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subway

Isham Hill in 1913

Inwood, New York City in 1913

Since launching MyInwood.net I’ve read thousands of century-old news accounts regarding all things Inwood, but the following article, written in 1916, is one of my favorites. The account contains so many elements from my little corner of the neighborhood—The Seaman Estate, Isham Park, the still-standing Hurst house on Park Terrace East and 215th and the [...]

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Inwood’s First Public School

PS 52, Inwood New York City, 1905 postcard

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

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The Building of Modern Inwood

Thumbnail image for The Building of Modern Inwood

During the mid to late 1800′s, Inwood was a quiet, pastoral environ with cows crossing dirt roads–in fact there were very few roads to speak of.  Perhaps the old neighborhood might be best summed up in the words of Robert Perkins, who, during the retirement ceremony for the Reverend George Shipman Payson, pastor of the [...]

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The Old Nagle Cemetery

Inwood Cemetery, NYC

In mid-17th century Jan Nagle and Jan Dyckman traveled to the New World and settled in northern Manhattan. For more than two centuries the families farmed the land, raised cattle, planted orchards, built bridges and homes and even intermarried. And while Dyckman is a familiar Inwood name, largely thanks to the preservation of the post-Revolutionary [...]

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Sherman Avenue in 1906

Thumbnail image for Sherman Avenue in 1906

Back in 1906 the elevated IRT train (today’s one train) first reached Inwood.  With it came the first true housing boom the neighborhood had ever seen.  Seemingly overnight apartment buildings sprang up east of Broadway to house working class folks lured uptown by an affordable, and suddenly accessible, part of Manhattan. Below is a 1906 [...]

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Turn of the Century Inwood

1892 photo of young woman in Inwood, New York.

Inwood at the turn of the century was a neighborhood in flux. Old sketches capture a frontier-like atmosphere, where dirt roads,  saloons and churches seem to be the only infrastructure. The churches were in fact the glue that held this fragile little community together and some of the best descriptions we have of the era [...]

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