New York City

Relic Hunting in Northern Manhattan

Reginald Pelham Bolton

“I chanced to visit an old inn near Fort George some years ago and I noticed a human skull that the proprietor kept among the bottles above his bar.  The man told me he had unearthed it, together with several swords and cannon balls, in his yard.  I offered to buy it, not caring much [...]

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Spring 2012: Inwood, NYC

Spring in Inwood, NYC 2012

Spring came early this year. In fact, the entire winter was mild. Here are a collection of photos shot around Inwood in March of 2012.

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Down and Out on a Dyckman Street Barge

Texas Guinan

“Today, Isobel and Margaret have only memories, but with ambition undimmed.  They exist in poverty on a discarded and rotting river barge.  It wouldn’t even float were it not jammed in the mud of stagnant Sherman Creek, near the Dyckman Street landing in New York.” (San Jose News, August 8, 1928)   As the summer [...]

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Inwood Hill Park Concession Stand: A Reader Contribution

Inwood concession stand 1977

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. 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 [...]

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Inwood’s First Public School

PS 52, Inwood New York City, 1905 postcard

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

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Johnson Ironworks: Reader Challenge

Johnson Ironworks thumbnail.

Not long ago I received an email from MyInwood.net reader Cherie Magee with an inquiry into the Johnson Ironworks, once located on Inwood’s Spuyten Duyvil. It seems Cherie had inherited some old family photographs along with a generations old story about an ancestor who may have worked at the ironworks. She wrote: “I was doing [...]

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Inwood Chatter: January, 1944

Inwood Chatter, January, 1944

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 [...]

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Inwood Arts Pioneer: Aimee Le Prince Voorhees

Inwood Pottery Works

  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. [...]

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