In 1904 Inwood’s first modern apartment building appeared on the corner of Dyckman and Broadway (then still referred to by many as the Kingsbridge road). The erection of the Solano and Monida Apartments should have have served as warning that the agrarian lifestyle residents had known for so many generations was  nearing an end.  So too should the serpentine-like framework of the elevated subway which appeared, almost overnight, through the quiet, daisy strewn meadows of the Inwood valley.

The Solano and Monida Apartments stand alone in the distance on Dyckman Street in 1904, Source: Museum of the City of New York

But most in the lush pastures were too busy tending to wheat fields and livestock to realize the significance of the changes already taking place all around them.

The below article captures Inwood in those last,  precious and innocent moments before the sleepy fields and roadhouses were engulfed by the greater City of New York.  A city which had once seemed so far away.

New York Herald, October 9, 1904

New York Herald, October 9, 1904
An Exploration of Northern Manhattan
The Wild Country On Manhattan Island Which New Yorkers Will Discover When The Subway Trains Are Running: Historic Sites

New York Herald, October 9, 1904

“Waiting for the rumble of the first train to awake it to urban ways is a region not far away which is soon to be transformed from woodland and meadow into a part of the teeming city.  Nearly three hundred years have passed since Henry Hudson landed on Manhattan Island, yet in its northern reaches the cold springs still murmur over the living rock, remains of Indian villages are visible and the sward still bears traces of forts which bore the attack of Hessian mercenaries.

Other parts of the island have been crowned by the habitations of men, and busy factories and giant stores have risen to the skies, yet this spot is still largely given to the pursuits of agriculture. There the estates of country gentlemen may still be seen; and the houses of a century ago are nestled amid the trees or grace the mountain heights.

New York Herald, October 9, 1904.

Bells on Sunday morn call good men to church, and the echo of chimes may be heard over miles of green fields and amid forest clad hills. The principal fruit of the trees is signs of real estate dealers, for often as many as ten of these indices which point the way to a new era may be seen upon one oak.  Inwood is a restful spot, and Marble Hill has just begun to come out o the apple orchard.  There has been little activity in real estate there for half a century.  Generations have come and gone, following the primitive pursuits of man on an island which bears a large part of a world city.  The inhabitants in the region still speak of going down to New York, all unmindful of the fact that the city has stretched far beyond them and at the Bronx side has grown almost to the Yonkers line.  There are those who wander among woodland paths who have not seen the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan and know the city only by occasional newspaper articles.

An Unknown Land

This until recently undiscovered country may be described as extending from 180^th street to 221^st street, and as bounded on the east by the Harlem River and on the west by the Hudson.  It is now penetrated by a trolley line, which takes on passengers at Eighth avenue and 125^th street and conveys them past the meadows and the forests to old Kingsbridge.   On the right of the tracks are miles of flat lands, on the left the wooded heights and the green hills over which now graze kine.

Upper Manhattan Island was once spoken of as a summer resort, and it is still for that matter. A generation ago men who had business in the city went by steamboat through Spuyten Duyvil Creek and landed at the Battery or at the middle of the island.

Others who owned horses preferred to drive to Kingsbridge, there to proceed by train to the Grand Central Station, and in more recent days those who dwell there drive down to the elevated 155^th street, and go to their places of business in the “city.”  Its inaccessibility has retarded the growth and development of that end of the island, and the stimulus which it will soon receive from the opening of the subway will make it an integral part of the municipality.  The tunnel which pierces the Dyckman hill will be an artery through which will flow a new tide of population.  The subway trains will emerge upon the elevated structure which is completed as far as Marble Hill and is waiting the construction of a new bridge to be carried on through Kingsbridge.

New York Herald, October 9, 1904

The iron way stands out as though it were the backbone of the skeleton of a new body, for it will be hidden before long by the sinews of a new settlement which may be the home of a population of one million souls.

Were it not for that long spur of steel which stretches out along the Harlem, the power house of the subway, which rises at the base of Dyckman Hill. And the ever present real estate signs, the casual observer might get little idea of the sun of a new order of which the first rays are to be seen.

New York Herald, October 9, 1904

Broadway at that point is an ordinary country road and only recently has paving been begun.  West of Broadway, concealed by trees, runs the Boulevard Lafayette, now connected by viaduct with Riverside Drive and the Speedway, which terminates at Dyckman street.

Hills Still Uncleared

To the left, as the explorer goes by trolley car, may be seen the pastures and the meadows, half concealed by hedges and straggling trees. Here are cliffs overgrown with pine and scrub oak, and long stretches of sandy soil.  Far back from the road are manors where the old families lived—the Dyckmans and the Seamans and scores of others whose names are kept green in the titles of rudimentary streets.  Many of the younger generation are traveling or are living in apartment houses and gilded hotels on the lower part of the island, for they do not care for the homes of their ancestors in fall and winter. The roads were too muddy and they were so far away from the city, although pocketed within it, that they grew tired of country life.

Holyrood Church, New York Herald, October 9, 1904

Here is Holyrood Church, built of stone, a long, rambling structure which rises from a land once the battleground of the armies of the Revolution.  Within it is a mantel built of bowlders (sic) and of muskets and swords and cannon balls gathered in the fields over which the British drove the Continental army from its last stand on Manhattan Island.

Nestled at the base of Dyckman Hill is Mount Washington Presbyterian Church, which looks as though it were carved from wood and set as a landmark of another time.

Changes have taken place in recent years in the conformation of the land about the venerable edifice, so that it is now in a hollow.  The congregations are not large these days, but every Sunday finds a line of carriages before the door and in the yard.  The parishioners are wealthy and the church is well supported.

Churches and road houses are signs of a well regulated and attractive country, and upper Manhattan has many houses of entertainment near its driveways.  There is the Abbey, which lifts its walls of gray stone and its parapets above the high cliffs which overlook the Hudson, and not far from the old Kingsbridge road, now called Broadway, are houses which resemble old English inns.  At the foot of Marble Hill stands the old yellow tavern which generations ago was a stopping place for those who traveled north.

Many Local Improvements

Modern improvements were not neglected here, and that is why the residents of Inwood once had their own gas company.  The tank stands not far from Broadway, rusted and idle, for a giant corporation has absorbed the company which once purveyed illumination to Inwood.  The office where the superintendent once directed operations is now almost hidden by weeping willow trees.

Perkins Academy, at which the sons of the residents of that neighborhood were educated, is being changed into a public school for the city.  John B. McDonald, the contractor for the subway, formerly Corporation Counsel, were among those who drank at this font of learning.

Old Dyckman Homestead, New York Herald, October 9, 1904.

Dyckman is a name well known in the upper part of Manhattan, and the old estate stretches for many a furlong along Broadway.  Isaac Dyckman lived in what was known as the Old Homestead, at Marble Hill, built in 1812, which has been torn down to make room for the cut being made by the New York Central Railroad.  The other Dyckman house, which later took the title of the Old Homestead, stands well back from Broadway, surrounded by green lawn and flower beds. Near it are the houses of retainers who were attached to the Dyckman family. 

Seaman-Drake Arch and horses grazing in the Inwood valley, New York Herald, October 9, 1904.

Over the entrance to the Seaman estate is a high marble archway erected to the memory of a dog.  Here there was once a club house of the Riding and Driving Club, but it was found that the roads were often too muddy to make equestrian sports enjoyable, and other quarters were found for the organization.

New York Herald, October 9, 1904.

On the heights are several public institutions which were driven years ago by the growth of the lower city to the country.  The trustees believed that the time would never come when they would be disturbed by the march of progress.  It is likely that before many years these institutions will again be on the move, forced by that gentle compulsion so well known in the world of real estate.  When the value of their property rises so that the trustees may sell for enough to build new structures further up the country and gain a substantial bank account besides, there will be an exodus of the various institutions from the neighborhood.

Once a Tide Mill

Marble Hill, where once an apple orchard stood, is the tip of Manhattan Island, and indeed it may now be called an island, too, for the cutting through of the ship canal has surrounded it entirely by water. The swift flow of the current through there has wrought two changes greatly deplored by the inhabitants, for the tide mill in Spuyten Duyvil Creek is now out of commission because the water is not swift enough and eels may no longer be caught by the village blacksmith, Patrick Malone.  On many a day he sat on his back porch and drew the wriggling prizes from the depths below.

The old general store may one day become a great department emporium, and they who casually drop in to clip a bit from the convenient cheese and to speak of the latest gossip over the cannon stove in winter will be seen no more.

For the old inhabitants of the upper end of the island new conditions of life are shortly to come.  Landscape gardening, the raising of vegetables, the tending of herds are occupations which will not be required in the economy of the settlement which is to follow the subway.  The stands for the sale of sandwiches and soda water and cigars which have sprung up about the sylvan places will give way to the drug store with its onyx fountain, and the restaurant and hotel will follow the trend of population.

It is hard to predict what the years will bring, yet it is likely that another decade will see the low tract along the Harlem filed with flat houses, while piers and warehouses will appear at the water front.  Two parks will grace the city which is to take its place within a city.  The heights of Inwood will be covered, no doubt, by the homes of the wealthy until they resemble the present Riverside Drive.  The institutions will withdraw in the natural course of events, and about the parks, as about Morningside Park, will be thousands of dwelling houses and hundreds of stores.  The country house will not be known in that region in the days which are not far distant, and from the Battery to Yonkers will stretch one continuous and mighty city.” 

Long before the familiar Henry Hudson Bridge guarded the entrance to the Spuyten Duyvil a giant, belching behemoth of the industrial era dominated the landscape. For Inwood and points immediately north the Johnson Iron Works represented, at its peak, a paycheck for some 1,600 employees and a polluting eyesore for others.

Built by Elias Johnson in 1853, the iron works was truly a family affair. Johnson had cut his teeth building cast iron stoves, and later munitions used in the far off Mexican American War, for the well established Johnson, Cox & Fuller operating out of Troy, New York. By 1848, Johnson cashed out and with his golden parachute went into business with his son, Isaac Gail Johnson. The younger Johnson had prepared for this day his entire life, and graduated from the civil engineering program at
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute that very year.

The younger Johnson soon set off for New York City to find a site for the new family venture. Of three locations, including Mott Haven and Central Park, the Johnsons settled on 180-acres of land extending north from the Spuyten Duyvil. The factory itself to be built on a thirteen and a half acre peninsula near the western end of the canal which they would share with another industrial facility called the Spuyten Duyvil Rolling Mill.

1868 Map of Spuyten Duyvil showing Iron Works

With nearby railroads and waterways, the Johnsons couldn’t have asked for a better location and life became very good indeed for the family. Many years later, when not attending to foundry business,  Johnson family members were often seen tooling about the neighborhood in new fangled automobiles. The family foundry also paid for lavish homes and golf outings to exotic destinations.

Johnson clan in Golf Illustrated, 1925

But initially, it was all work, and in the beginning that business was mainly the manufacture of stoves, tin handled milk cans and other mundane items for home and commercial use.

Then, in 1860′s, the industry of war provided an opportunity that would make the family rich beyond their wildest dreams.

In 1861 United States Army General Richard Delafield (on right) designed a cannon that would one day bear his name. When prototypes of Delafield’s cannon, manufactured at other foundries, exploded upon testing Isaac Johnson sensed an opportunity. While completely unschooled in the manufacture of cannon, Johnson made an outrageous proposition. He offered to build four guns using Delafield’s design and guaranteed each gun to “stand firing one-thousand rounds each without bursting.”

Not one of the guns failed.

Soon the Johnson Iron Works had a contract to produce sixty-four additional guns as well as the shot and shell that made them a deadly addition to the U.S. arsenal.

Delafield rifled three inch cannon

By this period the younger Johnson seems to have assumed the helm of the foundry now employing more than three hundred workers. And by most accounts Isaac Johnson was a good boss.

1901 United States War Department map of the Johnson Foundry.

A family man of deep religious and political conviction, Johnson seemed genuinely concerned about the welfare of his workers. After a backbreaking day in the foundry  a worker, like the one in this 1906 photo,  might retire to the well furnished company reading room, or, more likely, a local tavern. Smalls homes and a school for the children of workers were also erected just north of the factory. Johnson even leased land from the Presbyterian Church and erected a company chapel on Puddler’s Row (now Johnson Avenue and Kappock Street) in 1889. However, Johnson’s spiritual side was probably lost on his then mainly Irish-Catholic workforce.

The post-civil war era meant retrofitting the foundry for peacetime production. Soon the plant was producing gas and steam fittings of a quality that placed them in high demand on the global market. By 1892 the factory even had its own telephone number, “Harlem 731″ equipped with a long distance line. This early telephone communication became essential when the Spanish American War broke out in 1898 and military orders once again poured in.

During the 1880′s the foundry began experimenting with steel. By 1883 steel production in the foundry reached an annual output of some twenty-thousand tons.

Foundry Interior, circa 1906

As the wheels of change rolled onward so did production. By 1915 the company was the leading producer of rough steel castings used in the production of automobiles. In the years leading up to the First World War, ninety-percent of all the pistons, rods, cylinder blocks and crankshafts used in auto production were produced on the Spuyten Duyvil.

Johnson foundry in 1923

War had always been good for the Johnson Iron Works and World War I would prove no different. Wartime saw a nonstop flurry of activity with nearly 1,600 workers toiling in shifts 24 hours a day. The influx of workers also saw a local housing boom.

Meanwhile, inside the foundry, the ethnic makeup of the workforce was evolving. Gone were the days of a primarily Irish-Catholic workforce. Alongside the Irish, Welsh and Germans who compromised middle management and lived primarily on Puddler’s Row (right, circa 1900), a visitor might also see Poles, Hungarians and Russians living together closer to the foundry itself. While the different groups had their disagreements, in fact there were some rather violent incidents, most disputes were resolved over drinks at Kilcullen’s, Weigel’s or any number of taverns that serviced the mill workers.

But the glory days were about to come to a screeching halt.

The animated conversations in the local saloons must have turned somber in May of 1919 when the New York State Legislature passed Chapter 586; which allowed for the straightening and deepening of the Spuyten Duyvil for ship traffic.

The State of New York had decided to use the then narrow passage to connect the Harlem and Hudson Rivers. As geography would have it, the Johnson Iron Works stood right in the way.

After a protracted court battle the New York Supreme Court condemned the peninsula and factory to make room for the new ship canal.

On June 9th, 1923 the foundry produced its last batch of steel and castings and, after some tearful goodbye’s, sent 1,200 local workers and their families on their way.

Foundry in ruins in 1937

The peninsula itself would survive until the 1940′s when deep dredging separated the little island where the Inwood Hill Nature Center now sits from the high cliff wall now marked by the Columbia “C.”

Click here to read more Inwood history

One of the most important if not enduring images of the Great Depression is Dorothea Lange’s haunting portrait of a migrant worker cradling her two young children. Her eyes tell a personal story of quiet desperation, while the photo itself serves as a tragic commentary on a country in the throes of economic devastation so great that even its children were put in harms way.

Less familiar, but of equal importance, at least locally, are the images and stories of Inwood and points nearby, as the Crash of 1929 spread like a cancer through American society.

This is a story of tragedy and hardship, of coming together in time of need, of unemployment, public works, arts and ultimately survival.

While the scope of Great Depression seems unimaginable from a modern perspective, it is important to remember that this nation had been though a series of economic crises before the big crash. In 1907, 1910 and 1921 the nation endured other depressions, though at the time they were referred to as “panics.” To add to the chaos, the whole Kingsbridge area suffered terribly in 1922 when the Johnson Ironworks closed its doors on some 1,200 workers to make room for construction on the Spuyten Duyvil.

And while these “panics” and layoffs had a profound effect on Inwood, the Great Depression was a different animal all together. By 1926, working class New Yorkers had followed subway construction north, carving out a denser, apartment based community, where before existed mainly farmland. The landscape had changed. This time there would be casualties.

4740-46 Broadway at Thayer Street, 1936

Even through the eyes of a child the drawn out day to day downward spiral was evident and terrifying. Lifelong Inwood resident Peter Dongan, who sold newspapers after school to help support his family helps set the scene:

“I developed an acute awareness of the Great Depression in Inwood. I have vivid memories of seeing people’s possessions carried out of their homes and deposited on the curb, and usually without terrible preparation . The Sheriff would appear and say ‘you’re evicted’ and there was no time to pack. So you would have a tearful scene, with people sitting on the sidewalk amidst their belongings.

It was a practice for people to go around the neighborhood and ring doorbells and say ‘we’ve been thrown out of our house,’ and collect a dollar here, a dollar there, whatever people could give, and get themselves moved back in again.” (Source: You Must Remember This, Jeff Kisselhoff, 1989.)

Harlem River and West 207th Street colony, 1933.

But many from in and out of the neighborhood had no such generosity to rely on and set up clapboard shacks, tents or lived in derelict boats along the riverfront.

To the east, along the Harlem River sat one such community. By all accounts this floating Hooverville, in the vicinity of 207th Street, functioned in a fairly civilized manner with neighbors watching each others backs. Some even grew their own vegetables.

Author Helen Worden, who walked the perimeter of Manhattan in the early 1930′s while researching her book, “Round Manhattan’s Rim,” describes Inwood’s east side:

Harlem River and West 207th Street. 1933.

“A curiously individual group they are, these house-boat homes. The personal taste of the people who live in them is reflected in the shape, ornamentations and furnishings of the houseboats. All had porches, many flowers, and one boasted a stained-glass dining-room window.

Harlem River and W 207th Street colony, 1933.

A houseboat costs about eight hundred dollars. Ten dollars a month is the docking charge. The majority have telephones, electricity and water from the city. Year in and year out these boats anchor off Two Hundred and Seventh Street. All have names. Sunny is printed on the life preserver of John Olsen’s boat, and Jennie’s House appears on the side of a neighbor’s dwelling. Sailors handiwork in the form of rope-knotted curtains, carved frames and silk-embroidered flags dress up the rooms.

Harlem River and West 207th Street ,1933.

Jess Thomas is the guardian angel of the houseboat settlement. He is a great, tall, blue-black Negro from Binnettsville, South Carolina, with a friendly smile and a pride in his neighborhood. He reminded me of the descendants of the African chieftains who live on Edisto Island off the coast of South Carolina.

Harlem River and West 207th Street colony, 1933.

It is Jess’s sweet-potato patch and peanut crop that has made a farming community of this locality in a city of six million. ‘Shucks, they told me peanuts and sweet potatoes can’t be grown up here!, he chuckled. ‘But look at ‘em.’ He pointed to the healthy plants. ‘After frost hits the vines I’ll be able to dig ‘em.’”

On the west side of Inwood along the Harlem River stood Camp Dyckman, another Hooverville, this one based on land. By the time Helen Worden visited the camp sometime before 1934 most of its residents, mainly World War I veterans, had relocated south to the infamous Camp Thomas Paine located on the Hudson in the West 70′s. Worden gave this description of what she witnessed looking west from Inwood Hill:

“Below a straggling settlement of shacks and lean-tos fringed the water.
A man swinging an ax hacked at a wood-pile near a house. We watched him with idle interest. A short distance away stood a soda-pop stand tended by a ragged aproned proprietor. Suddenly the wood-cutter stopped, gave a shout, picked up his ax and charged at the soda-stand owner, who dived out from his store like a frightened rabbit and scuttled down the shore-line to a small hut. He locked himself in just as the man with the ax arrived. After hanging around for a few minutes the big fellow went back to his wood-chopping.

Squatters Colony for unemployed workers (Camp Dyckman) Just north of Dyckman on the Hudson, 1934.

‘What is that settlement over there?’ we asked at Captain R. T. Windle’s boat shop when we reached Dyckman Street.

‘Used to be a B. E. F. village,’ some one volunteered.

‘It ain’t much of anything now. Why don’t you walk, up and take a look at it?’

We followed the shore, climbing over the cans, rocks and refuse to the wind-swept group of shacks. A man and a dog guarded the first one, the same man who had wielded the ax. He stared at us through surly eyes, but called to his dog to be quiet when it barked. Just beyond his house was a small tar-papered hut marked head-quarters. From the top of it waved a tattered American flag and posted up on the front in bold letters was this verse:

‘Hoover was the Engineer
Mellon rang the bell
Wall Street gave the signal
Then the country went to Hell.’”

Spuyten Duyvil Boxcar Camp near 225th Street, 1933.

In Marble Hill, just across the Spuyten Duyvil a remarkable woman named Sarah J. Atwood and her daughter Mavis, ran a boxcar village. Atwood, a widowed mother at the age of 22 was no stranger to the plight of the unemployed. A former employment agent, Atwood operated a food kitchen on Ellis Island during an economic downturn in 1914. She spent most of her adulthood espousing the same mantra– handouts only make matters worse–”Provide employment. That’s all. Make work. Make jobs.”

Testifying before Congress in 1916, more than a decade before the Great Depression , Atwood stated: “If there is employment made, and these men are taken and given good, wholesome, outdoor work, portable buildings can be put up, rock crushers can be started. Those men can be well fed, and in 90 days would learn the habit of industry, and some of them, perhaps, might begin a very different life.”

Spuyten Duyvil Boxcar Camp near 225th Street, 1933.

And while Atwood’s boxcar jungle was no walk in the park, it was, by all accounts well run and maintained. The fifty or so men living in the encampment were expected to contribute several dollars a week for room and board. The men slept four to a boxcar. Dinner likely featured Atwood’s signature “Mulligan stew,” a hearty pot of cabbage and other vegetables cooked over an open fire. While ammenities were obviously limited, each boxcar was equipped with a wood stove and nails to hang clothing. Idle hours were simply spent tossing horseshoes.

While running a Westchester railroad labor camp in 1941 Atwood was killed in an automobile accident. By then the 72 year old firebrand had put some one million men to work.

WPA Workers in Inwood Hill Park, 1938.

New York Evening Post, Nov. 30, 1931

In the November of 1931,  Inwood Hill Park benefited from the financial calamity that had befallen the nation.  That fall, among the trees and old Indian paths, a gang of laborers set out to restore the site to its former splendor.  According to an account published in the New York Evening Post: “One thousand men, unemployed heads of families, were assigned to jobs today in Inwood Hill Park.

The work, made possible by Deputy Commissioner of Parks John M. Hart, was arranged by the work bureau of the Emergency Unemployment Relief Committee, and the men will be paid $15 a week, for three day’s work a week, pending arrangements with the City Emergency Work Commission.

The men assigned to the project all have registered during the past month at the district offices of the work bureau.  All are men with families or dependents, who, the work bureau said, were considered the most needy of the applicants for emergency work.

Commissioner Hart explained that the work would consist of clearing undeveloped land, cutting dead trees, grading, laying new trails for the use of the public and repairing old ones.  The work is being supervised by foremen assigned from the Park Department.  Whenever possible, dead trees will be salvaged for firewood to be distributed to needy families of men on the work bureau payroll.”

By the mid-1930′s Parks Commissioner Robert Moses began using W.P.A. funds and labor to build bridges, swimming pools, parks and playgrounds around the city. In Inwood Hill Park labor gangs set quickly to work demolishing old structures; derelict, but once beautiful mansions from a previous gilded age, and began carving out the familiar trails hikers enjoy today. Joining them in the Depression labor pool were workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal public relief program whose workers often included teenagers eager to learn a trade.

WPA Workers in Inwood Hill Park, 1938. (Note Henry Hudson Bridge in background)

In June of 1935 workers began construction on the Henry Hudson Bridge. The bridge, first promised in 1909, was a source of bitter debate and protest. Many felt the bridge would mar the natural beauty of the area, but Moses ignored the local outcry. By December of the following year his bridge was complete. The project came in five million dollars under budget.

Much like the Parks Department, the arts also benefitted from the pool of unemployed talent created by the Great Depression.

Harold Faye, WPA 1938-39 , "Last Train", shows MTA station at Spuyten Duyvil.

Artists including H.A. Weiss and Harold Faye were brought on board by Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) to document the fruits of Inwood’s labor on canvas. They quickly turned their eyes to the Spuyten Duyvil, which was and remains a source of inspiration for countless artists.

"Spuyten Duyvil Bridge" by H.A. Weiss.

While the ill effects of the Depression would be felt until World War II, the residents of Inwood learned to adapt and overcome. In some pockets a barter system was created for the exchange of goods and services.

Inwood Mutual Exchange System coupon from 1933.

Scarred, a little battered, but otherwise intact, Inwood had survived the Great Depression.

Author’s request: If you or someone you know have depression era stories you would like to share I encourage you to leave a comment below.

Long before the Piper’s Kilt graced Broadway, a small but historic group of taverns hosted a colorful assortment of highwaymen, tramps, soldiers and fishermen working their way up and down the old Post Road.

Like its competitor to the south, the Black Horse Tavern, located near the current intersection of Dyckman and Broadway, Hyatt’s Tavern serviced weary travelers near the Sputen Duyvil.

Built around 1759 near the current intersection of 226th Street and Broadway, Hyatt’s Tavern attempted to service colonial era New Yorkers crossing either the King’s Bridge or the nearby “Free Bridge”. (Christened on New Year’s Day, 1759, the “Free Bridge”, also called the “Farmer’s Bridge”, allowed local farmers to skirt the toll collected by the Crown at the Kingsbridge.)

The new tavern was built and run by Jacobus Dyckman, who had run a successful inn called the Black Horse near McGown’s Pass in the present Central Park. Sitting  in the fork of the road, travelers should have been funneled into the Inn, but over the course of fourteen backbreaking years, the Dyckman family failed to turn a profit.

"X" marks the spot of Hyatt's Tavern in this historical map created by Reginald Bolton in 1906.

With war brewing in the Colonies, the Dyckmans sold the Inn and adjoining property in Marble Hill to Jacob Hyatt whose family would run the tavern into the early 19th Century.

Modern drinker’s entering Hyatt’s tavern would face a confusing array of choices. Many early American beverages were mixed with rum, often called “Kill Devil,” which was a lucrative byproduct of the Colonial molasses trade. A typical bar menu might have included sling, toddy and grog. Another drink called Mimbo was made from loaf sugar, rum and water while Calibogus, a precursor to the boiler-maker was simply a blend of rum and beer.

In the days of the Revolution, in addition to rum drinks, choices might have included flip, wine, mead, cider and beer. While there is no record of Hyatt family brewing their own beer, most small taverns of the day produced small batch specialty brews from ingredients including birch, sassafras, apples, pumpkins, roots and just about every herb imaginable.

Incredibly, Hyatt’s Tavern not only survived the Revolution, it continued to operate as battles raged nearby.

Located in a strategic and extremely exposed position,  both sides struggled for possession of Hyatt’s humble watering hole. Shortly after the British capture of Fort Washington, Hessian mercenaries moved in and used the tavern as a guardhouse. Then, in December of 1777, American forces under General William Heath launched an artillery strike on both the tavern and two nearby bridges. Heath’s sharpshooters reported seeing Hessians fleeing the tavern and ducking for cover at the report of each American shot fired.

While both bridges were either destroyed or rendered useless by war’s end (Until bridge repairs were made, a temporary bridge was constructed of boats tied together near the present line of Seaman Avenue), Hyatt’s tavern continued to thrive. Miraculously the tavern had not only survived the Revolution, but for the moment it was one of few places officers and returning residents could seek shelter and conduct business.

While the phrase, “George Washington Slept Here,” was often used simply to drum up business, it has been reported he did indeed have a meal in Hyatt’s Tavern in 1789 while en route to Connecticut.

Sometime around Washington’s visit, the original structure was converted into a roadside store as Hyatt’s Tavern relocated across the street.

In 1807, Jacob Hyatt’s son, Caleb, said farewell to a family tradition and leased this relic of the Revolution to James Devoe.

Hyatt’s Tavern would later become the Kingsbridge Hotel, which was famous among anglers and travelers alike for its signature turtle dinners.

The widening of both the Spuyten Duyvil and Broadway near the turn of  the 20th Century sounded the death knell for both the hotel and it’s curious culinary concoctions. After falling into disrepair, the hotel was demolished in 1917.

And there you have the basic history of Hyatt’s Tavern. So often I’m left with extra material that was edited out of the final copy for the sake brevity. If you are still interested in reading more, below is one such scrap.

Real estate advertisement, placed by the Dyckman family, which appeared in the New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury of September 6th and 14th of 1772:

“To be sold at public auction, on Wednesday the 23rd of September inst., at twelve o’clock, at the Merchants Coffee House in the city of New York, that very valuable Island called Little Barn Island, belonging to the estate of Mr. St. George Talbot, deceased, situate opposite to New Harlem Church.

“On Wednesday, the 3Oth Sept. next, at the same place, will be sold at public auction, that most excellent farm at King’s Bridge, now in the possession of Mr. Sampson Dyckman, and the meadows thereunto belonging, with the large house, barn, kitchen, and all other improvements; it has a very good garden and orchard, with the best of fruits, such as apples, pears, etc., and is the most frequented and noted house on this island for travelers who pass Prince’s Bridge. It has the advantage of mowing of a large quantity of salt hay, etc., and in the spring it abounds with most excellent bass, shad, and herring; crabs and oysters most part of the year are caught in great abundance ; in short, it is the most convenient spot for a tavern- keeper to make his fortune in a few years of any on this island. The purchaser may take possession the first of October next.

“Conditions of sale for both the above places may be seen at John Livingston’s, in Broad-Street.”

Read more Inwood history here.

Much of what we know today about the history and pre-history of  Inwood and Washington Heights is due largely to the turn of the century work of amateur historians, self taught archaeologists and close friends William Calver  and Reginald Bolton. Starting in the 1880′s Bolton and Calver began exploring northern Manhattan with picks and shovels, chronicling their discoveries along the way.

What you are about to read is the third and final installment of an essay written by William Calver in 1932 describing those early days before the urbanization of Northern Manhattan. The original draft, written in fading pencil on lined legal paper is housed in the archives  of the New York Historical Society.

This is part III of a three part series

Read Part I

Read Part II

“Recollections of Northern Manhattan”
W.L. Calver
3-10-1932

We have referred to these two local reminders of man’s mortality-white and black but in close proximity to these we had previously noted what suggested the “staff of life.” This was the last crop of grain grown on Manhattan Island, True, the grain proved to be the prosaic rye intended for the sustenance of live stock but with all that crop marked the closing of an era in the Island’s history, and was remindful of the figure which grain and products thereof had cut in the affairs of the colony. Flour and baked bread were important articles of export.

And when the growing of tobacco was found to be more profitable and thereby the price of bread soared a law was passed compelling the farmers to plant two acres of grain to one of tobacco.  The flour barrel founds its place on the City seal in 1688; it is there yet. We photographed the grain field. In recent times, that is to say in the ultimate grain field days, that field was part of the Isham estate; of old it was “part of the Nagle farm.  With the passing of the Nagle residence-”the Century House”-in 1904-(shown above) we got the chance we had waited for to explore the sloping ground between the homesite and the Harlem River shore.

1904 dig at site of old Nagle homestead

We reckoned that here would be found the discarded household and personal material of the Nagles, and mementos of the British officers who would probably have occupied the house. Our guess was good; we discovered all we could have hoped for, but in the Autumn of 1907 as we were journeying toward the subway after a days work at the Nagle dust heap we made a find conspicuous in the Archaeology of the Eastern United States.

Site of Iroquoian Indian jar discovery

On the bankside of the newly graded 214th Street and near to 10th Avenue-right here in the Metropolis we spotted a massive and complete specimen of an Iroquoian Indian jar-the finest yet discovered. Although the pot was nearly duplicated in its dimensions and symmetry by a similar find which we made at the opening of 231st Street, we believe our first great find will never be equaled.  That vessel was, miraculously barely exposed by the grading of 214th Street and was noted by us as it lay interred, just safely below the plow line, in the soft earth of the field. Probably at the departure of the last Aborigines from Manhattan Island the jar had been buried on a campsite against the day when those poor exiles would return. That day alas, for them, never arrived.

Years before that early familiarity with the region to which we referred at the commencement of these “recollections” we looked into the longing eyes over the strictly private areas of Inwood as we passed up or down on the New York Central trains. The grassy meadow bordering the Harlem and the rocky ridges to the westward appeared by us ideal in the advantages they offered to the red man whose footprint as it were-we
ultimately discovered thereabouts. It is not too much to say that with its stretches of probable Maizeland, its oyster beds, and fishing grounds; its watercourses-fowl and small game; its still waters for canoeing, along with the natural rock shelters North Manhattan was unmatchable in the features possessed for the accommodation of primitive life.

Exploring the Indian caves

The Indian cave or “rock-shelter” now fortunately within the bounds of Inwood Hill Park, promises to be preserved-forever a memorial to the original occupants of Manhattan Island.

Doubtless the rock shelters, before the coming of the red man was the home of the bear and the wolf, and two score years ago a family of “wild dogs” that had quarters beneath some massive rocks above the Indian cave were the subject of newspaper stories for a while causing some little excitement among the residents of the valley, for those who investigated by day saw nothing, but much barking was heard in the vicinity of the rocks by night. The “wild dog” excitement never quite subsided at Inwood, and along about the year 1915 when the furor became acute all stray dogs were regarded with apprehension. The newspapers featured the matter again, so we decided we would investigate. There were plenty folks at Inwood who declared that an actual past of savage dogs existed. Hair raising stories of the nightly depredations of degenerate curs were told. The brutes foraged at night for their rations almost to the very hearths of the, then, sparse population of the valley. Children were attacked and erstwhile faithful, home loving, dogs were lured away from regular feed, and cozy kennels, to revert to primitive conditions and a vagabond life. There was, however, some little foundation, as we found, for the stories current of dog life in the hinterland of Manhattan. To verify, or squelch the stories we fared forth and made a complete survey of the infested region, all possible natural shelters, or potential dens, were inspected, and residents of the valley, and high places, were questioned without positive results. One day as we had completed a lengthy jaunt we sat down upon a rock-one of a great mass of stones removed for the cutting of Thayer Street, and almost immediately there arose a distinct growl coming from the other rocks a few yards away. The growl was of such a volume as to convince us that it did not proceed from a lapdog. With camera in hand we retired a few paces and awaited developments. Presently one sizable puppy, and then others to the numbers of five, or six emerged from their den.

The puppies of old Inwood.

These puppies were exceedingly shy, but we managed to get four of them in characteristic attitudes exhibiting curiosity, suspicion, or resentment. The mother dog we may suppose was a victim of circumstances having been abandoned by her master as folks moved to other parts , she was compelled to care for herself, and resorted to such shelter as could be found as a refuge by day, while she foraged for sustenance by night. From neglect and abuse she probably developed a savage temper, and some trivial exhibition of ill will on her part may have been exaggerated to such an extent as to make her the terror of Inwood. A young man living nearby made a grand rush one day and captured one of her puppies, this puppy, we subsequently learned, grew up to be mild tempered, everyday sort of dog.

Only a few years have elapsed since the last cow was kept on northern Manhattan, but the last actual herds of that region appear in our photograph of the Inwood farmlands. The very last porker reared on the whole extent of Manhattan Island inhabited an old fashioned sty on the site of the present day “Baker Field,” near to Spuyten Duyvil Creek. The owner of the sty poured the floor of the sty with asphalt blocks expropriated from supplies for city streets , but as may be seen in our photographs this era marking animal left no stone unturned. Those who have scrutinized early drawings of New York street areas, and have recollections of the figure cut by swine in the annals of Manhattan will understand what we mean when we refer to the individual we have photographed as “epochal.”

Previous to the cutting of the ship canal a curious phenomenon presented itself in the ebb and flow of Spuyten Duyvil Creek; for owing to the sinuosity and shallowness of that strait, its tides rarely kept pace with the larger volumes of water in the Hudson, and Harlem which it connected. To some extent this tidal peculiarity still exists. If we remember rightly an advantage to be gained by the construction of the canal would be the partial forestalling of a possible blockade of the New York Harbor and the passageway it would provide in a day of need for United States war vessels. Towards the last stages of its completion disaster befell the canal for abnormal high tides wrecked the bulkheads at the Kingsbridge Road and destroyed the temporary roadway that compromised the bulkhead. The canalling was completed by dredging-for the bulkhead was not restored. Two features of “interest” in natural history were disclosed by the cutting of the canal. One of these was the extensive lamination of peaty vegetable matter revealed in section to a considerable depth; the other was the exhuming of a mastodon’s tusk from the bed of an ancient bog. This was in the year 1885. The tusk is now in the American Museum. That particular remnant of a prehistoric kingdom is not, however, the only such of which Inwood can boast, for portions of the head of another Mastodon was unearthed-rather salvaged we should say-from a boy on the north side of Dyckman Street at the junction of Seaman Avenue when excavation work was carried to a depth of 21 feet below the sidewalk for a footing for the foundation of an apartment house. The tusks and skeletal remain of the mammoth still rest, perhaps, below the basement floor of #2 Seaman Avenue.

The name “Marble Hill” as applied to the extreme north portion of Manhattan Island forty years ago was derived from the character of the rock of which the hill is composed. A Revolutionary earthwork crowned the hill in a position to command the Kingsbridge. This work was known as “Fort Prince Charles,” its site and the marble of the hill are shown in a photograph taken by us in 1928.

In its passing from the rural to the urban we have witnessed the last appearance of certain forms of wildlife on northern Manhattan. The probable last foxes-there were two in 1892-one was minus a portion of his tail; the last mink we have his hide; and possibly the last raccoon we have noted, yet there are those who will, no doubt, be surprised to learn that wild rabbits still inhabit north Manhattan, and that opossums have been seen alive or dead at Kingsbridge, and Fieldstone within the past five years. All of these were oddities in their way-likely as the deer to be seen in unsuspected areas.

Seaman and Payson Avenues near turn of the century.

That section of Manhattan Island to which our recollections pertain has, of late, aside from its use as a place of residence for a vast population been the scene of at least five great developments, three of which in combination assure the maintenance of some of the original natural features of the locality. These are the parks bordering on the Hudson River and the ship canal. They compromise a continuous stretch of City owned grounds where areas may, in their development, prove and invaluable asset to the community at large. With the parklands may also be included the Baker Field, but opposed to these the extensive yards and shops of the new subway and a potential backset to an otherwise well formed region.

…and that’s the end of this three part series by William Calver.

For more Inwood history, click here.