Reginald Pelham Bolton (left) and William Calver (right) in undated photo shot in Northern Manhattan.

“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 to see such a relic condemned to a saloon keeper’s shelf, but he angrily refused.  He growled that he wouldn’t sell a dead man’s remains if he should starve else.  I finally bought the weapons and he gave me the skull.”
-Reginald Pelham Bolton, 1904.

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.

William Calver digging in shell midden.

Together, the two Victorian gentlemen, dressed in starched collars and neckties, followed subway digs, street grading projects and apartment building construction.  They were keenly interested in the relics often uncovered by the earth moving equipment and followed the work crews and elevated subway tracks that snaked ever northward through Washington Heights and Inwood.

Throughout the region they uncovered the remains of Native Americans, early Dutch settlers, Revolutionary soldiers and even slaves.  They also discovered ancient pottery, cannonballs and sometimes jewelry from another era.

Along the way, these two ordinary men, Calver worked for the IRT and Bolton was an engineer, became pioneers in the science of urban archeology.

On weekends, Botlon, Calver and a great cast of like-minded friends and amateur sleuths combed the hills, caves and construction projects of northern Manhattan before they were forever sealed under a vast carpet of brick and concrete.

Reginald Bolton seated in pit and William Calver to far right.

Families and children, picnic baskets in hand, often joined the diggers—sometimes witnessing gruesome discoveries.

While some criticized these amateur archeologists for their lack of formal training, their finds might have remained buried forever if not for their absolute devotion to the history of the region.

A blur of activity on Seaman Avenue.

Their love of the hunt is evident in the below poem found in the personal effects of William Calver, now housed in the archives of the New York Historical Society.

Poem discovered in the personal effects of the late William Calver.

The below article, published in 1904, describes the intrepid adventures of these “Godfathers” of Inwood history as they race to beat the developers.

New York Herald, August 4, 1904.

Relic Hunting in Northern Manhattan
New York Herald
August 4, 1904
RELIC HUNTING IN UPPER MANHATTAN
RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN WASHINGTON HEIGHS SECTION HAVE DISCLOSED FINE INDIAN—COLONIAL AND REVOLUTIONARY CURIOSITIES

New York Herald, August 4, 1904.

Pick and shovel within the boundaries of the city of New York suggest to you, the metropolitan resident of today, only commonplace apartment construction or the search for a refractory gas main; but it is entirely probable that the burrowing laborer is some antiquarian in search of the buried wealth of old New York.  A halo of romance and historic possibility surrounds the wielding of a spade and attends the removal of each handful of soil in certain parts of this wholly modernized Island of Manhattan.

Side by side with the plebeian digger of trenches the amateur investigator is at work.  Just ahead of the urban advance toward the northern limit of Harlem prowls the relic hunter.  He knows the ground to be rich in curious and valuable objects of historic interest, and he seeks to snatch them from their hiding places before the trampling foot of the gigantic city shall have made their recovery impossible.

Persons interested in historic research have come to regard the Washington Heights and Inwood district of New York as one of the most prolific sources of Indian, Colonial and Revolutionary relics in the country.

Affording excellent camping and fishing facilities for the aborigine tribes, the upper end of the island was long occupied by them.  Layers of shells, interspersed with weapons and implements, comparable to the “kitchen midden” heaps left by primeval European peoples, have been found, indicating the presence of large villages during many centuries.   Skeletons, pottery, pipes and ceremonial stones have been uncovered as well as hundreds of objects appertaining to domestic life and tribal customs that are of the greatest value to the historian.

During the Dutch occupation several houses were erected by squatters in this section, which were burned or destroyed before or at the time of the Revolutionary struggle.  Among the ruins of these homes have been found ornaments and utensils of iron, bone, brass, copper, pewter and gold, with parts of rare old china, glassware and handsome tiles.

New York Herald, August 4, 1904. (click on photo to enlarge)

Buttons, Bayonets and Skeletons

Most rich in diversity and in number are the discoveries belonging to the Revolutionary era, consisting chiefly of military paraphernalia and accoutrements. These include cannon, musket and pistol balls, swords, bayonets, camp debris, buttons, buckles, pipes, knives and the skeletons of British, Hessian and American troops.

Bolton and Calver at work in sketch from the New York Herald, August 4, 1904. (click on photo to enlarge)

Reginald P. Bolton, of No. 638 West 158^th street, and W.L. Calver, of No. 1,188 Hewitt place, the Bronx, are the leaders of the day excavators.  During the last ten years these gentlemen have patiently, if amateurishly, raked the soil, and the result is a collection that would amply stock a large museum.

Mr. Bolton tells an interesting story of the way in which his attention was first directed to the possibilities of excavation in his neighborhood.

“I chanced to visit an old inn near Fort George some years ago,” he said, “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 to see such a relic condemned to a saloon keeper’s shelf, but he angrily refused.  He growled that he wouldn’t sell a dead man’s remains if he should starve else.  I finally bought the weapons and he gave me the skull.”

Awake to the significance of this incident, Mr. Bolton began a systematic search for buried historic treasure through the section from 150^th street to Spuyten Duyvil Creek and between the Hudson and Harlem rivers.

Under the slope of Inwood Hill, which rises near the head of Manhattan, lies a plot of ground that has yielded a wealth of Indian material.  The cutting through of Seaman avenue some months ago brought to light a deep stratum of relics imbedded among the ashes of a thousand campfires.  Polished tomahawks of granite lay among delicately chipped arrowheads of flint and quartz.  A soapstone pipe, beautifully carved with the design of a human face, was found among wooden hoes and corn planters.  Near the skeleton of a dog lay several pieces of pottery, an amulet and a sacrificial stone, buried with solemn thanksgiving at the conclusion of some successful hunting expedition, when, it is entirely probable, a fat buck had been run down in the grove that is now Central Park.  Near this was found a banner stone, carried as an ensign in religious processions and regarded as a great rarity by modern collectors.  Scattered through the stratum were thousands of oyster shells.

In regard to the shells there arises an interesting point.  Among the piles of Colonial debris oyster shells are always found to be much larger than those of the Indian heaps.   This curious difference is laid to the superior fishing outfits of the Dutch, which enabled them to fish further from shore and capture the larger bivalves. Again, the site of Hessian camps is invariably marked by numbers of mussel shells, the Germans being the only ones who would eat those mollusks.  These details, seemingly trivial, have been of value in identifying localities.

Best of all the Indian discoveries was one made a short time ago by Mr. Calver.  In 181^st street, just below the level of the soil and partly protruding from the bank of a cutting, was an earthenware jar, more than a foot in height, the largest and most perfectly preserved object of the kind ever found on the Atlantic coast.  Its graceful contour marks it a fine example of the potter’s art.

Relics of New Amsterdam, with their intimate suggestions of our civic predecessors, take a deeper and more personal hold on the imagination of the discoverer.  From among the ruins of dwellings once occupied by the Dyckman and Nagle families have come picturesque hand forged kettles and the hooks and chains from which they hung above the hearth.  Well-preserved knives and forks have been brought to light and fishhooks and farming implements that have lain in the ground these two centuries.

Panes of leaded glass have turned up from the investigator’s spade.  Made in far Holland they were, and through them used to peer the sturdy faces of the burgher colonists. Hinges and braces of heavy shutters that swung before windows lay near by, reminders of the days when a man looked well to his residential defenses.

Near the banks of the Harlem a cresset was discovered, an iron frame that the pioneer was wont to fill with blazing tow when he bethought him of the joys of midnight fishing.

Idly watching a relic seeker near one of these ruined foundations of New Amsterdam some months ago, a young woman was moved to emulate his more laborious manipulation of a hoe with the point of her umbrella.  In a few minutes she has uncovered a finely painted Delft brooch.  Its preservation was perfect save for the setting and she is wearing it today.

New York Herald, August 4, 1904.

Fort Washington and the desperate all-day battle on October 27, 1776, that ended in its surrender to the British were rescued from oblivion by the discoveries and painstaking researches of these relic hunters.  The very existence of the fort had been forgotten and American chroniclers had either omitted the engagement altogether or confused it with the battle of Harlem Heights until several of the amateur pick swingers became interested and rewrote a chapter of our local history.  The movement they set on foot culminated in the erection of a magnificent tablet to the gallant 3,000 who held Fort Washington against 17,000 British and Hessians, with sea and land forces, for many hours before they were forced to yield.

Mapping minutely as they went, these investigators have reconstructed not only this campaign but also a considerable part of the British military movements during their occupation of Manhattan.  Examination of the regimental buttons and buckles found among the debris of camps showed them the disposition of the divisions of the forces.  Skeletons and scattered arms indicated skirmishes.  Fortifications, redoubts, batteries, sentry lines, camps and outposts have been traced and recorded.

Bullets for Dice

Connected with the life of the redcoats and Hessians in the camps and improvised barracks a number of rare relics have come to light.  Among the strewn litter of broken case bottles lay several sets of leaden bullets pounded square and marked for dice—to be set rattling against men’s pocketbooks instead of their ribs. Other bullets laboriously roughened and furrowed with a nail for the purpose of inflicting a more dangerous wound serve as a sharp contrast to the foregoing.

Clay pipes, scissors, pocket knives, Hessian pikes, bayonets that had been used for pokers and wood splinters, hand made pins, gun flints and musket locks were unearthed wherever the soldiers camped.

One of the commonest finds in these localities is the rusted frame of a jew’s-harp, giving rise to alluring if obvious reflections anent the tunes that once twanged from its mouldering jaws.  Perhaps, by the roaring fire some winter night, a violent partisan of the Georges entertained his mates with “The Vicar of Bray” through this bit of iron; or a stalwart Scot rendered “Auld King Coul” to the shouting accompaniment of the grenadiers. Yet again it may have sounded a song still sung by the hearths of Hesse Cassel.  It is no far-fetched conceit to say that some musical patriot made it voice “Yankee Doodle” after its owner discarded it on his final hasty flight to the Battery.

Regimental buttons form perhaps the most fascinating part of the military discoveries.  Diversity of size and design admit of the enthusiastic study of the hobbyist, and without descending below the class of an extreme rarity that they are found in quantities large enough to warrant several collections and the development of a button connoisseur.

One interesting result of the assemblage and identification of these buttons has been the revival of a point that is generally overlooked—the presence of many famous British regiments in Manhattan during the war.  Few persons know that the Forty-second, or Royal Highland regiment, world famous as the Black Watch, was encamped within the present city limits; but buttons they lost or discarded have shown such to have been a fact.   Here were also the Twenty-seventh Light Dragoons, now the Prince of Wales’ Hussars, better known as the “Death or Glory Boys,” the Thirty-third Infantry, The Royal Welsh Fusileers, and the Royal Artillery.  The Coldstream Guards and the Seventy-first Highlanders are other well-known regiments that were found to have camped in Harlem during part of the seven years’ occupation. Compilers of the history of British uniforms have received indispensable aid from the Washington Heights excavators.  Many of these buttons cannot be found outside of the local collections.

Victim of a Bar Shot

Military Relics Found Near Fort Washington, New York Herald, August 4, 1904.

Bar shot fired from British frigates during the battle of Fort Washington are occasionally unearthed on the banks of the Hudson.  It was customary to fill the space between the heads of the shot with long, heavy spikes, loosely tied with marlin (twine).  When the savage missile was discharged the spikes broke free and were set whirling in all directions.  A grim relic has recently come to light that strikingly illustrates the effectiveness of the loaded bar shot.

In a field under the bold rise of the forest was found a thigh bone, presumably that of a Continental soldier, one of the valiant three thousand.  Projecting from the bone and thoroughly imbedded in it was one of these iron spikes.  Although the impact that drove it there must have been terrific, the spike had not shattered the bone and the edges of the hole were smooth and level.  Marks of a saw showed that the leg had been amputated.

From time to time questions as to the final disposition of their valuable collection have been asked of the Washington Heights discoverers.  So far they have given nothing to the State Historical Society, although they frequently exhibit, a fine collection being now on view at the Jumel Mansion, Edgecombe road and 163^rd street.

There is a final detail in regard to the excavations that is worthy of note. Quantities of skeletons and parts of skeletons have come into the possession of the collectors.  These belong to every era of the American history and include even the bones dug from a long forgotten slave cemetery.  All of these remains are being carefully preserved. It is planned to inter them all beneath a suitable memorial, mingled as they are, friend and foe, freeman and thrall (slave).   The stone is to be dedicated to Indian, Hollander, Britisher, Hessian, Continental and negro—all who had a hand, however feeble, in shaping the destinies of the city of New York.

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.” 

Below are a collection of real estate advertisements from ages past.  As both a real estate agent and fan of Inwood history, I found the below images fascinating.  If you’ve lived in any of these building and have stories to share, please feel free to comment in the space below the image box.

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Map describing proposed amphitheatre on Inwood Hill, New York Herald, May 17, 1914.

Since the 1880’s various ideas have been floated for how best to use the space we now know as Inwood Hill Park.  From a World’s Fair that never took place to an ambitious plot to build a Coney Island style amusement park called Wonderland, developers, speculators and entertainment promoters long had their eye on the last large parcel of green on Manhattan’s northern tip.

So, why not an amphitheatre capable of seating thousands?

Think the Central Park Summerstage on a much grander scale, with bleachers lining the hill creating a Coliseum-like view.

That was the plan in 1914—A plan that could have provided a venue for Shakespeare in the Park on a scale the likes of which New York had never seen.

Proposed amphitheatre for Inwood Hill, New York Herald, May 17, 1914.

The plan, which would have denuded the forest of many of its trees, was, surprisingly, pitched in the name of preservation.  “Better do something with the space before the developers move in,” seemed to be the rallying cry.

Alas, Bruce Springsteen will likely never play the Inwood Amphitheatre, but it’s probably just as well.

New York Herald
May 17, 1914
Would Dedicate Inwood and Isham Hills to National Pageants

Tablelands at Head of Spuyten Duyvil Creek Is Recommended for Pageants

By Clifford N. Shurman

“Ten years have elapsed since the American Scenic and Historical Society proposed the preservation of the romantic northwest portion of Manhattan Island that posterity might see some part of the present borough in its original state. And yet the proposal has not borne the fruit of which it was so richly deserving.

Some part of Manhattan should be devoted to the fostering of national ideals—to something other than trade and commerce.  And what better spot is there than that which it was proposed, ten years ago, to call “Indian Park”?

No spot seems to answer this purpose better than the twin hills of Inwood and Isham and the valley between.  Even if all Manhattan were available, a more secluded, more historic and more distinguished spot could scarcely be found.

Writer of article, Clifford N. Shurman, sitting in front of the old Isham home, New York Herald, May 17, 1914.

The historic associations of this locality have made Inwood Hill an ideal spot for our Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls, who in the last years have amused themselves there.  Isham Hill, by the generosity of its owners, already has become city property and is being improved.

Not only the two hills, also the small valley between, offers through its situation and formation great opportunities for public use, forming a natural scene and, through its varieties, a romantic background for historical pageants and open air performances.  The two hillsides, bending around this valley, form a natural open-air theatre.

Isham Hill descends on this side in two or three terraces, which can be transformed rapidly into seating accommodations for thousands of spectators.  Facing the west where Inwood Hill rises and Spuyten Duyvil opens itself toward the Hudson, the brightness of the sunlight can never spoil but only enliven the view.  The valley itself is long shaped and somewhat triangular.  Every part of it can be seen, except the deep bed of a little stream hidden behind a rather steep and sudden elevation of the lawn.

The encroachment of the place for exclusive building purposes seems almost to be imminent at the present. Yet this can be averted and the features of the place saved.  The Mayor and Board of Aldermen would confer lasting honor on themselves by conserving to the future this last remaining available parcel of unimproved historic ground.”

A quick note: To read the above article in its entirety, click on the image below. The author covers quite a bit of neighborhood history not mentioned in this short post.

New York Herald, May 17, 1914.

Lorrie Goulet poses in the Inwood Pottery Studios for a newspaper article about the impending closure of the Pottery.

Since launching Myinwood.net I have posted quite a bit on the Inwood Pottery Studios; which once occupied Inwood Hill Park. The pottery, the houseboat community, the idyllic setting of a nearly forgotten era has always fascinated me.

So, I was thrilled when I received an email from a former student of the Pottery named Lorrie Goulet. She wrote: “I was very happy to see this article. I was a student of Mrs. Voorhees from age seven to eleven. This was from 1932 to 1936. It was one of my happiest experiences. I was there when Mrs. Voorhees had to abandon her pottery.

I wrote a letter to Mayor LaGuardia asking him to give Mrs. Voorhees more time to move. He did give her three months more. Because of my time at the pottery, my life in art was very much influenced. I became a sculptor, and have never forgotten Mrs. Voorhees, my first teacher. I am now eighty-five years old, and still working!”

Equally thrilling was the writer’s own history.

After studying ceramics as a child in Inwood Hill Park, Lorrie Goulet went on to become an accomplished sculptor. Her carvings, in both stone and wood, have been exhibited in museums around the world.

She still works out of her West 20th Street studio; a studio she once shared with her late husband, fellow sculptor Jose de Creeft. Her husband’s Alice in Wonderland sculpture in Central Park is still a familiar and popular sight with children an adults alike.

Lorrie Goulet and her late husband Jose de Creeft.

Extending a gracious invitation, Lorrie allowed myself and fellow Inwood history sleuth Don Rice into her workspace to discuss her childhood growing up on 218th Street–just steps away from the pottery works.

Together we recorded this fascinating oral history from an Inwood of long ago.  Many thanks to Lorrie Goulet for sharing her memories with us, and now, with you:

For more information on the old Inwood Pottery Studios, click on the below links:

Inwood Pottery Studio

Inwood Arts Pioneer: Aimee Le Prince Voorhees

A Potter’s Lament

Boats moored in Inwood Hill basin, 1935

During the 1920’s and 30’s an intrepid group of amphibious New Yorkers thumbed their noses at urban living, and high city rents, and took to dwelling in houseboat colonies along the perimeter of the Island of Manhattan.

Two of those colonies, consisting of a ragtag group of artists, electricians and even police officers, were right here in Inwood. One was located on the shore of the Harlem River near 207th Street, while the other was in a boat basin once located at the foot of Inwood Hill along the Spuyten Duyvil.

Like today, there was an east versus west of Broadway debate concerning who had the better digs. House-boaters east of Broadway, along the Harlem River, insisted they had better boats, hook-ups to electricity, city water and other public works as well as easy access to the local shopping district. Conversely, the Inwood Hill homesteaders, who lacked all modern amenities, including gas, water and electricity, considered their plot of shore, shaded by the famous Inwood Tulip, not far from the Inwood Pottery Works, to be the most tranquil and awe inspiring location in all of Manhattan.

Inwood Hill Boat Basin, 1935.

While some of the houseboats in both colonies were no longer seaworthy, their owners having long forsaken aquatic adventures, most were active sailing vessels whose owners lived for the summer months and life on the water. According to a May 24, 1923 account, published in the New York Evening Post which focused primarily on the Inwood Hill colony: “They seem to know that it will not be long before they will be able to forget the boredom of winter and slip away through Spuyten Duyvil into the broad Hudson, or down the Harlem for any one of a thousand places.

The land-bound houseboats, the half-and-halfs, and the floating ones are all alike, though, in feeling the meaning of the spring season. Most of them have already had fresh coats of paint; some are getting theirs now. They look as new as if they had never seen another spring, trim and neat as some old-time sailing craft just from the dry-dock and ready for her owner-master to sail her away across the seas.

Even if the houseboats do wander around five or six months out of the year they are more closely related to the house branch of their family tree than to the boat,” the article continued. Many had gardens, dogs and cats, and access to the old Cold Spring, a reliable source of pure ice cold water that once quenched the thirst of Lenape Indians who previously inhabited the region.

“Of course there are other houseboat colonies around Manhattan. There is a large one down the Harlem only a little way from Inwood with handsomer boats, perhaps, or more pretentious ones that are to be seen along the little cove, but what they lack is Inwood, a perfect background, majestic and colorful.”

What follows is a description of both Inwood houseboat colonies as seen through the eyes of Eleanor Booth Simmons, who, time and time again, turned her reporting to an Inwood that now exists in all but a few fading memories.

The Evening Post
July 10, 1920
By Eleanor Booth Simmons

The Evening Post, July 10, 1920

It was a king of ancient times, wasn’t it, who could be healed grievous illness from which he suffered only by wearing the shirt of an absolutely happy man? And when his courtiers had scoured the land and found the happy man, he had no shirt. Well, I have seen a happy man, right here in Manhattan, and he had a shirt. He was wearing no collar when I met him, but that was merely because he didn’t want to be bothered. He pointed out that this was one reason he was happier than a millionaire; the millionaire had to “dress tight,” as he expressed it, while he could be loose and of comfortable attire.

Houseboat in Harlem River at 204th Street, 1925.

A happy man, you will say incredulously, here in Manhattan with the housing problem to contend with? That is the point. He has no housing problem. He beats the landlord by living all the year round in a houseboat, for the privilege of mooring which on the Harlem River he pays the city $60 a year.

And he has a garden to boot, stretching up the shore back of his boat, in which he raises all the vegetables consumed by his family of a wife and three sons and himself. There is food for the spirit here, too: and my happy man, albeit a cabinet-maker employed in a shop near his boat, has poetry in his soul. He was a seaman before he became a cabinet-maker, and absorbed something of the mystery of the deep.

“There’s nothing so secret as the sea in its ways,” he told me, “but nothing that will talk to you like the sea when you know it. The water talks to me at night when the comes up the Harlem, and this houseboat, that rests on land at low tide, rises and floats with the waves all around it. It has a pontoon bottom and floats like a steamship. It’s mighty pretty then, sitting here on the front deck like, and looking at the lights across the Harlem. Some folks may be coming along that bridge and looking down here will say, ‘What a poor little place!’ but I wouldn’t change with the happiest of them. I wouldn’t.”

Policemen Colony Members

His is not the only houseboat in this little sheltered nook on the Harlem, at 207th Street east of Tenth Avenue. At least fourteen of them are moored there, each with its little garden of flowers and vegetables , and each is occupied winter and summer. They have city water, gas and electricity, and their snug little coal-houses filled against the winter. My happy man assured me that there was never the shadow of trouble among them.

“There’s a policeman living in the boat next to mine,” he said, “and a police inspector in one of the others. But we never need ‘em though,” he added magnanimously; “we’re all good friends with ‘em.”

Houseboat Colony by 208th Street & Harlem River, 1933.

This is one of two houseboat colonies to be reached by 207th Street. The other may be termed the colony de luxe, for the boats are handsomer, there are some artists and such among the occupants, and the surroundings—the winding inlet of the old Spuyten Duyvil, and the vista of the Ship Canal in front, and the background of climbing cliffs hidden in splendid oaks and tulip trees—are as beautiful as could well be imagined. On the other hand, it is further away from the conveniences, and the house-boaters have to depend on kerosene for lighting or generate their own electricity. But they have the most delicious water in the world, cold and clear, from the springs that are everywhere in the cliffs above.

Finding the Happy Man

It was a hot, breathless Sunday when I started out in search of the houseboat colonies. From the Dyckman Street station of the Seventh Avenue subway I wandered north a little way, and found myself in a yard filled with Street Cleaning Department wagons, where two dogs with their foreheads wrinkled with responsibility to the city government made invidious remarks about me, and a good-natured man with a cat on his knees told me to keep on the right around the end of the bridge that spans the Harlem River at this point, and I’d find the houseboats. I did so, and there, looking at his corn and potatoes, with his wife and some visitors from downtown, was my happy man.

Further along the row of boats was Mr. Callahan, another old resident, who was cultivating the geraniums in his brilliant flowerbeds. In front of the boats the reeds, which at high tide are quite covered, waved in the slow breeze. There was a good smell of salt water and fish in the air. The inhabitants can cast their lines from their front porches and catch perch and other small fish, and clams are plentiful. Across the winding Harlem, a little way to the south, rose the buildings of New York University and the Hall of Fame, and all the opposite shore was beautiful with trees and stately red brick institutional buildings.

Harlem River at Dyckman Street, 1937.

The happy man showed me through his houseboat and pointed out the various conveniences. The front room, opening off the porch, was a fair-sized sitting and dining room. Back of this were comfortable bedrooms, which were large enough to hold big beds and bureaus and so on and there was a bathroom with a good tub. A furnace heats the place in the winter, and I was told that even in the coldest weather it was snug as could be.

No More Houseboats Welcome

Its present owner paid $2,000 for this boat several years ago. Now, of course, it is worth more. They say there’s a long waiting list of people anxious to buy into the colony, but it’s a restricted suburb. The residents are determined not to be crowded, and they say there is no more room for any more boats. However, a couple of new boats are being built there now. It is the Dock Department to which one must apply for a permit to enter the colony, but, according to my happy man, he and his neighbors are dead set against anyone else coming in.

Inwood Park boat basin, 1920's.

To reach the houseboats that lie below the Ship Canal I walked along 207th Street, across Broadway, to Seaman Avenue, followed the winding road up the hill and found four or five people working away around a little old house half hidden in the woods, carpentering and beating cushions, and a lady in a cretonne artist’s apron, Mrs. Alma (sic) Voorhees, came to answer my questions about where the houseboats were.

May Waldis in center

An active brown curly dog welcomed me at the first one, the Roanoke II, and its mistress, Mrs. May Waldis, who is a swimmer of note and has no end of cups and medals won in diving and swimming contests at Sheepshead Bay and the Sportsman’s Shows, and so on, took me inside and told me proudly how her husband had built every bit of the boat—and he is not a builder by trade, but an electrician. It is quite a palace of a boat, all brown and white outside, with Colonial-looking pillars, which are really water tanks.

Inside the walls are prettily paneled and the living room, the bedrooms and the kitchen and bathroom are as perfectly fitted up and as roomy as a nice apartment. And everywhere outside is the lapping water, and when Mrs. Waldis feels like a swim she can just dive of her front porch. Yet the Waldises are willing to sell this boat because Mr. Waldis, who is Virginia born, longs for the South again. Mrs. Waldis isn’t keen about parting with the snug little craft her husband built, but she is resigned. There is another fine houseboat there for sale—the “June”—for the owners, who are Swedes, want to go back to the old country.

Boats moored in Spuyten Duyvil Creek in Inwood Park, 1935.

Interested in reading more on life inside Inwood’s former houseboat colonies? Click here to read the story of Bill Isecke’s strange childhood growing up on the Harlem River near 207th Street during the late 1940s and mid-1950s – on a derelict cabin cruiser, berthed in a forgotten boatyard.  This incredible oral history was collected by New York Wanderer Ben Feldman.

"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.”

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.

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.

"Ward or Public School No. 52 was a landmark on the southeast corner of Broadway and Academy Street from 1858 to almost 1957. This picture dates from about 1902, or midway of that period. Note the gas lamp with a mailbox on the lamppost. At the right is the house where the caretaker lived." -Source- William Tieck, Schools and School Days.

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 surprise when a monolithic, rectangular red-brick structure capped by fourteen chimneys rose from a cow pasture on what we now know as Academy Street and Broadway.  Everyone, locals included, were puzzled as to the need for such a large and modern structure. There were barely enough children in the area to fill even the first floor. Besides, children in those lean times, like their parents, literally lived off the land, and were needed in the fields to care for the crops and herd cattle. Who really had time for school?

Public School 52 on Broadway and Academy in 1930. Note old and new schools sit side by side before demolition of old school in 1956.

According to the late Kingsbridge historian William Tieck, “the growth of the Tubby Hook school was so slow that during the first thirty or forty years of its existence only the lowest floor of the three story structure was used. Because School Commissioner James MacKean was one of the prime movers in the erection of the building, it was long known as “MacKean’s Folly”. The land itself was donated by Isaac Michael Dyckman, who retained an active interest in the school until his death in 1899.” (Schools and School Days in Riverdale, Kingsbridge and Spuyten Duyvil, 1971).

"Even as late as 1908, when Public School 52 celebrated its fiftieth anniversay, it was surrounded by the wide-open spaces shown in the remarkable vista above. The picture was taken in a northeasterly direction overlooking the junction of Riverside Drive with Broadway and Dyckman Street. To the right of the school is the mansion-like dwelling of the caretaker, Mr. O'Neill. Landmarks include the original Mount Washington Presbyterian Church; above its steeple, the now abandoned powerhouse at 216th Street; and, on the horizon, the two buildings of the Catholic Orphan Asylum and Webb's Academy and Home for Shipbuilders. A string of subway cars is barely visible on the distant-and then new- elevated line running up Tenth Avenue. Note the trolley tracks and gas lamps." Source: William Tieck, Schools and School Days.

More than a century before Tieck’s seminal work on the history of education in the Kingsbridge section of New York, a reporter from the New York Herald visited the old Ward School 52 as part of an annual examination of city schools.

According to the article, dated June 16, 1865, “The new and progressive schoolhouse at Tubby Hook is one of the most interesting monuments of that beautiful and romantic region. Yesterday the annual examination of the classes was made by Mr. S. S. Randall, the General Superintendent of Schools, with the assistance of Assistant Superintendent N. A. Calkins, H. Kiddle and William Jones. There were eight classes—five grammar and three primary—consisting of one hundred and fifty children in all. They were under the management of Mr. G. Miller, the principal, and his three pretty and intelligent lady assistants. Indeed, all the lady teachers of New York are pretty and intelligent—so much that, in this respect, they differ from the teachers of other cities. They seem to be appointed for their beauty and intellect. The examination was careful and searching, and embraced mathematics, astronomy, geology, history, grammar and a variety of other studies. All the classes acquitted themselves well, and the result of the examination was by no means discreditable to them.”

Ah the ladies…but we digress.

The sturdy old building stood for nearly a century, with civil war heroes and other famous men passing through its doors before it was demolished in 1956 to make room for an addition to the newly constructed J.H.S. 52.

What follows is a 1911 newspaper description of Inwood’s first public school during its prime:
The Sun
March 26, 1911
TUBBY HOOK’S OLD SCHOOL
ANTIQUATED STRUCTURE UPTOWN WHICH HAS A HISTORY.

Something About the District in Which It Stands—Many Well Known Men Went to School In Old 52—The Late John B. McDonald One of Them.

In the upper end of the city, on Manhattan Island, surrounded by up to date apartment houses, electric railroads underground, and in the near distance over-head trolley roads, the elevated part of the subway as well as the main line of the New York Central Railroad, stands an old fashioned brick schoolhouse where formerly a genuine excuse for absence from school was given by the parents of pupils as “the boys were needed to drive the cows to pasture.”

The Sun, March 26, 1911

Up to about twenty-five years ago the place, 206th Street and Broadway, was known as Kingsbridge Road.  Inwood: locally and unofficially it was also known as Tubby Hook; muddy in winter, dusty in summer and looked upon by a non-resident as not being part of the city of New York. The origin of the name Tubby Hook may be traced to a family named Tubb who lived in the neighborhood of a point of land just a short distance south of the Spuyten Duyvil. This locality was later known as Inwood on the Hudson, warranted by the extensive woods surrounding the Dyckman tract of land, and is known now as Dyckman street and Broadway, about a hundred feet south of where the old schoolhouse stands.

To get at the history of this old familiar landmark, which is part of our present local school system, it is necessary to inspect the records of the township of New Haarlem, of which Washington Heights forms a part. A few years after the town was established in 1658 by the last of the Dutch Governors, Peter Stuyvesant, the famous one legged soldier recognized the need of some one person to perform the duties of a schoolmaster for the poor children of the district; the population of Manhattan Island at this time, December 4, 1663, was about 2,000 souls. The Schepens, or Magistrates, held a lengthy meeting, and at its close “a capable man” was appointed; but the very limited means of the residents prevented them from contributing toward the schoolmaster’s salary.

The best they could do was to give two dozen schepels of grain each for his support. The absence of money made it obligatory on the part of the Magistrates, Daniel Tournier and Johannes Verveelea, also Jan Pieterson Slot, who could not write his own name, to petition the Director General and Council of New Netherland for a grant in aid of the appointment of Jan La Montegne, Jr., son of a physician, who was one of the first settlers of New Haarlem. At the time of his appointment the future schoolmaster, who was secretary of the Board of Magistrates and a parish clerk, resigned to take up his new duties at a salary of fifty guilders ($20) per annum, which was considered “the least possible salary.”

For seven years, or until 1670, Mr. La Montagne served in the capacity of schoolmaster, when he moved away. Hendrik Van der Vin succeeded him and fulfilled the same duties at a salary of eight times as much as that paid to Mr. La Montagne. The increase in the schoolmaster’s salary was evidentially too much for the residents, for when his salary was not forthcoming in 1678 it became necessary to make a house to house canvas for subscriptions, which netted 300 guilders, an matters were squared with New Haarlem’s second schoolmaster, at least for the time being. This subscription, together with the rent of the town meadows, was devoted to the salary and support of Mr. Van der Vin, who agreed after some persuasion to accept it for the first year, after which his full salary was assessed upon the residents. The town also voted to rebuild his residence. Nevertheless he lived in poor circumstances and finally fell into debt, the town being compelled in 1682 to pay a bill of $6 for Van der Vin’s pens, ink, paper and writing material.

Reginald Pelham Bolton, a civil engineer, and a well known resident of Washington Heights, whose ancestors owned considerable property in the neighborhood of Bolton road, just west of Broadway and near the old schoolhouse, has in his possession a large quantity of old time official records, one of which bears testimony that Van der Vin was a gentleman well acquainted with Latin and Spanish, remarkable for his accuracy, methodical in his habits and very precise in his duties as a clerk.”

He was succeeded by John Tiebout, who resigned after some years and gave way to Guiliaem Bertholf, who served for one year. Tiebout returned and served until 1690, when he and his family of twelve children moved to Bushwick. Tiebout was succeeded by a young man, a recent arrival from Vlissingen by the name of Adrien Verrautl, and “judging from his penmanship, a scholar,” who filled the place until 1708 when he became voorleser at Bergen, N.J., being recommended by the people of New Haarlem.

Religious discussion of an acrimonious nature left the town without a schoolmaster for about fourteen years, or until 1722 when John Martin Van Harlingen arrived from Holland, who held the position until 1741, although for a long time after this the New Haarlem church people made no appointment. The war of the Revolution did away with education; something more important at this period, many sought protection inside the American lines, returning after evacuation to find their homes ruined.

Chapter 189, Laws of 1801 enacted by the Legislature then holding its twenty-fourth session at Kingston, N.Y., provided that a sum of be raised by a tax for the further support of government, such moneys to be invested in real securities and the interest thereof to be expended for the instruction of poor children in the most useful branches of common education. A town meeting was held in this year and arrangements were made to lease a portion of the common lands to establish an academy for the education of the children of the township, these lands were then situated in the old Ninth ward of the city of New York and caused considerable controversy with the city. A legislative act caused the land to be sold, the proceeds to be placed in the hands of various trustees, who paid $3,500 to the trustees of the “Hamilton School.” The exact date of the establishment of it is in doubt, but references show it to be prior to 1820. Valentine’s Manual shows the Hamilton free school to be located at 181st street and Fort Washington avenue, the teacher then (1852) being Hosea B. Perkins, who died in 1903, the trustees being Isaac Dyckman, Tunis Ryer and John P. Dodge. This school was the predecessor of the present school system on Washington Heights.

Public School 52 in 1905 Postcard

In 1858, when the population of Manhattan Island was about 750,000, the Tubby Hook school—now Public School 52—was formally opened, the land upon which it stands being given to the city by the late Isaac Dyckman, on condition that a school be erected thereon. Until recent years only the first floor was used.

In 1903 a change was made in the building, which measured 40 by 70 feet, with classrooms about 16 square feet, the census of the old red school being less than 150, an addition of twenty-five square feet was added, the class rooms enlarged, the top floor occupied, giving more room, making the census of the school at the present time about 300, including about two dozen in the kindergarten. At the same time that the addition was made the old familiar brick walls were given a coat of paint and the “old red school” became a rich cream in color. It is only within the last few years that the old time stoves were replaced by steam heat.

John B. Mcdonald: "The Man Who Dug the Subway."

It is questionable if any school in greater New York can show a list of well known graduates that are more respected in the community, among the alumni being the Rev. William J. Cummings and two brothers, John and Frederick; Lieut. Samuel K Allen, a graduate of West Point; his brother, Ethan Allen; J. Crawford McCreery, a partner of the dry goods firm; Samuel Isham, the artist and author; also his brothers, William and Charles; Dr. Norton Denslow and William Wallace Denslow, the well known illustrator and cartoonist; Elijah Cutts, late Senator from Minnesota; Joseph Keppler, artist and editor of Puck; Counsellor William Flitner and brothers, Walter and Charles; and William S. Hartt, director of the Tropical Fruit Growers Association. The old school also furnished some civil war heroes, such as Col. Charles N. Swift and Thomas C. Wright, both of whom rose from the ranks during the war; Col. Cornelius Schermerhorn, John Whalen, first Corporation Counsel of Greater New York and at present the president of Bank of Washington Heights; Blake Wales and his brother Alexander, Corporation Counsel of Binghamton in 1908; Robert Veitch and his son Charles of Dyckman Street; Theodore and Benjamin Barringer, both physicians, Former Alderman John J. McDonald, Andrew Thompson, one of the active members of the Stock Exchange; his brother William, and last but not least John B. McDonald, “the man who dug the subway,” and who died a week ago.”

-

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.

Johnson foundry in 1923.

She wrote:

“I was doing some research on the Isaac Johnson Foundry and your website came up. Terrific site! Thanks for all your information. I am trying to find out if there are any records about the foundry and its employees. I think my Great-Great Grandfather may have worked there.”

Cherie soon forwarded the photos she believes are images of foundry employees taken somewhere in the area around the ironworks. She’s hoping someone reading this post might provide a valuable clue to help put her photos into perspective. A true reader challenge.

She wrote:

Timothy Sweeney

“I was always told that my Great-Great Grandfather worked at a foundry in Spuyten Duyvil and that one of his daughters – my Great Grandmother, worked for the Delafield family – also in Spuyten Duyvil. I have found them living there in the 1890 and 1900 census.

My mother dug through some old family photos and there are several terrific photos of my Great-Great Grandfather, Timothy Sweeney. One of the photos was taken with 11 other workers. The photo is entitled “The Corporation” and three of the other workers are named as well. They are all holding pick axes. The Isaac G. Johnson Foundry is the only foundry I found in that immediate area, so I am wondering if there are any records still around that might confirm his employment at this foundry. Someone also mentioned to me that New Yorkers (in particular apparently) referred to their local governors as Corporations…so I was wondering if that could apply here. Could these men in the photo perhaps have been foremen and were jokingly being called the Corporation? I don’t imagine there would have been a lot of formal type photos of laborers.”

"The Corporation"

“I have also included a few other photos – Timothy Sweeney (my Great-Great Granpa) and Dan Hayes, his son-in-law. They are the same two in the photo by the railroad tracks. Could the tracks have been by the Foundry? The next two I have no idea where Dan is – but the stone-walls certainly look like someplace in that area. The last two photos – I was wondering if they could have been taken at the Miramar Pool. Do you have any other photos of the pool to compare these with? Unfortunately, none of these photos are dated.”

Dan Hayes

Dan Hayes

Dan Hayes and Grandpa Timothy Sweeney.

Site presumably near the old Johnson Ironworks.

Swimming area presumably near the old Johnson Ironworks.

Being interested in the Johnson Ironworks, Cherie’s request immediately caught my eye. While I was able to rule out the Miramar pool as the location in one of the photos, the trail ended there.

That’s where you the reader come in: If anyone has any information, photos, records or even old family histories of the Johnson Ironworks, I encourage you to write in. The foundry once had a workforce of some 1,200 men, so I imagine there are some historical treasures still floating about.

For more information on Inwood’s old Johnson Ironworks, click here.

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

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.

“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.

]]> http://myinwood.net/inwood-in-1886/feed/ 2 http://myinwood.net/inwoods-mount-olympus-the-seaman-mansion-in-1869/ http://myinwood.net/inwoods-mount-olympus-the-seaman-mansion-in-1869/#comments Mon, 14 Feb 2011 19:49:07 +0000 Cole Thompson http://myinwood.net/?p=6388

A while back I wrote a history of the old Seaman mansion that once stood on the grounds currently occupied by Park Terrace Gardens. Today the only trace of the Seaman estate is the crumbling marble arch located down the hill on Broadway.

Seaman mansion and arch from a distance in 1903.

The following description from 1869 finds the home occupied by its original inhabitants, Mr. John Seaman and his wife Ann. This slice of life shows a happy couple surrounded by fine art and sculpted gardens entertaining admiring friends in the mansion they lovingly called “Mount Olympus.”  (Bewildered neighbors had a different name for the shining white fortress on the hill: “Seaman’s Folly.”)

While Mr. Seaman made considerable money as a drug merchant, he lost his fortune through a series of bad investments. As luck would have it, Ann (below sketch) was a very wealthy, if not eccentric, woman. Her money came from a rich uncle who forbade her to marry “Johnnie” lest she lose her inheritance. As soon as the uncle died the two were married in Europe.

John Seaman lived out his golden years puttering about his gilded palace as his wife collected an ever-increasing army of poodles. In fact, the tombstones mentioned in the below description could be those of her beloved pooches whom she buried with the loving attention one might mourn a child.

The Seamans would in fact die childless. When Ann, who outlived her husband, died in 1878 more than 140 distant relatives contested her will. The lucky winner, nephew Lawrence Drake who was so despised by John Seaman he was forbidden access to the property during his lifetime. Relatives believed Drake had conned the poor, rich old widow out of their rightful inheritance. But that is a story for another time…

Seaman Mansion
New York Herald
August 29, 1869

“Incomparably the finest mansion on the Hudson, and undoubtedly the spot where fortunes have been spent, and well spent is the place of Mr. John T. Seaman, retired drug merchant, who has been the last fifteen years lavishing his extensive fortune upon the grounds that are now universally admired by all that visit them. Not alone Americans, but Europeans and landed gentry seek this spot, and are courteously treated by the venerable possessor, who now nears the sere and yellow leaf. Mr. Seaman is still a fine and healthy appearing man, with well-cut features and a fine stature. His efforts have been tireless to improve his place, and he now has the satisfaction of knowing that he has few rivals along the Hudson. Entering the grand gateway at the northern entrance the slate graveled drive is pursued over an undulating, though ascending, road till a footpath is met coming down at right angles from the northern portico. The steps to this pathway are white marble, and are flanked by two elaborately cut lions, in marble, showing much artistic taste in the sculptor. The way then lies straight ahead, when the drive turns toward the mansion in a southerly direction.  At the turn stands a good figure of “Europe” in marble, resting upon a marble pedestal; and further on, as the drive continues, is a beautifully gilded figure of “Diana,” with her bugle in hand. The white marble statues just on the crest of a hill, sloping off toward Spuyten Duyvil creek, are specimens of substantial architecture, corresponding with the style of the house. To southward of the mansion the drive continues, and a statue of Music is displayed, its spotless white contrasting well with the level lawn.

A small cemetery is observable hidden in a clump of bushed at this point, and the gravestones, white and gilded, shine with a peculiar beauty through the foliage. Following the direction to the westward of the house, under a huge marble porch, the drive brings up before a massive door, shaded by a great arch forming another porch. The mansion is built entirely of white marble, quarried by Mr. Seaman on the spot It is seventy-eight feet deep and in plan is nearly square. It has a main dome reaching a height of ninety feet from the ground, with its top pained a dark maroon color. There are also two smaller domes, whose arches are surmounted by the statues of Love and Music respectively. It is hardly possible to give a correct view of this house—a house that has few equals in the world, and one that is a combination of capacious wings, towering chimneys, vaulted domes, Roman windows and sharply defined, yet not ungraceful lines. If defies classification according to the schools of art, yet it is inferior to none of them, while a combination of all.  The plan of breaking away from what is pure Grecian or Roman is a praiseworthy innovation, and one, which has been followed with triumphant success along the river. From the northern porch the ground assumes a gently declining surface till it touches the drive in continuous groves of beautiful evergreens; from the eastward it descends on eight terraces, along which are constructed the extensive hothouses; from the southward the garden spots and statuary dot the green, and to the southward are the stables and the valley.

Seaman Mansion main entrance (later home to a local driving club).

Let us enter the house. The door is flanked with fine pieces of statuary, and once within a wide and lofty hall, with the usual furniture, is seen. To the extreme south end of the house is the octagonal library, fitted up at great expense. Closets whose doors support long and beautifully gilded mirrors, statues of Scott, Shakespeare, Byron, Milton, Homer, Esculapius, Socrates and Pluto fill niches in the wall, and also the mind from the measures of heroic verse to the eternity of dreary philosophy. Some fine paintings hang on the walls, and the western windows look out into a small conservatory, in which statues of the four Seasons are placed in appropriate positions. These figures are about two feet high.

Seaman Mansion interior near the turn of the century.

The parlors are capacious, with ceilings sixteen feet high, and would do for the throne rooms of a small empire or the east room of a presidential mansion. Venetian mirrors reflect distances and apparently double the size. In these rooms, standing up on a pedestal at the western end, is that well-known statuary, “John the Baptist in the Wilderness,” made to order for Mr. Seaman in Europe. In the reception room he had two busts, of himself and his wife, cut by Mansini; also a statue of the “Flower Girl.”

Ascending the broad oak staircases bronzed figures of the four quarters of the globe stand in alcoves under the main dome in this order—Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. The picture gallery is situated in the western wing in the second story, and there can be seen some very valuable works of art. The original picture of the “Marriage of the Virgin,” by Ludovico Carracci, eight feet square, and worth $20,000, hangs against the southern wall. This picture portrays its subject with a true inspiration, and the touch of genius can be traced in the colors, the lights and shades. The original of “The Shepherds’ Visit to the Virgin Mary,” by Reubens; the original of “St. Martin Dividing His Garment Among the Poor”—a finely colored painting; the “Betrothal of the Virgin,” the “Holy Family,” copy from Raphael, together with his “Madonna” and the “Polish Orphans,” comprise a very rare and valuable collection, in which, it will be observed, no popular daubs have a place.

Seaman Mansion near turn of the century.

The whole house is supplied with water from a large tank on the main tower, which holds 60,000 gallons, and which is lined with lead. The entire upper story and domes are lighted with plate glass let into the roof, and it is also by this means alone that the picture gallery is lighted. From the top of Mr. Seaman’s tower one of the finest, most extensive and varying prospects in this country can be obtained. It should be remembered that his house is located on one of the highest points of the island, and probably as lofty a private dwelling as there is on it.

Looking north can be seen Spuyten Duyvil creek and the rich and fertile acres which it washes; the Harlem river with its torturous course winding like a snake through the tall grass and thick shrubs; a section of the Hudson shining like a lake of molten silver, and tinged with crimson by the setting sun; the misty hills rising from the valley and just perceptible through the haze, the weird glens, the weather beaten crags and torpid mountains. A scene like this is but a portion of what strikes the eye at every point; and this sublime panoramic view has been gazed upon by many eminent Europeans, who declare that nothing equals it in the Old World.

At the entrance to the porch two figures in the dress of the time of Louis XIV stand out in conspicuous prominence, and a statue of America caps the main dome: the interior is frescoed with Cupids. The house is connected from room to room with an alarm telegraph, so, that should burglars aspire to transfer some of Mr. Seaman’s valuables the dial would at once indicate their location and anxieties, when doubtless he would treat them with becoming civility.

Gardener's House on the Seaman Estate, Inwood, New York City

The hothouses are very extensive. They consist of graperies, a pinery and greenhouses. The pinery is fifty feet deep, and is very fruitful. The graperies now groan under heavy loads of their delicious fruit. They are two in number, separated by a plant house, and have a through depth of 212 feet, with a width of 22 ½ feet, with a lean-to quadrant shaped roofs. A steam engine is used to throw the water on the grape vines, which have hothouse peaces just in their rear; and against the wall some rare figs. The whole arrangement of these graperies is a model of neatness. No finer fruit of this kind is grown in America. Every species abounds. There are the black Habburgs, the Victoria Hamburgs, some bunches of which weigh six pounds; the white Nice, the Muscat Alexandrias and the royal muscadines; the Timothy de Burgh, the earliest golden Chasselas, grizzly Frottingaus and white Prottingans. The plant house in winter contains 2,500 pots. The western slope is now broken up for improvements. A small lake is to be constructed; and adjoining, an ice house, so that he can make his own ice.

Entrance to the Seaman Estate, later the Suburban Club. The marble arch still stands on 216th and Broadway.

A new entrance is being built in exact imitation of the Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile standing at the head of the Champs Elysees on a line with the entrance to the Tuileries in Paris. This massive structure will cost $30,000 and is nearly completed. It is composed entirely of white marble and forms a fitting entrance to this empire, which Mr. Seaman has named Mount Olympus. Besides the statuary named, he has Bacchus, Cupid, Psyche and other pieces famed for their beauty and fidelity of design.

Thus has Mr. Seaman succeeded in surrounding himself with the elegances of art, the luxuries of fine flowers and delicious fruits and the comforts of a sumptuous and capacious mansion.”

Seaman mansion sketch from 1895 issue of the New York Tribune.

Click here for more Inwood history.

When New York Tribune reporter Eleanor Booth Simmons explored the hills of Inwood and Washington Heights in 1921 she discovered a quaint country community rapidly being swallowed by the big city. In this article she gives us a guided tour of the still standing homes of once rich and powerful families including Nathan Straus, James Mcreery and C.K.G. Billings, to name a few.

A quick author’s note: The first sketch accompanied the article as it appeared in 1921. Other photos I have added myself to provide visuals to Simmon’s prose.

Where Cobwebs Thrive on Manhattan Isle, by Eleanor Booth Simmons, New York Tribune, November 6, 1921.

Do you like to dream about old houses? Do you like to investigate neglected mansions of a past age, picturing the life that flowed through the high-ceilinged rooms now so musty and decayed?

If you are a New Yorker it isn’t necessary to travel to New England to indulge in this pastime. Forty minutes by subway from the shopping district, a brief walk, and you are in a region of old houses. Some crown the green hills of Inwood, which downtown excursionists are beginning to discover, and some, stranded on the streets, are rudely shouldered by modern apartment houses of glaring brick. But there they are, and in some of them you will find white-haired men and women whose talk takes you back to a day earlier than that in which the characters of Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence” lived.

Inwood Valley, looking north from Fort George near turn of the Century.

Fancy going into a house a few steps from the Dyckman ferry and finding two brothers and a sister who have dwelt there sixty years! These are the Flitners, children of the Maine sea captain, who, landing at the Hudson River dock with barges of lumber from the North, was so charmed with these shores that he brought his family here to live. Get them talking and they tell you of a time when there were but seven buildings above 187th Street east of Kingsbridge Road. In their childhood the winter skating was the social event of the locality.  The lads damned up a brook that ran just north of Inwood Street, now Dyckman Street, and made a wide pond between two small hills. At night they lighted fires of Tar barrels and waste wood on the banks, and the community gathered and sang and shouted and did marvelous things on the ice. Perhaps the winters were colder then, for, as Charles Flitner remembers it, there was always ice from fall to spring.

The Flitner house is well preserved. But just above it, at the first turn of Bolton Road, is a square red house of spacious rooms and staircases of noble lines going to rack and ruin in a way one hates to see, all the more because it is a common story in these parts.

Old inhabitants say it was the policy of the New York Central that left Tubby Hook, as Inwood used to be called, in a forgotten pocket between two rivers, unpeopling the beautiful houses and abandoning them to ghosts. In 1871 that railroad diverted its trains, save one or two slow locals, from the Hudson River tracks to the east bank of the Harlem. Not till 1900 did the first trolley cars run to Kingsbridge, and it was five years later when the subway was extended to Dyckman Street. For a good many years this most attractive part of Manhattan Island was rather inaccessible, except for the men who could afford their horses.

In 1844, when Samuel Thomson, wealthy man of affairs, built the little church that still stands at Broadway and Dyckman Street, men were content to be leisurely. Tubby Hookers who went to business by the 7:53 gossiped in agreeable groups on the station platform till the conductor decided that there were no more tardy passengers to arrive. Elegant ones drove to the city over the Bloomingdale Road, a shaded street that ran down Breakneck Hill past the Hamilton Grange, and those who remember it say it was a fine sight to see the elder James McCreery, the merchant prince, coming down from his home at the end of the River Road, “The last house on Manhattan Island,” behind his team of spanking bays. But Tubby Hookers grew tired of depending on horseflesh and the infrequent trains, and one by one they moved away from their mansions and their landscaped gardens.

Fort Tryon in the early 20th Century.

In 1796 Mount Washington was the popular name for the whole range of hills from Manhattanville to Spuyten Duyvil, and traces of the outworks of Fort Washington are to be found from end to end of them now. But as time went on the upper section became known as Tubby Hook, perhaps because the Dutch sailors who went up the Hudson, and who called every point of land a “hook,” saw in the bay of the Spuyten Duyvil a resemblance to a tub, with the steep wooded hills for sides. Isaac M. Dyckman and William B. Isham and the Vermilyea, Nagle and Post families, who among them owned most of the rich lowlands to the eastward, always spoke of their “farms at Tubby Hook.” Then Inwood became the name of this region and the hills to the south Washington Heights. But it is all one chain of beauty, and for years men like Reginald Pelham Bolton, its staunch defender and preserver, and George Barnard, whose studio stands high on “God’s Thumb” above the Hudson, have been saying to City Hall:

“See here! In the wooded hills and slopes that line the water from Jeffrey’s Hook, at 177th Street, to Spuyten Duyvil, New York has the most wonderful potential pleasure ground that city ever had. Purchase it, improve it, preserve it for all time to come.”

And first the Board of Estimate and Apportionment would say: “We will.” And then it would say: “We can’t. Out constituents would not let us spend so much money.” It has pursued, in short, a policy that has kept wonderful residential possibilities from becoming anything more. Who wants to spend money restoring old houses or building new ones when or where Father Knickerbocker may lay out his parks and roads?

However, the slow development has had one advantage. It left sleeping below the surface of the Dyckman Valley evidences of Indian life—native tools and weapons and remains of the dog burials of the redmen of 300 years ago, that Mr. Bolton and W.L. Calver and other ardent excavators might find them for museums of today.

Half a block east of the ferry Prescott Avenue, a narrow unpaved way, runs from Dyckman Street over Inwood Hill. Upper Bolton Road starts from Prescott Avenue just above Dyckman and goes windingly first west, then north, then east. Here is where bankers, lawyers and editors of past generations had their country seats. On the slope between upper Bolton Road and Prescott Avenue and lower Bolton Road, or the River Road, which starts at the ferry, was the estate of Samuel Thomson, who came to tubby Hook in 1835 and who was so ardent a republican that he quarreled with his wife’s titled relatives because he would not say “my lord.” A son-in-law, Walter Carter, publisher, has left this description of his first drive up Bloomingdale Road to the Thomson grounds and of seeingMr. Thomson reading the Bible of a morning “with a beaming face.” He was a good churchman and built Mount Washington Presbyterian Church on his own grounds because he was so sorry to see his neighbors working in the fields on Sunday. But he was also a keen businessman, as was shown by his buying 100 acres of land for $27,500 and shortly afterward selling one acre to J.B. West for $25,000. Three of his ten children became bank presidents, and the eldest, William A. Thomson, was for sixty years an officer of the Merchant’s Exchange Bank. Not a trace of the Thomson mansion remains, and on its site, where the House of Mercy stands, the new Jewish hospital is to be built.

But if the Thomson house is razed, many others remain, some of them seeming to shrink back from the steep cut of Dyckman Street and to look down disapprovingly on the noisy traffic the ferry has brought. The old home of Captain William H. Flitner is at 17 Bolton Road. The Rev. Dr. George S. Payson, pastor of the Mount Washington Church for forty years and more, records that the Captain was away much of the time “sailing the seven seas,” but his wife, Louisa, made his house “the abode of peace and gentleness.”

On its door today on sees the words “Dyckman Library.” It seems that Mrs. Alexander Hamilton, who was Elisabeth Schuyler, at her death left some money to establish a free school in the upper end of Manhattan Island. Before the request could be carried out the city inaugurated its public school system, and the money was invested in Broadway real estate. By an act of the Legislature the land was presently sold and the proceeds used to found a library, of which the three remaining members of the Flitner family—Charles, Clara and the Counselor—were given charge. Charles and Clara long taught in the school on Academy Street, which is now George Washington High School, but now they take turns serving in the library, which seems surprisingly modern, with its new books and magazines, in the quaint old house.

House of Mercy on Inwood Hill (later the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children).

Passing the falling-to-pieces red house on the hill, the home of the Talcott family a half century ago, and passing the modern House of Rest for consumptives, one comes to two large frame houses in the bend of the road across from the large brick buildings where the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children now has its shelter, and the Chapel of St. Mary’s crowning the hill. Once there were three frame houses, but one of them was burned.

1884 self portrait of Puck magazine founder and Inwood Hill Resident Joseph Keppler.

In the beautiful one still standing in the corner Joseph Keppler, one of the founders of “Puck” once lived. For a long time it was vacant, and peering in at the windows one could see fragments of old furniture, and imagine, at twilight, no end of ghosts. In the night you could hear howling, most gruesome—howling of masterless dogs that had taken refuge in the caves of the valley below. Now the Keppler house is inhabited by a family named Friedauf and numerous children romp under the great apple trees and copper beeches on the lawn, and behind the lattices where straggling roses grow. But the paint is scaling, the glass of the great bow windows is breaking and the hand of decay is everywhere.

Straus residence on Bolton Road

The old Nathan Straus homestead is further along, on a noble slope overlooking the Hudson. It must have been a charming place in its prime, but it is in a melancholy state of dilapidation now. Still, there is a policeman living in it, very happily apparently. He is a fresh air enthusiast, and, not satisfied with the ozone that must enter through the cracks of the old house, he parked his two infant sons day and night for many months on the roof of the wide veranda. Stern signs, “Beware of the Dogs,” surround the Nathan Straus home, but if you are brave enough to pass the signs find the dogs that are playing with the apple cheeked youngsters are most amiable and waggy of tail.

Across the road from the big house, if you penetrate the thicket of sumac, you will find the stone foundations of the Straus stables. The stables are gone and their foundations are grassy terraces held up by lichened stone. There are traces of an ancient kitchen garden and grape arbor, and it is a delightful place to picnic, with great trees lifting their heads from the steep slope below, and the Ship canal beyond, thick with rowboats and motorboats and darting canoes.

The Inwood Hill home of dry goods magnate James Mcreery

To reach the McCreery house you retrace your steps to the House of Rest and then, if you don’t care to plod to Dyckman Street, scramble down a narrow path to the River Road. Walk north, past overgrown terraces and box hedges, and quaint houses with cupolas and pillars, with the river and the railroad tracks below, and at the end of the path—it is hardly more than a path, though an automobile might negotiate it—is the home of the founder of the dry goods house where our mothers shopped. It is not a beautiful building. High and square shouldered, it looks like a boarding house. But it commands a splendid view, and it has a generous air, as if it had tales to tell of the hospitality that once made it a social center.

In the parsonage, built in 1883—it is 10 Seaman Avenue now, then it was an apple orchard—lives the Rev. George Shipman Payson, who for long, lean decades kept the faith as the head of the little church that Samuel Thomson built. During his first thirty years there were but sixty-seven Protestant families within reach of the church; often he had to wade through mud knee high to the railroad station at Dyckman Street, and he was, he pathetically says, “ten miles from a beefsteak.”

The old Dyckman home, slant-roofed and brick-chimneyed, is in an excellent state of preservation, maintained by the city as a museum.  It is on Broadway, at 204th Street. There were two Dyckman brothers, Isaac and Michael, who came to Tubby Hook in 1825 and lived their lives there, active farmers and elders in the Presbyterian Church. The house where the second brother lived is standing too, a frame building at Broadway and Dyckman Street. The McDonald family has lived there a long time and can tell you of the days when there was not an apartment house between them and Harlem. A little further down Broadway, where Fort Washington Avenue starts to wind up the hill, is a quaint wooden residence, with smooth lawns and climbing roses, and a funny old barn almost toppling over, that was part of the William Henry Hayes estate.

The former William Henry Hayes estate after its conversion into the Abbey Inn.

But the Hayes home, up on the hill, is now the Abbey Inn and the resort of motorists.

We are now in Washington Heights.

C.K.G. Billings' luxurious estate, "Fort Tryon Hall"

Fort Tryon Hall, which C.K.G. Billings, the racing man, erected above the Hudson, south of the Abbey Inn, is new from its soaring towers to its pergola, though the ground on which it stands is rich in relics of the Revolutionary War. Right here, as a tablet in the rock says, Margaret Corbin, in the battle of November 16, 1776, took her dying husband’s place at the cannon he had served and served till she was wounded too.

Libby Castle, once home to Boss Tweed

Across the road from the Billings place is the Norman structure, with its narrow windows and stone towers, that is called Libby Castle, though Mr. Bolton says it shouldn’t be, for Mr. Libby was inconspicuous and lived there but a short time. Its claim to notice is that William M. Tweed, the Tammany boss, had it for his home when he was arrested for crooked practices and fled from there to Spain. The land on which it stands was purchased in 1846 by Lucius Chittendon, a New Orleans merchant, who got ninety-seven acres for $10,000. The only road there was a driveway along the line of 187th Street from Kingsbridge Road, but he built a house and lived there in it. Angus C. Richards bought a piece of the ground in 1855 and erected the castle, which in 1869 he sold to General Daniel Butterfield, who was acting for Tweed.

Old residents say that “Bill Tweed put through Fort Washington Avenue and the Boulevard.” Lafayette Boulevard is now part of Riverside Drive. It is true. Mr. Bolton says, that we owe those streets to the fact that Tweed wanted easy access to his home. But he didn’t long enjoy his home. It was made over to his son, who lost it by foreclosure to Alexander T. Stewart, the merchant, whom Tweed owed for the furnishings of the Metropolitan Hotel, which he tried too finance. And now Father Finn, of the Paulist fathers, has it for a school for his choirboys, who may be seen almost any day playing ball in the wide grounds.

Almost the most remarkable house now left is the one built by a Dr. William Sweetser in 1860 just a little north of the Bennett estate. In shape it is a Greek cross, with four wings jutting out to the four points of the compass. It is a satisfactory old house, not dilapidated, but sufficiently shabby and ancient to allow one ample food for dreams.

Click here for more Inwood history.

New York Times, September 16, 1904.

Shortly after the turn of the century a small group of investors, led by real estate “wheeler-dealer” Andrew J. Cobe, made a land grab in northern Manhattan.  Their vision—a sprawling thirty-one acre amusement park to be built on the current site of Columbia University’s Baker Field.

Cobe was a shameless self-promoter who had been kicked out of  Cuba in the late 1890’s for his role in a souvenir peso scheme. Now, surveying the open pastures, rail access and nearby waterways of Inwood, the P.T. Barnum side of Cobe instinctively kicked in.

The self appointed president of the newly formed Corporation Liquidating Company had recently made  a major acquisition.  In a move that likely caused Jan Dyckman to spin furiously in his  grave, Cobe, and his newly formed syndicate of private investors, bought all the property alongside the Spuyten Duyvil they could get their hands on.  The purchase included one of the Dyckman family’s ancestral homes.

Artists rendering of "Wonderland," New York Tribune September 13, 1904.

Now, as the chilly autumn winds bore down on shoreline, Cobe knew he could actually sell this idea.  A few plugs from the press couldn’t hurt either.

Coney Island's "Dreamland", 1905 designed by Kirby Petit and Green.

In an article published in the New York Tribune on September 13, 1904, one of  Cobe’s representatives first described the future Wonderland, “Kirby , Pettit & Green, who designed Dreamland (on Coney Island), are the architects.  Their preliminary drawings show a massive entrance, opening on a main concourse, which will stretch diagonally from end to end of the property.

New York Tribune detail of Wonderland.

This concourse will be 180 feet wide and 1,800 feet in length.  In the center of this boulevard will be a lagoon, bridged at convenient points. No two buildings will be alike, and every possible order of architecture will be introduced.  A variegated color scheme, introducing some brand new effects, is promised.

There will be a large open air amphitheatre for the production of a new fire fighting show on lines larger than have yet been attempted.  Then there will be a theatre for spectacles after the type of ‘The Storming of Port Arthur.’  A famous magician is to have his own theatre, with a stage which will make possible a new line of magic.  There will be gardens typical of different parts of the world, and several foreign villages.  An English tea garden on the banks of a miniature Thames, an old Italian town and an Alpine pass and village are among the features arranged.

1904 New York Tribune sketch of Wonderland.

An enormous swimming pool will be erected near the river front.  Part of it will be enclosed and the water kept at even temperatures, making bathing possible from May until the end of September, in water of the same temperature found in August.  Outside there will be a large pool in the open for use in the warmer months.  It is possible that the famous Sutro baths in San Francisco will be reproduced.”

Cobe expected to have the two million dollar project up and running by March of 1905, he explained in a November, 1904 New York Times article.  He also provided Times readers with more spectacular details on the park, which was, at the time, really just a just a cow pasture.

Cows grazing along the Spuyten Duyvil near turn of the century.

According to the Times, the park’s designers “have striven to make Wonderland a place very different from all other recreation parks, although the familiar ‘chutes’ will not be left out”.

Cobe’s description included not only rides, but enchanting foreign micro-cities so popular at world expositions.  “There are to be a German village, a Japanese village, a sixteenth century German castle and gaily colored pagodas.”

The old Dyckman mansion which Wonderland promoters planned on turning into a casino.

The article went on: “Within Wonderland’s boundaries is the old Dyckman mansion, which will be turned into a mammoth ballroom and casino. Between the mansion and the esplanade walk, where now is a thick grove of trees, will be gardens laid out with curving paths and rustic benches.  The natural characteristics of the grove will be interfered with as little as possible.”

In just a few short years the subway would reach Inwood and the park would become a goldmine.  That was the pitch anyway.  In the meantime workers would have all winter to build Wonderland from the ground up.

Winter wasn’t the ideal season to embark on a major construction project, but no one seemed to question Cobe’s judgment.

By the spring of 1905 Wonderland was still relatively undeveloped, but Cobe and new park director Thomas Riego Hart assured New Yorkers of a July 1^st opening.

Hart provided more tantalizing details on the layout of the park to a New York Herald reporter on April 2^nd.

“Wonderland”, the Herald scribe told readers, “will strive to be what its name implies.  It will embrace some of the leading features of Earls Court, in London; Willow Grove Park, in Philadelphia, and several of the successes which have made Luna Park and Dreamland, at Coney Island, famous.  In addition, it will have Italian gardens, lakes, Venetian canals and deep shaded rambles.”

The park would also now include, thirty-two different amusements, including “a reproduction of the storming and taking of 203 Metre Hill, at Port Arthur” to be directed by Bolossy Kiralfy.

1883 Kiralfy Brothers expo poster.

Beginning the 1880’s, the Hungarian born Brother’s Kiralfy dazzled world audiences with their theatrical extravaganzas involving a then primitive form of electricity.  They were especially renowned for their riverfront spectaculars—the bright lights dancing on the water’s surface.  Wonderland offered just such a backdrop.

Composer Walter Damroach was to be a headliner at the opening of Wonderland.

If the promoter’s claims were to be believed, the venue would also attract some of the most popular musicians of 1905.   “Wonderland”, the Herald reported,  “is scheduled to have Walter Damroach, if possible, open the season and to engage Sousa and Victor Herbert for some time in the summer.”

Six days after the Herald article, the real estate section of the New York Times announced: “Wonderland Sold for $1,000,000.”

1904 New York Tribune sketch of Wonderland.

According to the article, “The tract, which consists of nearly all the land included between Broadway, Two Hundred and Eighteenth Street and the Harlem Ship Canal, was bought last fall by Andrew J. Cobe from the Dyckman estate and has since been headed by Thomas Reigo Hart as the site for an amusement park. It is said that the purchase means that the amusement enterprise will be carried out.”

Despite such promising reports, the grand July 1^st opening never took place. Cows continued to graze where Venetian canals and Japanese gardens had been so excitedly promised just months before.

Amusement Park Abandoned, New York Times, Nov. 23, 1905.

In November of 1905, the death knell sounded on Wonderland.  Wrote the New York Times, “Andrew J. Cobe has sold, through David Stewart, a one half interest in the ‘Wonderland’ property at Broadway and the Harlem Ship Canal.  It was said yesterday that all projects had been abandoned for converting this property into an amusement park, and that it would be developed for resale.”

Wonderland had been but an illusion.

Columbia University Baker Field at 218th and Broadway, 1927.

In 1921, Columbia University, using money donated by Park Avenue banker George Fisher Baker, Jr., purchased the abandoned Wonderland site.  Today Columbia’s athletic center, including Baker Field, occupies what could have been the Coney Island of Northern Manhattan.

When Wonderland’s “wheeler dealer” promoter died in December of 1924, the Times noted his passing with two simple sentences, “Andrew J. Cobe, real estate and theatrical broker, with offices at 233 West Forty-second Street, died yesterday of heart disease at his residence, 76 West Eighty-sixth Street, age 59.  His wife, two sons, a daughter and two brothers survive.”

A bit of Inwood trivia: Jason, the owner of the Indian Road Cafe considered naming his establishment “Wonderland.”

Click here for more Inwood history.

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

What follows is a 1921 account of life inside that community written by New York Tribune reporter Eleanor Booth Simmons.

I have just been to Inwood, looking for a ghost I heard about.

The Pedestrian gave me the tip. The Pedestrian is fond of legging it around Manhattan Island, and in one of his rambles last summer he came across this house that was reputed to be haunted.

The ghost itself he never saw, but he told me about the house the other day, and I went there, but I was not successful in running down the ghost. Consequently this is not a ghost story, but it is, however, the story of something I found there that is worth many spooks, and is almost as remarkable. When, in this year 1921, a group of people can form a colony that is in New York and not yet of it—can beat the high cost of living, twiddle their fingers at landlords, and within fifty minutes of the theater district dwell in perfect simplicity amid surroundings that many a summer resort can’t touch, isn’t it a miracle? That is what I found on the old ghost’s stomping ground.

Of course, it is too bad that the specter apparently is no longer there. A ghost always lends distinction. But somebody has leased the haunted house and installed modern plumbing, and no spook is going to stand for that sort of thing. Or it may have taken umbrage at some Greenwich Village artists who have been coming around the place, and maidens who have been seen posing in barefoot dances in the greenery. If this ghost is the shade of one of the Indians who owned the region three centuries ago, it has seen some interpretive dances in its time that ought to render it quite indifferent to anything paleface maidens draped in tinted veils could do, but if it is a stern revolutionary-patriot ghost its views would naturally be conservative.

The Pedestrian could not tell me what form the apparition took.

“There are a dozen interesting things, it might be, for the place,” he said, “is packed with history and tradition. The haunted house is on the northern tip of Manhattan Island, on the edge of what used to be Spuyten Duyvil Creek, but it is now widened and deepened to make the ship canal. Long ago it was an inn with a beer garden, with a fat German for mine host, and rowing parties would come from Jersey across the Hudson and make the forests of Inwood Hill ring with their revels. So the ghost might be a thirsty Jerseyite, haunting the scenes of happier times. Again, it might be the shade of Peter Stuyvesant’s trumpeter, old Anthony Van Corlear, who, according to Washington Irving, was drowned in the creek while crossing to warn the burghers of a British invasion. Or it might be a repentant Hessian, doomed to linger around the spot where he killed some patriot. Or it might be one of Henry Hudson’s party, who touched those shores in 1609, in the good ship Half Moon, and had a sharp fight with the Indians. Look it up, anyway, if you’re collecting ghosts. Take the Broadway subway to 207th Street, walk west to Seaman Avenue, follow the winding cinder road to the boat landing, and a little way ‘round the cove is the haunted house, right in the shadow of New York’s famous 123-feet-high tulip tree that first saw the light in the year 1690.”

I’ll say that that cinder road is a wise precaution on the part of a colony desiring to be quiet and free from the maddening crowd of holiday picnickers. Any lady intending to explore along there is advised not to waste her open-work silk stockings on the trip, for at the end it will be just the same as if she had worn solid black lisle. But mighty trees lean down above the road from the rise to the west, and when you reach the boat landing you forget all about the dust, for there before you is the peacefulist little paradise in the world, a veritable cove of content. When I saw it I instantly began to calculate how long it would take to save up enough dollars to acquire a dog and buy a houseboat or run up a shack, so as to settle down there for the rest of my life.

You cannot live there without a dog. It simply isn’t done. They all have them. You are met at the boat landing by deputations of dogs, a big black Newfoundland, a brown setter, a white bulldog, but the charm of the place is on them, and they come suavely, waggingly, interested, but polite. I counted one on every houseboat, and several enjoying pleasant cruises in small craft on the bay.

The houseboats lie on the right hand, hugging the half-moon shore, and beyond one sees little yachts and power boats whose owners have been drawn by the beauty and tranquility of the place. Spreading out to the west and north are the waters of the ship canal, leading from the narrow, winding Harlem River to the Hudson. On the other side of the canal, further north, rises Marble Hill, where fine homes stand on the ground over which Knyphausen’s Hessian troops pushed in 1776 to build their earthworks on the rocky summit of Isham Park, in the Dyckman Valley. It was right off Tubby Hook, now known as Inwood Hill, in the curve of which lies the houseboat colony, that the British frigate “Pearl” tacked to a fro in the Hudson, throwing shells across the wooded ridge that Mayor Hylan can have for a public park any minute the Board of Estimate decides to buy the property from the man who owns it.

There is a horrible rumor that when the city does this it will fell those magnificent trees and make neat little grassy terraces all the way down the hill to the water on the canal side. But it doesn’t seem as if even a politician could commit a crime like that.

Turning from the houseboats I saw a gate to the left which said “Private” in large letters, so I passed through. Inside was a house very old and picturesque in shape, very new and fresh as to the white and green paint. A man with a hammer was putting up curtains, and a woman in a fetching artist’s cretonne apron was assisting. A large white gentlemanly bulldog appeared to be bossing the job. I inquired if they had dispossessed the ghost, but they said no; the haunted house was further along, around the bend of the shore. But it occurred to me that it was too light to hunt ghosts, and I liked the looks of these people, so I lingered, and not being able to get rid of me they gave me tea and told me about the colony.

They had, it seemed, just happened on the place when cruising about in their powerboat last summer. They are Mr. and Mrs. Harry Voorhees and Crew. Crew, the dog, was named that because, Mr. Voorhees being captain and Mrs. Voorhees mate, he couldn’t be anything else. They saw the old house, fell in love with it, rented it, and resolved to start an artist’s colony. Mrs. Voorhees’ proper work is magazine illustrating and pottery making, consequently she is never so happy as when transforming a hut into a studio or making a bout-house into a sleeping lodge. This house, which was falling to pieces, was material that appealed to them both, so they moved right in and had a lovely time remodeling it over their heads. They were so fascinated that they couldn’t leave when winter came, but gave up their city flat and remained, heating the house with kerosene and toting water from the spring. Next winter they will have a fireplace. What they’ve done already would fill pages in an architectural magazine. A crumbling porch has become an open air dining room, and the once ugly kitchen is charming with a gate door, white shelves and picturesque lattices.

‘What do you do for a telephone?”

“The Reliance Motor Boat Company, which leases this land from the rich man who owns it, has a ‘phone line in its office down the road, and the watchman is always there to take messages. We could have one here but we haven’t cared to.”

“What about a bathroom?”

“We’re going to pipe water from the spring and put in a bathroom. The hill is full of springs, the best water in the world.”

It is. I had a drink from the tin cup that’s chained at the main spring, farther along the path, and if all the water is as clear and sparkling as that, one could almost excuse William H. Anderson.

“Marketing,” Mrs. Voorhees went on, “is easy, the 207th Street shops are such a short walk away, and the fruit and vegetables are so fresh there. And when we get back we have these woods, and the lights on the water, and the heavenly quiet.”

Warm Sundays are the only time when the quiet is disturbed. Then the bourgeoisie finds its way hither from the teeming city, and, bursting through the gate marked “Private,” trails with its numerous offspring along the path to litter the ground under the big tree with pop bottles and banana skins and wiener-wurst ends an picture supplements and burst balloons. Then is the quiet rent by the nasal conversation of Mamies and Freddies, and there is no solitude in the primeval wood because they are reclining everywhere with their arms around each other’s waists.

About the nicest house in the colony is the Roanoke. Mrs. May Waldis is its mistress, and she belongs to the water, for she holds any number of medals she’s won in swimming feats. Her husband, an electrician, built the boat. Inside it’s like a commodious four-room flat, with hot and cold water, a bath room, electric lights from their own battery, a piano, a gramophone, all the luxuries of home. Copper screening encloses the roofed verandas, and Chesapeake, the curly brown dog, guards the place. They had a dance on the boat every week last winter and were as comfortable and gay, Mrs. Walldis says, as if they’d been living at the Waldorf-Astoria, and they were much more free and they put money in the bank!

I left the Roanoke by the narrow curving gangway that connects it with the shore and rambled along the path, stopping to inspect one or two artist’s shacks, and presently I came to the Big Tree with its protecting fence, and then to the haunted house.

It didn’t look haunted. Carpenters were at work on it. The weather-beaten clapboards were being replaced by new lumber. Out of the back door looked a woman’s rosy face.

“You don’t look like the ghost I was told I would find here,” I said. She stared, and then laughed.

“I did hear there used to be a ghost in this house,” she answered. “But I guess it didn’t like our improvements. I’m Mrs. Carl Freitchie, and my husband and I are fixing up the place to live in. See the large windows we’re putting in and the partitions being knocked out to make a nice dining room. We only lease it, for they won’t sell, but we don’t think we’ll be disturbed and we’ll get, in the pleasure of living here and the differences between apartment house rents and this, everything we spend on the alterations many times over.

‘We’re going to have a garden, though the ground is so full of oyster shells, left, it’s said, by the Indians who held their feasts and powwows here, that it’s not always easy to plant things. “If that ghost comes around here,” I’ll let you know. But I think it’s left for good.”

Near by a man was working on the frame of a houseboat that he is building in odd hours.

“You ought to’ve come around in Pop Seeley’s time,” he said to me. “I’ve heard that Pop and the ghost were on real good terms. Pop was a boatman and a great character, and he always had charge of things in these parts before that motorboat company came. 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. Maybe he had the ghost for company. But Pop is dead now, and everything is changed.

And that was all I could find out. I gave up the ghost and mounted the trail to a point from which I could watch the evening descend over the colony. Dinner-time was coming; on the little yachts and power-boats men and women brought out folding tables and spread them on the tiny decks. Inviting odors rose from the cook’s galleys. Bright-colored canoes came skimming home, with sun-burned boys and girls in bathing suits at the paddles. No, the Inlet was no place for a ghost. It was altogether too happy.

Inwood Hill Boat Basin seen in a 1935 photo.

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.