tulip

Inwood’s Forgotten Houseboat Colonies

Ship Wheel

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 [...]

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“Pop” Seeley: The Old Man of the River

Pop Seeley cabin, Inwood, NYC

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. [...]

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A Potter’s Lament

Inwood Pottery

“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 [...]

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Inwood Hill in the 1920′s

Inwood Hill boat colony 1904

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 [...]

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Artist Ernest Lawson

Ernest Lawson

The natural beauty of the Spuyten Duyvil has long been the inspiration for artistic endeavors. Its marshland, slick currents, wildlife and humanity struck a particular chord within turn of the century painter Ernest Lawson. Often painting landscapes, Lawson, for much of his life, focused his impressionistic brush strokes on that narrow spit of water separating Manhattan from the Bronx.

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Tulip Tree of Old Inwood

The Tulip Tree of old Inwood, New York.

Before Inwood Hill Park, before there even was an Inwood, a mighty Tulip grew in the forest. In a new city lacking a sense of anything from antiquity, New Yorkers latched onto a tree. The giant tulip of Inwood became a popular destination for picnickers, school children and hikers looking to escape the other world [...]

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