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.

Herb Maruska with Ford Station Wagon in 1968

Frequent MyInwood contributer Herb Maruska grew up in Inwood.  His memories of post World War II Inwood are as detailed as they are fascinating.

This time around Herb takes us into the kitchens, basement and furnace of his childhood home located in 157-159 Vermilyea.  He calls this piece “Coal and Soap.”

Thanks Herb for this peek into a life before many of the modern conveniences we now take for granted.

Coal and Soap

Written by Herb Maruska:

The apartment house at 157-159 Vermilyea Avenue was built in 1910, so coal was originally used for heating the building. Although in the years following the Second World War, many buildings in the neighborhood slowly converted to oil heat, Mrs. Lichtenstein, the owner of the building, did not want to spend the money necessary for conversion to oil. So even in the 1960’s, the building continued to rely on coal.

157-159 Vermilyea Avenue in 1964

The coal was delivered from the Weber-Bunke-Lange Coal Yard on the Harlem River at 203rd Street. The coal was brought to the yard in barges, and dumped into a huge pile of coal on the shore. Coal was delivered to various apartment houses in coal trucks. When the truck arrived at 157 Vermilyea Avenue, it needed to come up on the sidewalk so that the coal could be dumped into the coal bin in the basement using a slide. The first apartment on the ground floor on the left side of the building served as the coal bin.

Weber-Bunke-Lange Coal 203 Street and Harlem River in 1935

On the day when the delivery of coal was scheduled, Harry  “Wujeku” Konopka (Wujeku means uncle in Polish), the super, would line up garbage cans in the street to prevent a car from being parked where the coal truck needed to cross over the sidewalk. When the truck was in place, he would open the front widow of the apartment and the coal chute would be set at the back of the truck, ranging through the window. Then the truck driver would raise the hopper and let the coal slide into the basement.

The coal then needed to be moved through the building to the furnace. A wheelbarrow was employed for this task. Konopka would use a shovel to fill the wheelbarrow with coal, and then he had to maneuver the load though the hallways back to the furnace. This was not an easy job for an elderly man, but he persevered. He would then open the heavy front door of the large cast iron furnace, and pitch the new load of coal into the flames.

Vermilyea Avenue- View from window in 1965.

Coal was not the only fuel that was burnt in the furnace at 157 Vermilyea Avenue. All of the garbage that tenants sent to the basement in the dumbwaiter cabinet was also burned. Remember that the functioning dumbwaiter was located in the back end of the hallway, near the rear apartments, and you just loaded your bags of trash and pulled the rope to send the trash downstairs. Wujeku would unload each bag and critically examine the contents, looking for small valuable items such as alarm clocks and food scraps for his guard dogs. But then, what was he supposed to do with the undesirable garbage? Why, he dumped it all into the furnace! The garbage served to supplement the meager coal rations which Mrs. Lichtenstein purchased from Weber-Bunke-Lange.

Burning garbage is actually quite unpleasant. Typically the supply consisted of many copies of the New York Daily News. The pages would all catch fire in the furnace, but then the strong current of hot air would lift the flaming pages up through the chimney. Yesterday’s Daily News pages, all blackened around the edges, would then flutter slowly back down to the ground in our courtyard. But if there was a gust of wind at just the right moment, a page or two would drift into our apartment through an open window. My father would not read the Daily News: he was too intellectual. He read the New York Times. But as a kid, I enjoyed being able to read the simpler stories in the Daily News which were delivered a day late through our kitchen window.

Weber-Bunke-Lange Coal at 203 Street and Harlem River in 1935.

Old burnt newspapers weren’t the only effluent from the coal furnace which wafted through the kitchen window. We also got coal tar. Naturally the ancient coal furnace had no scrubber system. Whatever chemicals were generated from burning the filthy coal just went up the chimney. Coal is not a clean source of heat. It contains all sorts of junk, including pieces of ferns and dead dinosaurs. So when the coal was being burnt, black smoke puffed out of the chimney. The chemicals quickly cooled in the atmosphere and forming tiny black droplets of tar, which sank back to earth, much like the Daily News pages. This coal tar would slowly but surely make its way in through our kitchen window. A coating of black slime would be deposited on the window frame, the window sill, and on Aunt Vera’s plants. These evergreen plants came originally from Dr. Manisoff’s house downtown, where Vera worked as a housemaid when she originally arrived from Slovakia.

Little Herbie Maruska in a tree, October, 1948.

After awhile, the green leaves of Aunt Vera’s plants would turn black and get slimy from the coal tar. The kitchen window region needed a thorough cleaning to remove the residue of coal tar. But first, how did the coal tar residue get inside the apartment?

From somewhere back in the 1800’s until around 1950, homes were supplied with coal gas to provide lighting, heat, and cooking gas. The process for turning solid chunks of coal into gas was originally developed in Germany around 1780. Basically, in the processing plant they burn coal while spraying water onto the fire. You get the following basic chemical reaction:

C + H2O -> CO + H2

This reaction reads:  C (coal) + H2O (water) yields CO (carbon monoxide) and H2 (hydrogen). The carbon monoxide and hydrogen mixture was then funneled into a pipe and sent to an enormous gas storage tank. The gas storage tank which was located on Fordham Landing Road and Cedar Avenue just across the Harlem River from Inwood is shown below. Carbon monoxide is extremely toxic. At a concentration of 1% in the air in a room, a single breath is instantly fatal. At a concentration of 4% in room air, hydrogen can detonate. Good grief! And this deadly gas mixture was routed from the cast iron storage tank into all of the apartments in the neighborhood. What if the stove leaked? How did we survive?

Coal Gas Storage Tank on Fordham Landing Road

The answer to survival in case there was a deadly gas leak from the kitchen stove was to keep the kitchen window open at all times. Summer or winter, rain or shine, our kitchen window was always open.

Parakeet on kitchen windowsill in 157 Vermilyea Avenue.

You see, both carbon monoxide and hydrogen are lighter than air, so the gas molecules would tend to rise up and float out the window. Some birds might inhale the fumes and fall out of the sky, but at least we were all safe. But since the kitchen window was always open to allow the carbon monoxide to exude from the house through the window, this open window also provided an ingress for coal tar emanating from the chimney. A dangerous health trade-off! But coal tar, like the tar from cigarettes, leads to a slow death later in the future, while carbon monoxide promised instant death. So my parents chose to leave the window open.

So how was my poor mother, Emma Maruska, supposed to clean the slimy dark coal tar off her window frame, and especially off the leaves of her Sister Vera’s plants which were living in our apartment. This task required Grandma’s Lye Soap. Julia “Ciotka” Konopka provided facilities for manufacturing Grandma’s Lye Soap in the basement of 157 Vermilyea Avenue. The Lye Soap was created in a large steel vat which had been produced originally by Wujeku. The vat was square, maybe four feet by four feet in area, and maybe with sides two or three inches high. To make lye soap, you needed lye and lard.

An Example of Grandma’s Lye Soap.

Women from the Old Country tended to fry most of the meat which they prepared for the family dinner. So, for example, pork chops would be fried in a pan on a top burner of the stove, with the pan filled with gobs of Crisco. The heat was produced by burning the coal gas.

Emma, Herbie, Betty at 214 St 1946

Afterwards, a prudent lady like Emma would pour the molten lard, flavored with pork fat, into an empty jar. Of course, Julia Konopka and a few other ladies in the building would also save all of their used cooking fat in little jars. When there were sufficient jars of used fat, they were taken down to the basement. Julia provided cans of Draino, which is lye. The fat and the lye, along with some water, were all loaded into the Grandma’s Lye Soap vat. Julia Konopka had a secret recipe from Poland so she knew the exact ratios of the components which were needed. All of the ingredients were carefully stirred together with a large wooden spoon. The vat was placed on four old red bricks and heat was supplied from below. The soap was brewed for several days. Finally it became a smooth yellow mass, spread evenly throughout the vat. Now the heat was removed, and the lye soap was allowed to cool. Afterwards Ciotka took a large carving knife and sawed the soap into convenient pieces, about two inches wide, and four inches long. The soap bricks were stored on a shelf. Then Emma could come down to the basement and get a bar of lye soap, which in addition to cleaning tar off the kitchen window, was useful for cleaning pots and pans, and doing the laundry in the kitchen sink.

Grandma’s Lye Soap was popular throughout the land. In fact, in 1952 Johnny Standley made a hit record about Grandma’s Lye Soap which spent two weeks at number one on the Billboard Pop Music Survey:

It’s in the Book
By: Johnny Standley

Do you remember grandma’s lye soap
Good for everything in the home?
And the secret was in the scrubbing
It wouldn’t suds and couldn’t foam

Then let us all sing right out of grandma’s lye soap
Used for, used for everything on the place
For pots and kettles, the dirty dishes
And for your hands and for your face

Little Herman and brother Thurman
Had an aversion to washing their ears
Grandma scrubbed them with the lye soap
And they haven’t heard a word in years

Then let us all sing right out of grandma’s lye soap
Sing all out, all over the place
The pots and kettles, the dirty dishes
And for your hands and also for your face.

Mrs. O’Malley, out in the valley
Suffered from ulcers, I understand
She swallowed a cake of grandma’s lye soap
Has the cleanest ulcers in the land

Then let us all sing right out of grandma’s lye soap
Sing right out, all over the place
The pots oh, the pots and pans, oh the dirty dishes
And for the hands and for your face.

There was I, eight years old, roaming around Inwood Hill Park, warbling this delightful song. I especially liked the part about Herman and Thurman getting their ears washed with lye soap. No, my mom never washed my ears with the stuff!

Thanks again Herb. I think we’ll all have this song stuck in our heads for some time to come.

If you’d like to read more about Herb and his Inwood childhood, click here.

Library books and old newspaper articles provide wonderful glimpses into the history of any neighborhood. That said, those who grew up and lived in Inwood can provide a much more intimate portrait of what life was really like.

In this latestest installment of My Inwood Memories, former Inwood resident Herb Maruska takes us into the old neighborhood in the days and years following World War II. His memories and photos of growing up on Vermilyea Avenue provide a rare snap-shot of Inwood in the 1940’s and early 50′s.

Take it from here Herb…

“I was born on July 17, 1944 in Seagoville, Texas, in an internment camp for German-Americans rounded up by the United States Government as potential threats to democracy, just as Japanese-Americans were confined to prison camps.

I was just a little new born baby, and in my opinion hardly a threat to society, but here is picture of me in the camp, apparently ready to cause mischief.

Herb Maruska's Seagoville, Texas Internment Camp birth certificate.

A U.S. Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service list of Civilian Alien Enemies in Custody on December 31, 1944 at the Seagoville Internment Camp, included little me, my father and my mother (who was a United States citizen). Oh well.

After the war we were sent back to New York City.

Here I am in my high chair in 1945.

My parents, Paul Maximilian  and Emma Maruska, soon found themselves in apartment 2-C at 157-159 Vermilyea Avenue in the Inwood Section of Manhattan.

Inwood was pretty much divided east and west by Broadway. On the west side were generally more affluent people who lived in nicer apartment houses. Most of these people were Jewish. On the east side of Broadway the apartment houses were older and more run down. Here most of the residents were Irish.

It was certainly difficult to find an apartment in New York City in 1946 when all of the victorious American soldiers came home and married their sweethearts, and to make matters worse, my parents did not have good references, having just arrived from the internment camp in Texas. So they could not afford to be very choosy.

Herb Maruska's building, 157-159 Vermilyea Ave, in 1964

157-159 Vermilyea Avenue was squarely in the Irish part of town, but it was owned by Mrs. Lichtenstein, who was Jewish. Because both my parents were Bohemian-style intellectuals, they fit in more easily with Jews than with simple working-class Catholics.

So my father lived in a house owned by a Jewish lady and worked as a salesman for a dairy business owned by a Jewish man named Charles Schreiber. I think that these facts show that despite having been interned by the U.S. government on suspicion of being an “enemy alien,” Jewish people did not consider him to have been a Nazi, which of course he never was. Otherwise we would not have had so many Jewish friends.

It is impossible for me to remember the details of the first few years of my life. As best as I can figure, my father went off to work every day as a dairy food salesman and my mother stayed home with me.

The front of the apartment house faced west, and when you entered our main door from the hall, you were facing north. All of the windows of apartment 2-C were facing north. We lived on the second floor overlooking a courtyard. We never got any sunshine in this little apartment. Our building had running water, bathrooms with toilets and steam heat. They clearly represented state-of-the-art construction in 1910.

Initially, the adults shared a standard double bed in the bedroom, while I slept in a crib in the same room. I figure that the bedroom was about 9 ft by 11 ft. You entered the bedroom through a glass panel door which had a semi-transparent curtain on it. My parent’s bed had a wooden headboard which was set up against the right (east) wall. This wall was the rear wall of the apartment, with another unit behind it. The far (north) wall was solid brick, the exterior wall of the building. The left wall had a window in the center which looked out into the courtyard. To the left of the window were stacked a trunk, and then two suitcases, filled with clothing and other possessions. To the right of the window was a chest of drawers, with five drawers. My father had the top drawer. He was very neat, and all of his under-clothes were carefully arranged in his drawer. He also kept his wallet and other papers in this drawer. My mother was totally messy. Her drawer looked like a rat’s nest! The bottom drawer was for sheets and towels. There were two other drawers: one for myself, and eventually one for my younger brother Rolly.

My parents never made any good friends in the neighborhood. They talked with the Polish people in the basement (Harry Konopka, the Super, and his wife Julia). And they said “hello” to some people with whom they crossed paths in the Park. But my mother’s only real friends seemed to be her three sisters. My father had several German friends. Most of these friends he met in the internment camp. His best friend was Otto Burkhardt, who, like my father, was a pastry chef.

Otto had a wife named Elfriede, but they never had any children. Somehow the Burkhardts were able to scrape together enough money to set up a bakery shop in Queens, at the intersection of Broadway and 31st Street. The Burkhardts worked exceedingly hard and made a great success out of their bakeshop. Since my father was a pastry chef by trade, Otto invited him to join the business. However, my father could not see himself toiling in front of a hot oven. He suffered from “big shot” tendencies, which in the end did him no good whatsoever. During Christmas season the bakery was extremely busy, and my father would make himself a little extra money by moonlighting there.

Paul Maximilian Maruska (center) with Otto Burckhardt (right) & the Schillers on McCreery Meadow in 1950.

Working in the bakeshop was no joke. My father would travel to the shop on Friday evening and sleep over in the Burkhardt’s apartment. They lived in the building over the bakery. The bakers had to be up and at it by 4 AM. They had to get the oven going, and then start making the cakes. Elfriede minded the store and dealt with the customers. By 2:00 pm all of the baking was complete and the bakers went to sleep. In later years as the business prospered, Otto employed several other bakers, always Germans, to help him on a regular basis. The Burkhardts did so well that they bought the entire apartment building. Then they bought themselves a house in New Jersey, and a house back in Germany

In the early years in Inwood, my father also knew people called Schiller and people called Rohner, camp buddies. However, as the years away from the camp grew longer, these friends drifted away.

He had one other important German friend, a woman named Martha Culkin. Culkin was her married name, but her husband was long gone. She was originally from Alsace-Lorraine, on the border between France and Germany, but she spoke German. She had no children, and lived in one of those single-room-occupancy hotels on the West Side around 90th Street. She visited our apartment frequently, and so she became “Aunt Martha.” Through the years, my mother and Martha became good friends.

Martha was a watchmaker by trade. She worked in the Bulova Watch Factory by Queens Plaza. She smoked endless cigarettes. Martha brought lots of presents for my birthday and Christmas, so she was a dear “Aunt.” She never learned how to cook, and ate all of her meals at a diner on Columbus Avenue. She would remain friends with the family until she died many years later.

My father pictured himself as a great political leader. Now that Hitler and his gang had been exterminated, Paul Maximilian felt that he would be especially useful back in Germany, to help the country re-establish itself after the devastation from the Second World War. He was extremely anti-Russian, and in fact referred to the cockroaches, which infested his apartment as “Russians.” Whenever he would step on a roach, he would curse and mutter, “Another Russian is dead!” He and Martha argued endlessly about the political situation in the world. My mother did not bother to listen to their ravings, and instead buried herself in the reading of history books. She was especially interested in books which confirmed her suspicion that Jesus was not really the Son of God.

Needless to say, I grew up without any positive religious convictions. Although both of my parents had been originally baptized as Catholics back in Europe, we never went to mass in Good Shepherd Church.

From December 26th-27th, 1947, there fell 26.4″ of snow in New York City. This would hold up as the largest recorded snowfall total in New York City until 2006. I believe that I can remember being taken over to Inwood Park that weekend and to my glee, the park benches were buried under the snow, and little Herbie was able to walk along the seats of the benches without having to climb up onto them.

My brother Roland was born on February 21, 1948. There was hardly enough money in the house to support three people, and now there were four! When little Rolly was brought home from the hospital, I had a cold and had to wear a handkerchief over my face to look at the new baby. We wound up with two cribs in the apartment, one in the bedroom, and one in the living room. You would have thought that at 3½, I would have been too big to fit in a crib, but somehow we survived.

As the years went by, both Rolly and me got bigger and bigger. Obviously at some age I could no longer fit into a crib. As far as I can tell, a steel folding bed was acquired and placed in the living room along the east wall. This is where I slept, while little Rolly had his crib in the bedroom along with mom and dad. However, Rolly also got bigger, and finally he also outgrew a crib.Somewhere along the way, the whole bedroom was re-arranged. My parents threw out the old double bed and bought two new single beds. Rolly and I each got one of these new beds, which were placed in the bedroom. Rolly got the inner bed, along the north wall, while I got the outer bed, by the door.

Where did my parents sleep? This is difficult to figure out. There was a steel folding bed in the living room. There was also a standard sofa. So apparently one of them (probably my mother) slept on the sofa, and the other one slept on the bed. It seems a little strange, but I certainly remember a sofa in the living room placed along the south wall. There was also a large stuffed chair, known as the Green Chair, which sat along the west wall, next to the radiator.

The building had steam heat. The furnace in the basement had a boiler attached to it to generate hot water and steam. The steam went up through the building in pipes to provide heat in the winter. There were three pipes in the apartment, each pipe being maybe three inches in diameter, and a radiator in the living room. It got very hot, and if you touched it, you got badly burned. After many years, the heat given off by the radiator caused the Green Chair to dry up and fall apart. Then we got a new chair.

One day I was sitting upon the right arm of the sofa, making believe that it was a “horse,” and trying to get the “horse” to “gallop,” when the arm broke away from the sofa. Good grief, I’m sure that I got severely punished for that maneuver!

Look at the Christmastime picture below. We are sitting in the corner of the living room. My father’s bookcase is set against the wall which has the bedroom behind it. Notice the cloth stuck to the corner of the bookcase to prevent Little Rolly from slamming his head while running around the room. The Christmas tree is set up on a table which later was used as the meal table in the kitchen. The kitchen was very small, and this table was a little bit too large for the space it needed to set in.

Maruska Family December 25, 1949

Rosendo and Fe Palafox came to America from the Phillipines. They lived in Apartment 1-C. They looked Oriental.  During the Second World War, the Palafoxes had to walk down the streets of Inwood wearing signs around their necks stating “We are not Japanese” so that they would not be hauled off to a Japanese Internment Camp. This sort of behavior in America makes me very uncomfortable. What a shame. I don’t know what sort of business Mr. Palafox was in, but he liked to take pictures. He took all of the nice color photographs which I have. He did well for himself, and around 1950 or so the family bought a house and moved to Queens. We never saw them again.

Inwood Park Meadow Fe Palafox, Emma, Eddie, Rolly, Herbie 1949

The Palafoxes had relatives in Apartment 1-E named Garcia. The Garcia family members also wore signs around their necks disclaiming Japanese origins.   Pino Garcia and his family moved away around 1952.

They were not the only victims of misplaced hostility.

Years later, I attended PS 98, and all of my friends were Jewish. Our family name sounds Jewish (it is a Czech name). Because we never attended mass at Good Shepherd, the neighbors assumed we were Jewish. On several occasions I was over on the meadow in Inwood park with my little Jewish friends, when we were attacked by a bunch of Catholic guys. They beat us up, and I remember getting my face pushed into the mud, and all of that stuff. Also, there were times when Catholic kids chased me down the street, yelling, “Let’s get the Jew!” Ugh.

Finally, when I grew up, I joined the Catholic Church. I married a Catholic girl in a beautiful church wedding. We had our kids baptised. One day as an adult in my 20′s, I was sitting on the benches in the park, overlooking the salt marsh. The same old group of Catholic guys, who used to beat us up, came over and sat down by me. They said, “Oh, here is the Jew.” I said, “Actually, I am not a Jew, I am a Catholic just like you. Just because my parents chose not to attend mass, does not mean that you should attack me nor should you beat up my other Jewish friends. “Gosh,” said one of the guys, “We beat him up for nothing!” Then they all offered me their apologies, which I accepted.

The 157-159 Vermilyea Avenue building always had a janitor living in the basement. This person was known as the “Super,” which indicated he was the superintendent of the building. But the Super never supervised anything. The Super lived on the ground floor at the back of the building. This basement was built on the surface of the ground, which is why there were so many stairs in front up to the first floor, where rent-paying tenants lived. The basement contained all of the rooms which existed on the upper floors, but only a few of the rooms were livable. The rooms at the front of the building, by the street, were used for storage, including the storage of coal. Coal was delivered in a coal truck which pulled up on the sidewalk and dumped the chunks through a basement window. In the center of the basement there was located the furnace, which provided heat in the winter, and hot water all year around. The furnace burned the coal, which needed to be hauled back to the furnace in a wheelbarrow. Ugh! The furnace was located in the region of the basement directly below the living room of Apartment 2-C.

The two rear apartments were joined together. These formed a large apartment where the Super lived. When I was a little boy, the Super was an old man from Poland called Harry Konopka. He had a wife named Julia Konopka. They had a daughter named Olga. Harry was a tall lean man with a thin white mustache, while Julia was short and round. They looked like your typical image of old time Polish peasants. My parents were friendly with the Konopka’s because they also came from north-central Europe. I called Mr. Konopka “Wujeku” (pronounce oo-yuh-koo) and I called Mrs. Konopka “Ciotka” (pronounced set-ka). These words mean uncle and aunt in Polish.

A word here about the “dumbwaiters” in the building. Apparently back in 1910 when the buildings were constructed, people felt that it was too much trouble to carry their garbage down to the basement. So each apartment was outfitted with a dumbwaiter. The dumbwaiter was a box located in a shaft which ran from the basement up to the roof. There was a pulley system for each dumbwaiter located in the portion of the shaft that protruded out of the roof. Our dumbwaiter shaft was located in the kitchen, but it was no longer in use. It had been nailed shut. The dumbwaiter shaft was 2 feet, 5 inches wide, and about 2 feet deep. But the dumbwaiter in the back hallway was still in operation. It was a public dumbwaiter. When you wanted to dispose of a bag of trash, you went down the hallway to the dumbwaiter and opened the door. Typically a foul stench exuded from the shaft. You pulled on a thick rope, and with a groan, the dumbwaiter would start its squeaky ascent from the basement. The box would arrive at the door, and you put your garbage inside. Then you sent the box back down to the basement.

In the basement, the dumbwaiter box arrived in the central utility area. Wujeku had to unload each bag of garbage. Being a man from Europe who lived by the code, “Waste not, want not,” he sifted through each bag of trash. Any scraps of food were thrown to Butchy and Jacky, the basement guard dogs. I would guess that their real names were Polish, but that’s what they sounded like to me as a young boy. Butchy was dark black, with long thick fur. Butchy barked at you and seemed to be threatening. Jacky was kind of orange-brown and just slunk around in the background. Jacky was probably much more dangerous. Anyway, these ugly dogs were not allowed inside the Konopka’s apartment.

Harry Konopka gathered and collected any and all useful items that were thrown out by tenants. He maintained shelves on the side of the utility room where he stored all of these treasures. When my father’s wind-up alarm clock failed, my mother went down to the basement and selected a replacement from the Konopka treasure trove. Little Herbie wanted a fish tank? A bird cage? These things were all available in the basement. Since I was just a little boy, I don’t know what Wujeku charged my mother for these items.

In their kitchen, the Konopka’s had a huge cage with a large parrot. The parrot was very beautiful, and it spoke fluent Polish, which I could not understand. I was warned never to put my fingers near the wires of the cage or the parrot would just bite them off. The outside door to the utility room was never locked. You could just walk right in. Of course, the sight of Butchy and Jacky snarling viciously in the utility room was enough to frighten unwelcome guests away. Once inside, we would ring the bell of the Konopka’s apartment. They were always home. Harry Konopka enjoyed drinking alcohol, but somehow he managed to keep the building in order.

There were 46 feet of open space behind our building. Up against the structure there was concrete paving, maybe 16 feet wide, but then there was a lovely garden. I would say that the garden was 50 feet wide, and 30 feet deep. There was stone wall separating the garden from the concrete walkway. In the center of the garden was a huge cherry tree which Wujeku had planted many years before. He also had a lovely white birch tree. There was a shed along the inside of the stone wall where Ciotka kept all of her gardening supplies. She filled the back yard with flowers and vegetables when springtime arrived. She had a raft of morning-glory vines growing on clotheslines which stretched from the stone wall back to her four rear windows of the apartment. What a lovely site. You can see the garden wall and the morning-glory vines in the photo below. Ciotka even created a small flower garden for me. When my mother needed to go somewhere in daytime when my father was at work, she would leave me in the garden where she knew that I was safe. I amused myself by digging little holes in the ground. Oh what a life! But then I got to be six years old, and I had to go to school…”

A special thanks to Herb Maruska for making this post possible. If you are reading this and have stories or photos you’d like to contribute, please drop me a line.

Click here for more Inwood History.

On this chilly Inwood evening,
Summer’s loss we are a grieving.
Give us something warm to drink,
just ten cents and brewed with beef.

OK, so I’m no poet. Feel free to write your own rhyme in the comments section below. Drink your clam broth and stay warm Inwood!

Click on the below 1926 photo to enlarge

Winter of 1926 on the corner of 207th Street and Vermilyea Avenue

Let’s see some Inwood history.

Academy Street Named aptly for the first school in Inwood. Dedicated in 1858, Ward School 52 was also known as “MacKean’s Folly” for the school commissioner who ordered the three story structure built in the then sparsely populated area.

Arden Street Named after local butcher Jacob Arden, whose pre-Revolutionary customers sorely needed a C-Town.

Bogardus Place Named for the family of inventor and architectural pioneer James Bogardus who owned a large parcel of land in what is now Fort Tryon Park. During the 1840s Bogardus began construction on numerous cast iron buildings throughout the city, including the first cast iron building in New York located on Center and Duane Streets.

A modest man, who never considered himself an architect, Bogardus’ patented cast iron building exteriors changed the face of the urban world. Not bad for a guy who dropped out of school at age fourteen to start an apprenticeship as a watchmaker. Bogardus died in New York City on April 13th, 1874.

Broadway Generally acknowledged to have followed the old Weckquaesgeek Indian trail that ran the thirteen mile length of Manhattan. Early settlers called it the Bloomindale Road. Going north the original trail crossed the then shallow Spuyten Duyvil Creek into what today is Marble Hill. At low tide a traveler could cross the Spuyten Duyvil Creek on foot. Records show that Indians referred to the crossing as “The Wading Place.” Future generations would see a ferry crossing and eventually the King’s Bridge.

Cooper Street Named after “Last of the Mohicans” author James Fenimore Cooper.

Cumming Street Named for a local property owner on May 11, 1925.
A New York Times wedding announcement from a bygone era says that on June 11, 1868 John P. Cumming Jr. married Irene Flitner of Pittston, MO. The Reverend R.W. Dickinson presided over the wedding in the Inwood Presbyterian church.

Dongan Place Named for Colonel Thomas Dongan, the first Roman Catholic Governor of the Province of New York. He was known as a peacemaker and smooth city manager during a time of rebellion.

Dongan later became the second Earl of Limerick after the untimely death of his brother in 1698.

Dyckman Street and Nagle Avenue were named for Jan Dyckman and his partner Jan Nagle. Dyckman and Nagle were early settlers who, in 1677, bought the farmlands and boweries originally owned by the family of Tobias Teunissen. Teunissen, who hailed from Leyden, is said to be the first European to settle in this northern wilderness. History notes that Teunissen served as a guide for Governor Keift’s military expedition against the Weckquaesgeek Indians in 1642. His helpfulness and knowledge of the area proved fatal. Teunissen’s land and farms were abandoned in 1655 after he and all but one family member were slaughtered by his Native American neighbors.

Henshaw Street Named for Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Henshaw, who lived in the area in the 1880s and were members of the Mount Washington Presbyterian Church. Census records show that a Jonathan Henshaw born 1859 and died 1917.
Census records also show an Elmer Ellsworth Henshaw being born “Inwood-On-The-Hudson”, as the neighborhood was once called, on April 26, 1886.
Other sources say the street is named for a young soldier named John G. Henshaw who died of bronchial pneumonia during the First World War.

Isham Street Named for wealthy leather merchant William Bradley Isham, a close friend and Princeton classmate of President Woodrow Wilson.
In 1864 Isham purchased a sprawling twenty four acre estate spanning 211th to 214th Street along Broadway and northwest to the Spuyten Duyvil Creek.
William Isham died on April 2, 1929.
William Isham’s mansion once stood on what is now Isham Park. The mansion, stables and greenhouse on the summit of the hill were demolished in the 1940′s.
Today all that remains of this stately home are stone benches on the east edge of the park. The family donated the park space to the city in 1912 and for the gift of this little slice of paradise they certainly deserve a street named in their honor.

Payson Avenue Initially named Prescott Avenue, Payson gets it name from the Reverend George Shipman Payson. Payson was pastor of the Mount Washington Presbyterian Church from 1874-1920.

Post Avenue Named for the family of Hendrick Post who arrived in the area around the same time as the Dyckmans and Nagles. Post later married Jan Nagle’s daughter Rebecca.

Riverside Drive in 1907.

Riverside Drive The current name is obvious, but Riverside began as Lafayette Boulevard after the French marquis who aided the colonials in the American Revolution.

Seaman Avenue First opened in 1908 and extended in 1912, Seaman Avenue is named for the family of Henry B. Seaman. The Seaman estate once covered some 25 acres from Park Terrace Hill to Spuyten Duyvil Creek.  Henry was a descendent of Captain John Seaman who settled in Long Island in the 1650′s.
One descendant of Captain Seaman, Dr. Valentine Seaman, helped introduce the smallpox vaccine to America.  Today, the only visible trace of this once powerful Inwood family is the Drake-Seaman Arch, once used as a gateway to their hilltop estate, on 216th and Broadway. The 35 foot tall arch was built in 1855.

Sherman Avenue Inwood’s longest Avenue, Sherman is named for the Sherman family who lived on the south side of the small bay also named for them.

Sickles Street Named after Daniel Edgar Sickles. Sickles was a New York State Legislator and Major-General during the Civil War. During the battle of Gettysburg Sickles survived being struck in the leg with a cannonball. His amputated leg as well as the 12-pound ball are now on display at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Sickles leg on display at Walter Reed

Sickles, always the colorful character, first made national news when, in 1859, he shot and killed his young wife’s lover in  Lafayette Park across from the White House. The victim: Francis Barton Key, whose father, Francis Scott Key, penned the Star Spangled Banner.
He was acquitted of the murder, but drew public scorn when he forgave his cheating spouse.
Later Sickles would hold important posts including a diplomatic mission to Colombia, serving as Military Governor of South Carolina and U.S. Minister to Spain.
Sickles died in New York City on May 13, 1914, having outlived most of his contemporaries. He is buried, minus the leg, in Section 2 of Arlington National Cemetery.

Staff Street Named for First World War Sergeant Henry Staff. He lived on Sherman Avenue and was killed in action in 1918.

Thayer Street Originally known as Union place, Thayer Street was named for Brigadier General Sylvanus Thayer, the first commandant and, often called, the “Father of West Point”.
Thayer is not a very common name and chances are if you run into one they are directly related to him. Though most of the family now lives in Maryland and Massachusetts.

Vermilyea Avenue Named for Isaac Vermilyea, an Italian settler who arrived in New Harlem in 1662. Rising from constable to magistrate, Vermilyea was able to purchase a large portion of the current Inwood Hill Park by 1712.

West 204th During the 19th century, before numbered streets became fashionable, many streets were named after American writers. 204th began its existence as Hawthorne Street.

West 207th During the 19th century, before numbered streets became fashionable, many streets were named after American writers. 207th began its existence as Emerson Street.

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