1886.

The old Thomson mansion, now known as the Sutro place, is still standing, although for a long time it has been unoccupied by its owner, who resides in California. Desertion, however, seems only to increase its picturesqueness. The spacious portico supported by Doric columns and facing the Hudson, affords an enchanting view of that majestic stream, while the ample grounds, notwithstanding long neglect, reveal the traces of a rustic paradise. Upon the same road is the handsome country residence of D.C. Hays, President of the Bank of Manhattan Company, and on the opposite side lies the Brooks estate, now the home of C.M. Raymond, whose taste for fancy gardening is displayed in his hot-houses and cultivated grounds. The road here bends sharply to the left, and a few feet in front of us we come upon a lawn, upon which stands an animated statuette of Puck bearing in his hand the American flag. A short distance from the end of the road, embowered among the old forest trees, is the residence of Joseph Keppler, the caricaturist of Puck. Mr. Keppler is well known to the residents of Inwood. His portly form and dignified countenance, which are rendered all the more impressive by a broad-brimmed felt hat, ornamented with a peacock feather, and worn with a decided military grace. The path we have been on terminates a short distance beyond, at the countryseat of James McCreery, on a high bluff. The view of the river from this point is very extensive.

Map of Inwood, New York World, December 26, 1886

Retracing our steps over the Bolton road, we pause to note the elevation of the locality that we have been viewing. We can look eastward far over Westchester County and Long Island. Kingsbridge road, several hundred feet beneath us, winds along the base of another ridge, also occupied by handsome residences, including the beautiful Dyckman property, the Seaman estate, the country seat of W.B. Isham and several others, whose value must be reckoned in the millions.

During the Revolutionary war, when Washington was withdrawing his forces from New York, the whole of Manhattan Island became a battleground, and many sharp engagements between our troops and the British were fought around Inwood. The old residents will tell you that oftentimes the heavy rain-washed bullets out of the ground, and that many rusty swords and bayonets have been found in the neighborhood. Near Two Hundred and Fifteenth street, on the Kingsbridge road and old mansion is pointed out as the house in which the Red Coats, after their successful attack on Fort Washington, assembled at night to celebrate their victory. At the present time you find in this romantic suburb nothing suggestive of disorder, unless it be the mounted police of the Thirty-fifth Precinct. The appearance of a cavalcade of these handsome fellows, mounted on fine horses, is martial enough, though in a district, which boasts neither grocery nor groggery within a radius of a mile, a policeman’s life becomes a rather quiet one.

Remains of Fort George, New York World, December 26, 1886

Inwood is accessible by the Hudson River Railroad, by the New York City and Northern road and by the recently completed cable line. The former runs frequent trains morning and evening in connection with the Ninth avenue elevated express between the Battery and One hundred and fifty-fifth street, and persons bound for Inwood can leave the train either at Fordham Heights or at Kingsbridge, whence the walk to any part of the place is short and pleasant; but the ride over the cable to the terminus and a walk thence over the rough country to Two hundred and Sixth street form a delightful jaunt. Beautiful scenery and points of interest are encountered on every hand. At the end of Tenth Avenue we climb a rocky prominence of Revolutionary fame, known as Old Fort George. The earthworks that were hastily thrown up are no longer visible, and the only battlements that we see now are the huge boulders which nature has piled high. Mounting the rocks a scene of uncommon beauty is spread out. The Harlem lies 250 feet below. Fordham Heights, Long Island and Westchester County are seen in the east and in the distance toward the north are the spires of Yonkers.

"Washington House", New York World, December 26, 1886

Through an opening in the hills to the west we get a glimpse of the waters of the Hudson, and the Palisades, more conspicuous than all the rest, are seen for a stretch of many miles. Descending through a half finished street and over a meadow, a church spire, almost hidden amid foliage, guides us to a point where Two Hundred and Sixth street intersects the Kingsbridge road. This little frame structure has bravely withstood the storms of forty years. The sole house of religious worship in Inwood, it is an object of interest to the visitor and of affection to the residents.

Estate of Samuel Thomson, New York World, December 26, 1886

The march of improvement, which is so rapidly transforming the west side, must in time embrace the whole territory north of the Hudson and below Spuyten Duyvil. The great activity in building operations attracts the notice of the most casual observer who rides over the Sixth avenue elevated road to One Hundred and Fifty-Fifth Street. But far beyond this point lies a district as yet comparatively undisturbed by the building speculator and projector of railways, yet it is not too much to predict that ten years will witness an immense exodus from the present crowded districts to these picturesque and wonderfully healthful hills overlooking the Hudson. It seems especially the place where families of moderate means and of refined instincts might secure something more worthy of the name of home than their restricted resources will permit in the heart of the extravagant city. Inwood is certainly destined, in the course of the city’s growth, to lose its present air of seclusion, but those who have explored its shady dells and enjoyed its rustic solitude must regret the approach of the contractor leveling the woods and blasting the rocks. It is no wonder that the residents of the place are jealous of all innovations looking towards its popularization. An excursionist is rarely seen above Two Hundred and Sixth street, and even upon a Sunday afternoon one may pass hours in the woods along Spuyten Duyvil Creek in perfect retirement. From the crest of the beautiful hill that Bolton road traverses we take a farewell view of Inwood. A sea of green foliage surrounds us; the evening breeze rustles the leaves and bends the strong arms of the giant trees. Beyond the Palisades the brilliant glow of sunset is melting into twilight, and the darkening waters of the Hudson flow along in silence. It is a picture of peace.

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