Recently, MyInwood.net reader Frank Yannaco wrote in to tell me about the concession stand his family once owned and operated inside the Isham Street entrance to Inwood Hill Park.

Inwood Hill Park Concession stand on the corner of Isham and Seaman in 1977. Louise & Frank Yannaco pictured with merchandise in the background.

We soon began a dialogue that included a promise of photos and descriptions of his life in Inwood.  True to his word, Frank soon emailed me photos and descriptions from Inwood’s not so distant past.  I would like to thank Frank for his valuable contribution and encourage other readers to reach out and do the same.

Yannaco family poses for photo in front of the concession stand in 1977.

“Joe” and Frank Yannaco, 1960

According to Frank, “Joe’s” Concession Stand was located in Inwood Park on Isham Street across the street from Good Shepherd Church. My Family owned the stand from the mid 1920′s when the Presbyterian Medical Center was built.  It was given to my Grandfather James Pupley and his brother Peter by the NYC parks department when they arrived in this country from Greece in the 1900′s. They went to the Parks Department with the idea to sell snacks in the park. His original stand was on the site of the Presbyterian Medical Center. They asked him what park he wanted to relocate to and he chose Inwood Park.

Joe (his real name was Pete) sold candy, soda, hot dogs and ice cream. Frank and Louise, his niece, took it over in 1971 and remained until 1988. It has since been torn down. All the original owners – James, Pete, and Frank and Louise (my parents) have passed away.”

Along with his description of the concession stand, Frank also included this ode to Inwood in the 1950’s penned by his wife, Mary:

Mary Tolfree (Yannaco) and sister Eileen TolfreeSherman Avenue on Easter Sunday, 1957

Inwood in the 1950′s we did not
have a TV much less the Internet.
You got together at friends homes
to watch a show in black & white.
There was not many “networks” or “choices”.
A phone I don’t think so.
The stoop was the meeting place.
Your relatives were down the block
or a bus ride away to the Bronx.

Our Family went to St Jude’s Chapel
on Sundays and said the Rosary
as a family every night.
Our friends waited on the stoop for us
to come down.
{The Bazaar was held for many years
to make money to build the church.
Before that, mass was held in the movie theater.}
Then you were Proud to be a Catholic,
bless yourself in public when
you passed a Church,
and bowed at the name of JESUS.

All the stores were closed on Sunday.

Regina’s Bakery, 1958-Eileen Tolfree

Except for Regina’s Bakery.

The Tolfree kids on Academy Street next to Moe’s Candy Store in 1957 (four of seven children in the family)

My mom Eileen worked there back in the 50′s
In Washington Heights there was a bakery
called Home Made Pastry on 188th
and St. Nicholas Ave. She worked there for years.
On Sunday that was servile work unless
you had to feed your family.

Our family The Tolfrees lived at
584 Academy Street.
We 3 boys and 4 girls have 24 children; with
grandchildren we total around 92 decedents of
Herbert and Eileen Tolfree.

We lived across from Moe’s candy store.
Remember the egg creams and cokes in
the paper cone and metal holder cups.
The stools that spun and Moe.
We lived near the corner and there was
a “Meat Market” at 584.
Outside in the nice weather Pop with his umbrella cart would sell hot dogs and orange drinks.

Mary (right) and her sister Rita  Tolfree on Academy Street looking east down Sherman Avenue

I moved from 584 in 1959.
Went to Saint Jude’s School till
3rd grade 56-59.
Remember 1st grade Sister Mary Magellan
and Miss Scott from kindergarten.
All of my family went to either St. Jude or Good Shepherd.

First Friday Mass at St Jude’s Chapel.
Remember the luncheonette near St Jude.
We would go there for breakfast after
First Friday Mass before returning to school because we had fasted from the night before.
Those were the days.
Navy Uniforms white shirts and beanie hats.
Back then women and girls would wear hats, then scarves, then doilies and then tissues.

Now we don’t wear hats at all!!!

Louise & Frank Yannaco working the concession stand in May, 1977.

Across from Good Shepherd in Inwood park
there was a octagon stand that sold hot dogs, candy and soda.
The man’s name was Joe, so they called him.
His real name was Pete.
He was my husband Frank Yannaco’s uncle.
Then he retired and Frank & Louise
Yannaco took it over.
It was in the family for 40+ years.
They gave up ownership in 1989.
Louise also worked at Miramar pool in the 50′s.
near the pool was a luncheonette on 210 St
and 10th ave.
Frank’s grandfather owned that in the 50′s.

Tolfree Girls at the Academy Meat Market on Sherman and Academy in 1959

Remember the fish store with the live fish.
The Bazaar and Miss Rinegold.
The stoop we sat on and
the gutter we kept out of.
(They had nothing to do with rain.)
Connecting roofs we climbed over.
Fire escapes we use to hang out on.
Both my husband and I were born in
Jewish Memorial hospital.
Re-named in 1936 in honor of the
Jewish Soldiers who died in WWI.

Rita Tolfree on confirmation day, Academy and Sherman, Moe’s Candy Store, 1952

Inwood for me was a real
neighborhood back then.
In the heart of NYC zip code “34?.
Even though I did not know it then.
My neighborhood was special.
The “Super” would wash the floors
every Saturday and polish the brass
handrails and mailboxes.
On Saturday everyone
would clean their house.
Nobody worked on Sunday because
you went to mass and had a special
dinner to prepare for the family.

Neighbors you could turn to by just
yelling out the window or down the alley.
The place many of us yearn for now.
I think Inwood is still that place,
my building is still standing and
I’m sure 50 years later people are still yelling out
the windows to their neighbors….

Finally, before we leave the concession stand, a photo from Herb Maruska, who writes, “This is so wonderful! I never expected to see Joe again! Thank you!
Joe sold Good-O beverages. My parents, suspicious people from Europe, would not allow me to drink them. One day, I picked up several Good-O bottles thrown away in the woods, and I tried to return them to Joe for the deposit money. Joe said, “Hey, I know you kid, you never bought those sodas from me. Get outta here!” He refused to give me the deposit. So I threw the bottles in the trash.”

Joe’s Ice Cream Stand in 1968. Contributed by Herb Maruska who writes, “Notice that the stand was green, not orange and blue.”

Former Inwood resident Mike Boland recalls cliff diving into the Spuyten Duyvil:

On June 17, 1915 a procession of more than fifty automobiles gathered in Inwood to mark an historic occasion—the inauguration of the new Dyckman Street ferry, which would make its maiden voyage across the Hudson River, to the popular recreation sites along the New Jersey Palisades, later that afternoon.

Dyckman Street Ferry opens, The Sun June 18, 1915.

“The procession, marshaled by Mr. Thomas Leonard, started at 2 P.M. from 207th Street and Sherman Avenue, and went by way of Broadway, Nagle, Avenue, Dyckman Street, Post Avenue, Academy Street, 10^th Avenue, Broadway and Dyckman Street to the ferry.  At the latter point the exercises were held on a temporary platform.” (Source: Annual Report on American Scenic and Historic Preservation, Volume 21)

Dyckman Street ferry launched, 1915.

“Members of the Inwood Business Men’s Association were particularly active in the parade. The Englewood Board of Trade was well represented.  The only walkers were the suffragists of the Twenty-third Assembly district and the Mothers’ Club of Public School 52.  The Suffragists reached the reviewing stand ahead of the rest of the parade and took a conspicuous place near it.” (The Sun, June 18, 1915)

George Waldbridge Perkins,Sr (Source:Library of Congress)

Presiding over the festivities was George W. Perkins, president of the Interstate Park Commission.

After a brief prayer by Reverend George Shipman Payson, pastor of Inwood’s Mount Washington Presbyterian Church, ten-year-old Estelle Loeb, stole the show with a song titled, “We Take Our Hats Off to You, Mr. Perkins.”

Initially, the ferry, a joint project overseen by The Board of Trade of Englewood, New Jersey and the newly organized Dyckman Street Board of Trade, planned to run boats across the river at twenty minute intervals on weekdays and every five minutes on Sundays when a rush of picnickers and hikers was expected. The East River Ferry Company was under contract to provide additional boats if necessary.

Dyckman Ferry, 1936.

On that Thursday afternoon thousands of New Yorkers made the crossing to explore new park system and gaze back across the Hudson from this exciting new vantage point.  The trip across the water was likely equally exciting.

Dyckman Street Ferry ad, The Evening World, May 28, 1921.

Initially the toll was a mere three cents, but the fare was quickly rounded up to a nickel.

The “America” ferry and Dyckman Street slip in 1926. Note the Jewish Memorial Hospital in the background.

The ferry was of particular interest to the new-fangled automobilists, and the fresh roaming grounds now easily accessible for the first time—decades before the construction of the George Washington Bridge.

Dyckman Street ferry, New York Sun, October 20, 1927.

According to Sanford Gaster, who compiled oral histories of older Inwood residents in the 1980’s,  “It is interesting to note that so many recreationists would leave Inwood, or pass through it, in order to reach a wooded, waterside place.  While this attests to how much open land Inwood had lost, it also suggests the new popularity of mass recreation, which required modern facilities.” (Source: Public Places of Childhood, 1915-1930, Sanford Gaster)

Dyckman Ferry canoe diving, The Buffalo Evening News, September 22, 1926.

Riding the wake of a ferryboat in a canoe, Scientific American, August 16, 1919.

Among those Gaster interviewed was longtime Inwood resident Rose Creel who fondly recalled the beautiful park facilities across the Hudson:

Bathing beach in the new park on the New Jersey Palisades, circa 1915. (Source:njpalisades.org)

“Here were pavilions with tables and benches for picnickers.  Many people of different nationalities came with exotic smelling food, radios and sometimes musical instruments to make their music for singing and dancing. It was a place clean enough to go diving and swimming.  Fishermen sat on the rocks with their crab baskets and many a good catch they had.  In the spring the shad boats came and the fishing was good.” (Source: Public Places of Childhood, 1915-1930, Sanford Gaster)

From its beginning the ferry was a riotous success. On hot summer evening’s passengers would often take the ferry back and forth as they gossiped and sang—the cool river breezes refreshing both body and spirit.  Musicians, who paid a concession fee to perform on the boats, did much to enliven the mood.

Dyckman Street at Hudson River, 1925.

In those early days motorcars were pushed on and off the ferries to prevent a backfiring engine from spooking the horses, which were still a popular mode of transportation.

By 1923, with the automobile becoming increasingly popular, the need for expansion became evident. A new ferry slip, capable of handling an additional 125 to 150 cars an hour, was constructed.

According to a schedule published in the New York Times,  “The first boat will leave the New York end at 6am and on the New Jersey side the service will start at 6:15 am.  The regular daily service will be at 10 minute intervals, the last boat leaving Dyckman Street at 11 o’clock at night, and from the Englewood side at 11:10 pm.  On Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, when the motor car traffic is especially heavy, the boats will continue until midnight or later if necessary.”

Of course not everyone in Inwood cheered the ferry’s success.  Some felt the terminal carried with it a host of problems, namely noise, crowds and traffic.

Dyckman Street near Henshaw, 1928.

Long-time Dyckman Street residents, gathered on their front porches, watched in horror as their bucolic little hideaway from the cacophony of downtown suddenly became one of the most congested streets in all Manhattan.

According to a 1924 New York Times article titled “Inwood, the Wild: “There are old houses on Dyckman Street; they have cupolas, some of them, and lace frills done in woodwork, and they look down somewhat disapprovingly on the knickered hikers scurrying to the Palisades ferry at what once was (and may still be on some legal document) Tubby Hook.”

Theses ominous changes reached all the way east to Broadway:

“The increasing popularity of the Dyckman Street Ferry for motorists and its use by thousands of young people from all parts of the city during the warm weather to reach the open spaces of the Interstate Palisades Park on the New Jersey shore make Dyckman Street one of the live uptown thoroughfares. The junction of Broadway and Dyckman Street is also the terminus of the northern extremity of Riverside Drive, and is one of the most congested traffic points in the city on Saturdays and Sundays, although traffic is always heavy there every day in the week.” (“Upper Manhattan,” 1926, p. 16)

1930 photo of Dyckman Street ferry terminal.

In the year 1930 the line carried 1,286,177 vehicles and 965,000 pedestrians. (Source: The Hudson River Through the Years, Arthur G. Adams)

And while the ire of a handful of Dyckman Street residents was understandable, most New Yorkers simply loved the ferry.

In one published account, former passenger Arthur G. Adams describes the ferry as an affordable treat for the common man and his family:

“…During the war years of gas rationing, a frequent outing would be to drive to the Hudson River shoreline at Englewood or Alpine and watch the steamboats passing by in the evening.  Maybe your father would spring for a round trip across on the ferryboat to Dyckman Street or Yonkers in the cool of the evening, with the itinerant accordionist and violin players offering a serenade and passing the cup. It certainly was not sophisticated, but you did see the great steamboats passing by. The ferryboat was a window on the greater world.” (Railroad Ferries of the Hudson by Raymond J. Baxter and Arthur G. Adams, 1953)

While initially built to serve a recreational, mainly summertime crowd, an increasing number of New Jersey based business professionals began to rely on the ferry to transport them to higher paying jobs in Manhattan.

But the harsh winters of the day often made river traffic impractical if not impossible.  Many years ferry service was discontinued for months at a time as ice floes covered the surface of the Hudson.

By 1930, according to the New York Sun, ferry pilots had become adept at dodging ice floes in the treacherous icy waters:

“It was recently published,” said a resident of Inwood, just above Washington Heights, “that the Dyckman Street ferry, which takes persons over to Jersey and back, had not closed during the entire year of 1929.  This was news to old-time residents of the section who knew it used to be the custom to close the ferry when the ice became too thick in the Hudson for the boats to plow through it.

“In fact it used to be symbolic of real winter when folks in Inwood used to say to one another: ‘The Dyckman Street ferry is closed.”

“Naturally old timers go to wondering how the ferryboats now do what they do when they were one time unable to do and the reason has been lately discovered by a man who lived in Inwood since 1916. The answer is that the boats do not plow through the ice, they dodge around the large floes and do everything but cut through them.

“This old timer stood on Riverside Drive extension the other day when large floes were coming down the Hudson and watched a boat on its way to Jersey. When it left the slip it did not take a beeline course across the river because great masses of ice were running south.  But through the open spaces between the floes the boat steamed its way and it was out in the open in no time, although two or three blocks to the south of the site of the ferry house.

“It certainly was a nice piece of steering on the part of the pilot and must have been diverting to those on board.  And it solved a big mystery.”

Dyckman Street ferry terminal in 1934 with George Washington Bridge to the south.

Surprisingly, despite construction of the George Washington Bridge in 1931, ridership on the ferry continued unabated, though there were complaints that the boats had fallen into a state of severe disrepair.  Perhaps the owners realized the end was in sight and saw further investment as foolhardy.

Dyckman Ferry, 1936.

In a letter to the New York Times, A. Burr wrote, “Last Sunday I made a trip on the Dyckman Street ferries across the Hudson and I was horrified by the condition of these boats.  They must be the oldest ferryboats in the United States, they are unsanitary and their old frames squeak. Life-preservers are placed high on the wall, and the hooks to tear the wooden shelf on which they are stored are even higher than the shelf itself.” (New York Times, June 21, 1935.)

The ferryboat “Florida” in 1939.

Of course all good things must come to an end.

Dyckman Street ferry terminal in 1937.

According to Arthur Adams’ history of the Hudson River, “The line operated until May 21, 1942, when the only remaining usable float-bridge at Dyckman Street collapsed, pinning the boat in the slip.  The Second World War discouraged any thoughts of restoring service immediately.”

Dyckman Street Ferry, lithograph by Raymond White Skofield,1937.

But the story of the Dyckman Street ferry doesn’t quite end in 1942.

New York Times, July 4, 1949.

In 1949, an upper east-sider named Fred Kosnack applied for and was granted the ferry concession.

His sixty-foot boats, capable carrying 65 passengers, did a brisk business that summer.  New Yorkers have always been a nostalgic lot, and in a post-war environment, Kosnack’s little boats did much to boost people’s spirits.

According to the Times, “Mr. Kosnack, a river man for the last twenty years took his time in piloting his boat across the calm waters. “Let them inhale the cool air,’ he said. ‘The good Lord knows they will go back to the sweltering apartments at the end of the day.’” (New York Times, July 4, 1949)

On October 15, 1949, Kosnack’s concession expired and the Dyckman Street ferry became but a fond memory in the hearts of generations of New Yorkers.

Site of the old Dyckman Street ferry terminal on the Hudson River in 2013. Currently home to “La Marina.”

530 West 215th Street at Park Terrace East

Since moving into the neighborhood more than a decade ago, neighbors, some who’ve lived in the area for years, have asked, “What’s the deal with the beautiful bricked up building next door to the Northeastern Academy School?”

Late 1920′s sketch of Hurst House, Inwood, New York City.

Curiosity about the history of this forgotten old building, in part, led to the creation of this creation of this very website.

When launched MyInwood.net, I could never have anticipated that I was sowing the seeds of a field of dreams.

What began as a modest post that was sparse on both facts and images, blossomed into something truly beautiful as descendants of the original occupants, independently of one another, began sending in old photos, stories and documents.

Not only was the history of 530 West 215th Street uncovered, but a family was reunited.

What follows is a remarkable tale straight out of Inwood…

Hurst House today (Photo by Pat Courtney)

1920′s photo from Hurst descendent JoAnn Jones (note Isham Gardens under construction in background)

If the  architecture looks institutional in style,  it should.  Built by architect James O’Connor in 1912 , the home served as the private residence of William Hurst, his wife, Minnie, and their ten children.

Minnie and William H. Hurst. (Photo courtesy of Kevin Wright who wrote into MyInwood.net: “Mr. Hurst’s daughter Theresa was my Grandmother”.

A noted architect, O’Connor graduated from Columbia University in 1898 where he earned the degree of Bachelor of Science in Architecture. The native New Yorker also studied in Paris at the Ecole de Beaux Arts before returning to the States to form his own architectural firm. During a later partnership with James F. Delaney, the two would design convents, schools and public housing projects including the Morrisania Housing project in the Bronx, the convent and  hospital building for St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village as well as the Tuberculosis and Cancer Hospital on Roosevelt Island.  Over the course of an impressive career, which spanned the first half of the Twentieth century, O’Connor found himself the recipient of numerous architectural awards for both residential and commercial projects, including best design for his work on the Grace Steamship Lines building; once located downtown.

A specialist in the design of indoor tennis courts, O’Connor would also design private residences up and down the east coast including homes in Middleburg, Virginia,  Greenwich, Connecticut and of course the old brick  house on 215th Street designed for William H. Hurst.

William H. Hurst. (Photo courtesy of Hurst Great-Grandson Kevin Wright)

The 100 x 120 foot lot, which sat across the street from the old Seaman Mansion, was purchased  by Hurst in 1910.  A wealthy man, Hurst made his fortune as as president of the Stock Quotation Telegraph Company, which supplied stock ticker equipment to financial firms.

Stock Quotation Telegraph Company letterhead.

A year after purchasing the property, Hurst would serve as jury foreman in the famous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in which some 146 garment workers, mostly young girls, were killed.  The lethal inferno remains the deadliest industrial accident in New York City history.

Hurst real estate transfer, New York Daily Tribune, April 15, 1910.

Like the current south-north migration, Hurst moved his large family to Inwood to escape the cramped quarters of their former West 80′s townhouse.

Hurst passport application dated 1890.

Mr. and Mrs. Hurst would also require extra living quarters for their servants.

View of Hurst home in 1920′s as seen from traffic circle near current site of Bruce’s Garden.

According to the New York Times, “The 1925 census return shows him in the house with his family, four female Irish servants and Alex Setchof, a 22-year-old Russian chauffeur. All five of the staff had been in the United States for only a year.

Hurst’s poodle makes the headlines.

In 1921, a butler, James J. O’Brien, sued Hurst because he was bitten by the family poodle on the lawn while serving tea. Mr. O’Brien wanted $2,000, and said that Hurst had pressured him to settle for only $25; it is not clear how the case was resolved.”

While little has been written about the lives of the Hurst family–a writer named Robert Emmet Ireton dedicated his 1909 book, A Central Bank,  to “William H. Hurst,  President of the Stock Quotation Company, Treasurer of the New York News Bureau Association, Loyal Friend and Citizen…as a Token of Esteem, Regard and Respect.”

Old newspaper clippings also tell us that  the family placed an advertisement in 1917 seeking the services of a private nurse.  Perhaps one of their ten children suffered some chronic malady?

Hurst family seeks nurse, New York Herald December 2, 1917.

Old newspaper clippings also tell us that the Hurst family lost a daughter in 1925 and that the funeral mass was held inside Good Shepherd Church, just down the street from the family home.

Hurst loses daughter, New York Timess June 20, 1925.

The family would be rocked by another tragedy when Minnie Hurst, who had mothered ten children, died in January of 1929.  Like her daughter before her, Minnie’s funeral was held at the Church of Good Shepherd.  There was likely not a dry eye in the house.

Minnie Hurst obituary- The Kingston Daily Freeman, Jan 26, 1929

Hurst himself would die less than two months after his wife’ s passing.

William Hurst Obituary, NY Times, March 25, 1929

Hurst estate settled, New York Times, September 26, 1930.

After Hurst’s death in 1929, according to the New York Times, the property was sold and the brick building, with terra cotta detailing, was converted into a convent. In 1946 the grounds were expanded to create the Garrard School of the Academy of the Sacred Heart of Mary.

Sacred Heart of Mary ad, Herald Statesman, Yonkers, March 16, 1968.

A local resident who attended the school in 1964 described life there in a neighborhood forum. “The entrance way was a grand style with black and white tiles, a crystal chandelier and symmetric winding staircases to the second floor. To the left of the staircase was a sunroom which was used as a sacristy for the chapel. On the first floor there were two sitting rooms on each side of the entrance. Opening into the lager area a chapel on the right and a classroom on the left (front hall like a T shape).

Upstairs another grand entrance way with the classrooms surrounding it. All rooms with fireplaces and sunshine. Some rooms were painted light blue and some light yellow. Mantels were white. On the third floor were the nun’s quarters. One died up there so there could be a ghost. We heard rumors of terrible things that went on up there. We had quite an imagination.

In the basement were the kitchen and a room to eat. Not a full cafeteria style. There was a nun that was one of the lesser orders of the RSHM and she was called “sister”, as opposed to “Madame” which (is what we called) the teachers.

We learned and spoke French. All prayers were in French and we had to curtsey in a sweeping style bringing one leg out in a ballet motion and bow with skirt held. Meeting a nun in the hallway to curtsey was difficult when you had a full load of books in your arms.”

The school closed around 1969, and in 1974 the Northeastern Conference of Seventh-day Adventists bought the old Hurst house as well as the property next door, 532 West 215th Street, for a new school, Northeastern Academy.

1970 real estate listing for the Hurst home. (Described as a “Convent”)

Unfortunately, Mr. Hurst’s former home, which had fallen into disuse, has been bricked up since the 1980′s.  A building which harbored and nurtured generations of children now sits unused– a stately and curious reminder of another Inwood of ages past.

For me, connecting these long lost Hursts, while learning more of the history of my own neighborhood, has been a labor of love. I’m sure it has for them as well.

This latest installment of photos come from Lee Hirata, who scanned them from her grandmother’s photo album. Lee says many of the photos were dated 1915.

And the best goes on… Caleb Hurst, who contacted MyInwood,  wrote: “I am the great grandson of William H. Hurst. My grandfather was Austin Hurst, and my father was William H. Hurst.” He then followed up with this treasure trove of mostly interior shots of his great grandfather’s Inwood home.  Thank you Caleb.

Joe Gonzalez writes:  “Allow me to add yet another ancestor to your contacts!  William Hurst is my wife’s great great grandfather via his son William, Jr. and his wife Ruth Adele Johnson.  We also have some pictures to share.

Attached is a picture of Minnie Murphy Hurst, along with a picture of Minnie and William’s son, William H. Hurst, Jr. in his WWI uniform.”

Minnie Murphy Hurst from Joe Gonzalez.

William H. Hurst Jr. in WWI uniform. Note Seaman mansion in background. (Source: Joe Gonzalez)

And, Joe Gonzalez writes in again asking for help identifying family members in the below photo: “So far, I know Austin is far left, Clare Hurst Forney is 4th from left, and her husband Adger Forney is third from left. Otherwise not 100% certain of others. Based on that familiar low stone wall, I’m guessing this was taken at the Inwood house.”

Hurst family photo from Joe Gonzalez. Can you identify anyone? Joe Writes: “So far, I know Austin is far left, Clare Hurst Forney is 4th from left, and her husband Adger Forney is third from left. Otherwise not 100% certain of others. Based on that familiar low stone wall, I’m guessing this was taken at the Inwood house.”

On June 22, 2013, after years of email correspondence, I met the descendants of William and Minnie Hurst for the very first time. Many had never seen the house before,nor had they met one another.

Hurst Family reunion, June, 22 2013.

Several generations of surviving Hurst’s posed in front of the old house, “530″ they called it, and shared some family mementos they brought for the event. The day was full of emotion and I thank them for including me.

Hurst Family portrait, June 24, 1924.

Children of William and Minnie Hurst. (See below sketch to find out who’s who)

Legend for previous photo: Children of William and Minnie Hurst.

Gustave Leoplold Herz 1919 passport application photo.

On a steamy July day in the summer of 1918 Austrian inventor Gustave Herz purchased a large stable on the northern tip of Manhattan.  While many before him had built grand monuments to equestrian sportsmanship, given the neighborhood’s proximity to the Harlem River Speedway, Herz was no horseman.

Instead, Herz was a dreamer who planned to convert the large stone building on the south side of 215^th Street between Seaman Avenue and Park Terrace West into his dream home.

The land Herz purchased was part of the larger Seaman-Drake estate, but did not include the gleaming marble mansion just to the east.

Shortly after closing on the deal, Herz, who held patents for early models of the spark plug, set to work transforming the old stone stable into an eclectic workshop and home for himself and his family.

Herz spark plug.

New York Times, July 19, 1918.

During the early years of Herz’s residence, the Park Terrace area would have been a serene and nearly suburban area.   Unlike the lands to the east, the western side of northern Manhattan had not yet become crowded with apartment buildings spurred by the arrival of the elevated subway in 1904.

Herz would share the hill with a small and elite group of New Yorkers who enjoyed the romantic solitude and beautiful views the area had to offer.

Seaman Mansion for sale, New York Times February 2, 1913.

Architect Thomas Dwyer, who had purchased the old Seaman mansion, now the site of Park Terrace Gardens, would have been Herz’s closest neighbor to the east.  Dwyer was famous in his own right.  From his office, in the old marble arch, Dywer drew up plans for a number of municipal projects including the Soldier’s and Sailor’s Monument on Riverside Drive.

1920′s photo from Hurst descendent JoAnn Jones (note Isham Gardens under construction in background)

Other neighbors included William H. Hurst, President of the New York Stock Quotation Telegraph Company.  Hurst, his wife Minnie and their eleven children lived in a large brick home designed by Irish architect James O’Connor in 1912.  The house, today in a severe state of disrepair, stands on the corner of west 215^th Street and Park Terrace East.

Isham House, circa 1934.

The Ishams, an old and wealthy Inwood family, lived in a beautiful wooden home on the current site of Isham Park. (A gift from the family to the City of New York).

Among this fascinating group of New Yorkers Herz found a home away from the deafening madness of downtown.

Edith Herz 1920 passport application photo.

There, amid the tranquility of old Inwood, Herz and his wife, Edith,  bore a son.  On the stone walls of the former stable the inventor carved quotations from Goethe, his favorite writer, and otherwise personalized the home that had once sheltered the horses of a previous generation.

This wonderful description of the old stable home was written in 1938, just before the residence was demolished to make room for more modern apartment dwellings.

The article makes one want to travel back in time to meet this colorful inventor and his Park Terrace neighbors.

New York Sun
December 3, 1938
Last Days of Famed Stable

Sales Dooms Inwood Building Made Into a Mansion by Inventor Herz
By Gerry Fitch

Old stables made into attractive homes have given many a New York street a quaint and enduring charm.  It’s something to sigh about that these old stables must inevitably be torn down to make way for changing life in changing times.

And even as this is being written the end has come for the most fantastic stable-home of them all—the stone structure standing on two levels of high ground up in the Inwood section.  This unusual “house” with its beautiful surrounding garden occupies a large plot bounded by Seaman Avenue, 215^th Street and Park Terrace West.  The site happens to be ideal right now for another smart apartment building, such as loom up all around it.  For who can afford to be sentimental about charm, and aren’t the old and the thick tall trees enclosing it, and the rock garden and the lovely rose bushes just too old to live any more?

Seaman mansion before demolition.

Only a month ago the sale of the picturesque Dwyer mansion (formerly the Seaman-Drake estate) in Inwood was reported.  Already the mansion is half demolished, to be followed by five new eight-story apartment buildings.   The “stable house” used to be the stable of the fast disappearing mansion, but that was long before Thomas Dwyer bought the mansion some thirty years ago.  He didn’t buy the stable because another buyer had seen it first, G. L. Herz, millionaire Austrian engineer, who invented the spark plug.

Gustave Herz spark plug patent.

The original builders of the mansion and stable must have been picturesque individuals indeed.  Both structures, more than a hundred years old, are reflections of “individualism” at its utmost.   Following upon the sale of the mansion by Mr. Dwyer the stable-house is now sold by the widow of Mr. Herz, and upon the site will rise two more apartment buildings of six to eight stories in height.

Property Sold Monday

Herz Spark plug advertisement, 1913, The Automobile.

Last Monday Alexander and Samuel Grutman bought the property, Kadel, Sheits and Weiss acting as their attorneys.   Albert Hirst represented Mrs. Edith Herz.  Demolition will start at once; the two new buildings must be ready by next summer so that tenants can enjoy a “free summer” in the pleasant altitudes above Spuyten Duyvil Creek.  The apartments will be Colonial in design and accommodate fifty-two families.  They will be restricted against stores.

On the west wall of the stable-house is a sun-clock, in faded colors of gold and bronze.  On its face is the singularly appropriate reminder in Latin that life is brief indeed.

Except for the sun-clock that can go on somewhere else, about the only thing that can, except the stone the house is made of.

So, if you want a last look at an ancient (from our standards) edifice built with tremendous blocks of granite after the fashion of an Egyptian tomb, and intended to house luxuriously the fine horses of our landed gentry, tramp over the snow-covered garden of the Herz House.  The place has recently been used by a fermenting firm and is full of medical literature.  There are pictures on the wall of Clark Gable.  The four colonial pillars before the arched entrance still have an inviting look; inside is the foyer with great stone slabs for the walls.  Mr. Herz refused to cover them.

Poetry Carved on Walls

When he fell in love with the stable he decided to carve the most beloved phrases of his favorite poet upon the walls.  And that is why so many of the lines of Goethe are to be found cut into the stone blocks.  He made the stable into a nine-room house, modernized it in every way and still did not touch the walls.

In the office of Lawyer Hirst I learned other interesting things about Mr. Herz, “Along with being very rich,” explained Mr. Hirst, “Herz was cultured, art loving.  He had come here poor at the turn of the century.  He wanted to bring to his new land some of the art treasures of his old land.  He amassed a collection of rare cameos, of Bibles, and other objects d’art, and had Vienna craftsmen make elaborate cases for them.  These he housed in several rooms.”

One of his two sons was born in the Herz House, but the family moved to East Seventy-fifth Street a few years ago upon the death of the inventor.  They took the collections with them.

Near the stable entrance is a block of granite that will give the wreckers a headache.  (‘The place will be as hard to destroy as a steel building,” says Mr. Hirst.) This is off doubtful usage in the old days, probably was a watering trough, but it makes a romantic garden seat.

The two new apartment buildings will occupy plots 100 by 100 feet and ramble with the land as do other near by apartment houses.  Some of them have several stories more on one side than the other.

Gustave Leoplold Herz 1919 passport application.

Edith Herz 1920 passport application.

“That girl you saw in the dormitory,” a matron of the Magdalen Benevolent Society explained to the reporter.  “She is really the worst girl in the place.  I wouldn’t trust her out of my sight.”

“Her parents haven’t much for her, “ she continued.  “Their only worldly possessions are seven small children and a pushcart.  Her sisters told me a woeful story of poverty.” (New York Tribune, October 19, 1907)

The Magdalen Asylum, once located on the northwest end of Dyckman Street along the Hudson River, Source: The Architectural Record, Volumes 23-24, 1908.

In September of 1903 a seemingly routine real estate transaction transpired on the northern tip of Manhattan.

Inwood resident Francis A. Thayer sold, to the New York Magdalen Benevolent Society, a large tract of land on the northwestern end of Dyckman Street overlooking the Hudson River.

Turn of the century map of Inwood, note Magdalen Society in middle.

On this sizeable property, equaling roughly five acres, the Society planned to erect a country residence for wayward girls and fallen young women.

Inwood Hill Park would not be dedicated until 1926, and during these intervening years, charitable institutions and private residences belonging to New York’s merchant class dominated the ridge.

Since establishing itself in lower Manhattan in the 1830′s, the Magdalen Society’s sole purpose had been rescuing women from lives of prostitution and vice—sometimes, quite literally, kidnapping them from brothels.

Scene in the Magdalen Asylum (Lights and Shadows of New York, 1872)

According to their mission statement, “The object of the society is the promotion of moral purity, by affording an asylum to erring females, who manifest a desire to return to the paths of virtue, and by procuring employment for their future support.” (New York and Its Institutions, 1609-1871)

During those early years the group’s ambitions were modest.  From a rented upper floor on Carmine Street the Society cared for no more than ten women at any given time.

1872 Magdalen Benevolent Asylum print.

By 1836, the Magdalen Society had moved uptown, into a large wood frame structure on 86^th Street and Fifth Avenue.

For many years, the home, surrounded by an imposing brick wall, served the Society, whose wards ranged in age from 10 to 30, well, but as lower Manhattan marched ever northward, the neighborhood became too costly to suit the institution’s needs.

Looking further north, the Society chose an isolated spot, with picturesque views, in a then mostly undeveloped area called Inwood.

The sixty-five odd inmates had long outgrown their 86^th Street home and had briefly relocated to another residence on 139^th Street until their capacity problem could be solved.

Floorplan for new Inwood location of Magdalen Home, (Source: Architectural Record, Volumes 23-24)

To say the Society had grand plans for the new location in rural Inwood would be an understatement.

Tasked with the charge of building the new dwelling were architects Carleton Greene, W.W.  Bosworth and F. H. Bosworth.

Magdalen Home, (Source: Architectural Record, Volumes 23-24 1908)

The building was to have a magnificent façade designed in the style of a French chateau — in reality if would be another asylum of stone and concrete whose neighbors would include the House of Mercy and a home for tuberculosis patients.

But to the outsider, the home must have had a magnificent European feel:

Magdalen Society depicted in a penny postcard.

“On every side are great windows, looking out into the woods or over the waters of the Hudson.  The workroom where the girls sew is like the deck of a steamer, and so are the dormitories where they sleep.  The bathrooms and sanitary arrangements are admirable, All kinds of cases are sent there.  Some are women who come or are sent there.  And there is a spotless infirmary with surgical appliances and a medical chest, so that any girl who is ill, or thinks she is, can be examined and treated if necessary.” (New York Tribune, October 19, 1907)

A reporter for the New York Times offered the following description:

“This is a five-story fireproof structure solidly built of stone, covered with white stucco, with large, light, airy rooms and every comfort and convenience necessary for the physical and mental health of its inmates.  There are 60 of these now and the new home will accommodate 100. 

Entrance to the Magdalen Home, (Source: Architectural Record, Volumes 23-24, 1908)

The building is high up on the hill with a winding drive leading to it, a high stone wall, also covered with stucco, surrounding it, and a picturesque little lodge at the big entrance gate.  Here lives the engineer, who has charge of the heating apparatus of the building.  His wife acts as gatekeeper.”

The society has purchased five acres of land, on one corner of which the building is erected.  The grounds are sodded, the grass even new is a rich green, while all the Autumn flowers are in blossom in the garden.  These grounds are open to the women inmates of the home when they are not engaged in their duties around the house.  Owing to the slope of the grounds, the high wall does not shut off the view across the river.

Everything inside is white and clean and cheerful.  The dormitories in which the women sleep are on two of the upper floors.  The dining room is a large, sunny room, and over the chapel, which is at the front of the house, is a large room, with a piano, for amusements and celebrations.   The workrooms are in what may be called the basement, being below the parlor floor of the building, but that, too, is lighted by large, sunny windows.

It is in the basement that the chief work in the house is done, for the home maintains a laundry and teaches its inmates to become fine laundresses, one of the employments at which they are most likely to find work when they leave.  Everything is done in the most modern and improved way, and a large number of New Yorkers send their laundry work to the home, where it is done at reasonable rates.  On their work the society cleared $6,000 last year.  Laundry baskets are sent and delivered to the owners by express at their expenses.”   (New York Times, October 20, 1907)

When the Society formally dedicated the new home the afternoon October 19, 1907, the press were on hand en masse to cover the event.

Magdalen Home dedicated, New York Tribune, October 19, 1907.

After a brief benediction by Reverend George Shipman Payson, the pastor of the local Mount Washington Presbyterian Church, Superintendent Harrison showed off her “family”—that’s what the inmates were called—as well as the shining new facility.

“Some parents of the wayward girls are sensible about committing them; others are foolish, or worse, and want to get them out. A pretty girl of nineteen came in yesterday, escorted by an officer…” Miss Harrison said.

“She had been to court; her mother is trying to get her out,” Harrison continued. “Her mother had her singing at Coney Island last year and she was going to ruin as rapidly as a girl could.  A man in the District Attorney’s office found her there and had her committed to us.  Now her mother wants to take her back to Coney Island.  What kind of a mother is that?” (New York Tribune, October 19, 1907)

A society matron, Mrs. Griffiths, was quick to point out that alcohol was the underlying malady that most affected the “family.”

“That woman has been with us for years,” Mrs. Griffiths, said to the reporter, passing a pleasant looking, middle aged woman, who was putting away sheets in a linen closet.

“If I were to tell you who her husband is you’d be surprised: he holds an excellent position in the theatrical world.  She was an actress, too, but drink was her curse; she could not trust herself or be trusted outside.  I feel most for the drinkers,” Mrs. Griffiths continued.  “A woman who does wrong when she is drunk doesn’t know what she is doing, but a girl who goes on the street and sells herself in her sober senses—that is dreadful.”  (New York Tribune, October 19, 1907)

Note Magdalen home on the right in this postcard of the Tubby Hook area.

Asked if it was a good idea to have girls and women comingling in the same facility, Mrs. Griffiths responded without hesitation,  “Yes. The women, who have been through a good deal, often have a motherly feeling for the girls.  They seem to desire to save the girls from what they have undergone.  And sometimes the girls can help the women.   As for the girls learning evil from the women—well, some of these girls who have lived on the street know all the evil there is to know, I fancy; no woman could teach them that.  Of course, we are with the family.  It isn’t as if they were left alone.”

Dying to Get in

New York Evening Telegram, October 24, 1910.

While most young women would go to great lengths to avoid or even escape the confines of the asylum, one early resident did just the opposite—

In October of 1910, a nervous and terrified young woman, who called herself Emma Young (she never revealed her real name), wandered into the East 22^nd Street police station.

She claimed she was the victim of a stalker and sought the safe haven of the precinct house.

“I am afraid of being murdered,” she said to the lieutenant.  “A man I despise has been following me.  He has threatened to take my life.  I know he is desperate enough to do it, because he is infatuated with me and I refuse to have anything to do with him.  I thought I saw him following me along Sixth Avenue so I rushed in here.  I want to be sent away where he cannot reach me. “(New York Evening Telegram, October 24, 1910)

A policeman named Dresler calmed the weeping woman.

He then escorted her to night court where she begged the magistrate to place her into protective custody, even if that meant being committed to an asylum.

According to a published report, “She said she wished to start life anew—to get away from the influences of her past life.  Magistrate Herbert said he would let her act as her own judge.  He mentioned several institutions and the length of time to which she could be committed to them.   She selected the Magdalen Home.  She readily signed the commitment papers when they were placed before her.” “(New York Evening Telegram, October 24, 1910)

Young “Emma,” tragic and mysterious, also refused to name the man “she so greatly feared.”

Magdalen Home in Inwood, (Source: New York City, Architectural Record, Volumes 23-24, 1908)

Who’s that Girl?

Magdalen Home escape, New York Tribune, November 20, 1913.

By 1913, every police detective in northern Manhattan was familiar with the “family” on the hill.

Distress calls were made by the home’s matrons with alarming frequency and usually involved either an escape or a riot that needed to be quelled.

So, it was no great surprise when a call for assistance came in on November 19, 1913.

What began a simple request in tracking a young Magdalen, who had absconded into the night, turned into a confounding mystery.

Earlier that evening 24-year-old May Brown and 23-year-old Mary Allen attempted a death-defying escape from the Magdalen Asylum.   Sometime after six o’clock the two young women leaped from a forty-foot wall and into the rocky ravine below.

According to the press, the girls “took advantage of a celebration at the home last night to make their escape.  It was planned to hold a musical last night, and yesterday the girls had more freedom than usual in preparation for the affair.” (New York Tribune, November 13, 1913)

New York Times, November 22, 1913.

May Brown broke a leg and was knocked unconscious in the fall.  Her cohort, despite an intense search by mounted police, managed to vanish into the descending darkness.

Later, police would discover that May Brown, doing time for posing as a Sunday school teacher, had given an alias at the time of her initial arrest.

The real May Brown, police would discover when detectives arrived to tell her parents of the near deadly fall, was the victim of identity theft.

In addition to having allowed one young woman to elude capture, the clever young lady chained to the hospital bed refused to reveal her true identity to the tired and frustrated detectives.

Riot!

Magdalen Home riot, New York Herald, June 20, 1913.

On the night of June 19, 1913 police received another desperate call from the Magdalen Asylum.

A riot had broken out. Please send help.

When special officer William Hartigan arrived on the scene, the grounds of the Institution were a vision of pandemonium. At least seventy-five girls were involved in the uprising—scratched, bleeding, clothing torn, tossing furniture out of windows, chaos…

“The fight raged through the main corridors of the institution. Mrs. Harris and her women guards and attendants were powerless to separate the combatants…Mrs. Harris called in William Hartigan, a special officer, and he, too, was severely beaten by the girls.” (New York Herald, June 20, 1913)

Luckily, reinforcements were moments away.

“The policemen went into the crowd without gentleness, pulling the girls apart and hurling them from the centre of conflict.  As they pulled a girl away women guards would seize her and lock her in a room.  In that way, one by one, the girls were separated.” (New York Herald, June 20, 1913)

In all, six girls were arrested.

Police theorized the girls had rioted in hopes of being sentenced to other institutions where the minimum term was less than the three years to which Magdalen girls were generally committed.

The Long Fall

Magdalen killed in fall, New York Herald, March 13, 1914.

In March of 1914 sixteen-year-old Sarah Greene who was killed in an apparent escape attempt.

In a printed account, a newspaper scribe wrote, “Being unversed in even the elemental theories of physics, Sarah Greene…tied one end of a rope composed of ripped bed clothes to a chair on the forth floor of the Magdalen Home…and started to lower herself from a window to the rocks bordering the Hudson…As soon as she changed her weight from the window sill to the rope the chair followed her out of the window and seventeen bones in her body were broken when she fell on the crags.”  (New York Herald, March 14, 1914)

The matrons, who heard the cry, immediately locked the other girls in their rooms until “Sarah Greene, unconscious and dying, was sent to Washington Heights Hospital.” (New York Herald, March 14, 1914)

Two years later another inmate was killed in a similar fall:

Magdalen girl falls to death while sleepwalking, Evening World, September 17, 1916.

September 1916: Helen Miller, a 23-year old “hunchback…known to the police as an incorrigible,” plunged, fully dressed uniform of the asylum, to her death from a third floor window.  Magdalen administrators claimed the young woman had a habit of walking in her sleep, but could not explain why she was fully clothed. (The Evening World, September 17, 1916)

Another Riot

MagdalenMagdalen Home riot, New York Herald, July 20, 1914.

In July of 1914, members of the Magdalen “family” once again waged a pitched battle with the local constabulary.

After responding a frantic call that an incident in the dining hall had turned into full scale melee, police found a mob of girls smashing furniture and china, ripping open pillows and mattresses and breaking every mirror and window within reach.

There in the midst of it all, once again, was special policeman William Hartigan, once again getting tossed about by a swarm of angry young women.

“Detective Louis Hyman responded to the call, and when he arrived the young women reviled him and then set upon him.  The detective then telephoned for a platoon of police, who soon arrived at the home in two patrol wagons and arrested the girls. 

Scarcely had the police bundled the sixteen young women into the patrol wagons and left the institution in charge of Special Policeman Hartigan, when six other young women began to riot.  When Miss Jeanette Macconachie, assistant to the superintendent, attempted to stop their screams they attacked her, Hartigan went to the rescue.  One girl grasped him by the coat, while others tackled him in football fashion.  Soon they were rolling about the floor with the policeman, scratching and biting him and tearing his clothing. 

Meanwhile two other girls started singing and howling.  Hartigan managed to free himself and attempted again to restrain the young women.  Then they dashed up the stairs, threw chairs out of the windows, following with furniture with clocks, bowls and pitchers.  They broke the mirrors in the bureaus and smashed every window within reach.” (New York Herald, July 20, 1914)

According to the Times, the riot ended in multiple arrests: “After sixteen of the girls, most of them colored, had been selected as the ringleaders and removed to the patrol wagon, the police were able to restore some type of order.”

The Riots Continue

Magdalen riot, New York Herald, April 30, 1915.

On April 29, 1915 police wagons were again dispatched to Inwood’s Magdalen Asylum.

The replacement of a well-liked, reform-driven superintendant with a stern new disciplinarian, who reportedly ramped up punishments while eliminating many of the few privileges the girls enjoyed, had resulted in a full-on mutiny involving over 100 girls.

According to a news account published the following morning:

“By the time the reserves arrived in two patrol wagons from the West 177^th street station, a mile and a half away, the women keepers had put down what they called the worst rebellion that ever had occurred at the home. At that time more than 100 girls had been beaten into submission by the women attendants and were imprisoned in rooms.”

While ten of the alleged ringleaders were taken to night court for examination, most were back on the grounds several days later to participate in a Memorial Day celebration attended by the Institution’s high society benefactors.

Memorial Day celebration at the Magdalen Home in Inwood , New York City, New York Tribune, June 1, 1915.

Of the event, which included Maypole and Tango dancing, one reporter wrote, “The ten ringleaders in the recent riot pranced about the grass as innocently as the rest.  One of the group, who spent several days in the Jefferson Market Jail, led the procession of America’s dancers under the wing of the Goddess of Liberty herself.” (New York Tribune, June 1, 1915)

The Great Escape

Magdalen Home escape, New York Herald, January 24, 1916.

While not exactly Alcatraz the Institution’s high walls made escape a difficult proposition.  Through the years several girls were  killed or injured climbing out windows in failed attempts at freedom.

In the winter of 1916 inmate Margaret Darcy succeeded in an escape so daring the retelling of the event in the morning papers seemed the stuff of an adventure novel.

One Friday evening, just days into a three year commitment to the Home, Margaret feigned illness.  Left alone in third floor dormitory she quickly squeezed her thin young frame into a twenty-four-inch tube used as a laundry chute.

After surviving a twenty-foot vertical drop into the basement, she opened a window, cut a hole in a heavy wire screen and raced across the courtyard just as a night watchman sounded the alarm.

“But the girl was exceptionally agile and reached a tree near the wall,” the New York Herald reported. “This she climbed so fast that she was out on a large branch before the guards reached the yard. In a second she had dropped outside the wall and was gone.”

“Police were called and they searched the woods about the home, but found no trace of Margaret. Workmen will be busy today adjusting steel bars in front of the laundry chute in the third floor dormitory.” (New York Herald, January 24, 1916)

Name Change

In 1917 the Magdalen Benevolent Society changed its name to Inwood House.

During the annual meeting inside the Cosmopolitan Club, Executive Secretary Mary Paddon explained that the name had been changed to avoid “confusion and misunderstanding.”

“It seemed a pleasanter thing for girls to say, after being inmates there,” she explained to a journalist, “that they had lived at Inwood House, rather than a Magdalen institution.”  (New York Herald, February 28, 1917)

Another monumental announcement followed.

Magdalen home becomes Inwood House, New York Herald, February 28, 1917.

Paddon revealed that the Society planned to sell the Inwood site and move north to a more isolated location.

“When the home builds in the country there will be a group of small cottages, instead of one big building,” Paddon continued. “Young girls will be placed in one cottage, girls with babies in another, the feeble minded in a third, older women in a fourth, and so on.”

That Paddon would change the name of the home to Inwood House while simultaneously announcing a proposed move out of the neighborhood must have struck some in attendance as odd.

The asylum on the hill now had a new name, though little else changed in the day-to-day running of the institution.

Yet dark days lay ahead.

Funding Issues

Magdalen Home fundraising drive, New York Tribune, December 17, 1916.

Shortly after renaming the institution, Inwood House began a massive public relations and fundraising campaign.  Advertisements and pleas for assistance peppered the New York press.

One clever op-ed written by Cornelia T. Emmet, the then President of Inwood House, managed to connect the plight of her wayward girls to the war effort in Europe.

“To the Editor of The Tribune,” Emmet wrote, “Thousands of men are coming into New York City each day from the training and concentration camps in search of relaxation and recreation.  With this added danger and complication we are facing the need of caring for the unprotected girls of this city who have been weak enough to yield to temptation.” (November 27, 1917)

Emmet was referring to the spike in pregnant girls who had streamed into the facility as soldiers, often seeking companionship, returned from the front.

In another letter to the editor, Inwood House booster Bruce Cobb would write, “The care of the women who are going to come in contact, is a civil way perhaps, with the men who have faced God on the battlefields of Europe, is one of the problems in which all women must cooperate.” (New York Herald, March 4, 1918)

While fundraising efforts continued, the Inwood era of the Society’s existence was nearing its end.

Frightening Experiments

Many of the young women who passed through the doors of the Inwood institution had worked the taverns, brothels and alleyways of lower Manhattan before being “rescued” by the Society.

Venereal diseases were a common and legitimate concern and during the infancy of modern medicine and many remedies were far more frightening than the conditions themselves.

Journal of Social Hygiene, 1922.

New York Sun, June 14, 1920.

In the spring of 1920, two young women, Fanny Busch, 18 and Edith Johnson, 19 were rushed to Fordham Hospital suffering from bichloride of mercury poisoning.

Oddly, the night superintendant of the home refused to provide any details about the incident.

A reporter who visited the hospital was rebuffed when he inquired how it was possible that two girls had somehow ingested a dangerous substance normally kept under lock and key.

“Whether the poison was swallowed accidentally or whether the girls joined in a suicide pact was left unexplained by the hospital authorities, who, it was said, had heard the story from the superintendent.” (New York Herald, June 14, 1920)

The mystery was finally solved when inspectors from the Health Department visited the home  not long after the incident.

“For many years, the institution has been giving douche and mercury treatments for venereal diseases….hypodermics of mercury were given twice a week until twenty had been received by the patient.  A two-week’s period of rest followed this course of treatment, at the end of which time a blood test was given.  If the result was still positive a similar course of treatment followed.  This plan was continued until a negative Wassermann resulted.” (Source: Journal of Social Hygiene, 1922)

The End and a New Beginning

Magdalen Home becomes the Jewish Memorial Hospital, New York Times, July 10, 1921.

In the summer of 1920, not long after the dual mercury poisonings, the site was purchased by officers representing the Jewish Memorial Hospital.

1934 photo of the Jewish Memorial Hospital on Dyckman Street and Bolton Road.

Jewish Memorial Hospital building fund stamp.

Renovations on the building, dedicated to the memory of Jewish soldiers who perished during the First World War, began the following year.

Aftermath

Cover of book published by Inwood House.

The director of the old Magdalen Benevolent Society made good on her promise to see that the organization’s work continued well into the future.

In fact Inwood House, though drastically changed, exists to this very day.

Inwood House in the late 1950′s from literature published by the organization.

From their headquarters on 320 East 82^nd Street, Inwood  House has long focused on the needs of young and unwed mothers.

According to their website: “In March 2009, Inwood House opened a state-of-the-art Teen Family Learning Center at 320 East 82nd Street in Manhattan with corporate, private foundation, individual, and public support. The only one of its kind in New York City, the Inwood House Teen Family Learning Center serves as a national model of service for pregnant and parenting teens, our city-wide programming headquarters, and a training institute for the City’s graduate schools of social work, public health, and early child development.”

The Hudson At Inwood. Ernest Lawson (1873-1939). Oil On Canvas Laid Down On Panel.

While times change, taking care of fallen “family” members never goes out of fashion.

“There may have been tornadoes in Manhattan Island before meteorological records were kept, but old inhabitants say that the one which cut a swath of nearly an eighth of a mile wide on the bluff of Inwood on Friday, July 5th, was the first of which they had ever heard.” (New York Tribune Illustrated – July 14, 1901)

NY Tribune July 3, 1901

In the summer of 1901 Gotham suffered the deadliest heat wave in New York City history. From June 29-July 6th  at least 989 individuals perished in weather so hot it melted asphalt and drove scores of New Yorkers insane.

For a solid week New Yorkers cursed, collapsed, threw themselves into wells, leaped to their deaths from bridges, overwhelmed morgues and stretched police and hospital workloads beyond their limit.

NY Tribune- June 30, 1901.

Some fell to their deaths while sleeping on rooftops while seeking relief from their stifling, windowless tenements—dizzy, confused, dehydrated–trying to escape the suffocating air inside.

New York Tribune July 1, 1901.

As the death count mounted newspapers began keeping daily tallies of the dead. Grim articles with headlines like ‘Morgue Crowded with Bodies” and “New York Holocaust” spelled out gruesome details of the ongoing catastrophe.

Newspaper readers absorbed the calamity with morbid fascination.

Hundreds of horses lay dead and bloated in the street, preventing ambulance service and removal of the dead. The young and the elderly were particularly vulnerable. Special boats were commissioned to take infants out to sea in hopes the ocean breezes would better sustain life than the oven-like atmosphere in the sweltering metropolis.

The World- July 3, 1901.

New York commerce stood still. The stock exchange shut down. Employers were encouraged to close up shop until the heat wave, or “Warm Wave” to use turn of the century parlance, had passed.

On July 3rd, 1901 Professor Willis Luther Moore, head of the newly formed U.S. Weather Bureau warned New Yorkers that July 4th would be the hottest in recorded history.

Willis Luther Moore- Head of U.S. Weather Bureau in 1901.

“You may say,” said Professor Moore,” that this will be a record breaker, nothing like it ever having been recorded in the annals of the United States Weather Bureau for intensity of heat and the number of deaths it causes. The two days that are to come will be something extremely bad. The death rate will mount rapidly, prostrations from sunstroke being numerous. The coming Fourth of July will be the hottest on record, and this will add much to the average casualties of the day.” (The Evening World, July 3, 1901.)

While the casualty list would skyrocket as the days progressed, three separate thunderstorms on the Fourth of July would prove a brief respite from the heat. Still a balmy 86 degrees, the heat killed only 57 people on the Fourth compared with 317 the day before.

The following day, July 5th, 1901, weary New Yorkers prayed for more rain—if only to cool things off for a short while.

In Inwood, on the northern tip of Manhattan, they received more than they bargained for.

The below article from the New York Illustrated Tribune describes a once in a lifetime meteorological event that played out right here in our own backyard.

New York Tribune Illustrated – July 14, 1901.

“There may have been tornadoes in Manhattan Island before meteorological records were kept, but old inhabitants say that the one which cut a swath of nearly an eighth of a mile wide on the bluff of Inwood on Friday, July 5th, was the first of which they had ever heard. The nearest previous visitation of this character, and the only one remembered within the present limits of New York City, occurred at Woodhaven Junction, in the present borough of Queens, a short time before consolidation.

New York Tribune Illustrated – July 14, 1901

There appears to be little doubt that the Inwood storm of a week ago was a genuine tornado. It was a black funnel shaped cloud, and came with a humming like a swarm of bees, which almost instantly rose to a deafening roar; and before those in its tracks had time to think had done its work of destruction and passed out of sight. It swooped down on the bluff with terrific force, snapping off like matchsticks hundreds of large trees and uprooting others which had withstood the tempests of a century, bounded entirely by the high ground at Fort George and the Harlem River, and then touched down the earth again at Featherbed Lane, across the Harlem, where it mowed another swath through the woods for a short distance, then lifted and disappeared. That no dwelling houses were razed and no lives lost seems miraculous. The burst of wind was followed by a downpour od rain which flooded the stricken district and extended far beyond it in all directions. The water, which descended more rapidly than the sewers could carry it away, rose above the floors in many houses in the valley between Inwood and Fort George, and almost to the ceilings in some houses in the Borough of the Bronx. Hail fell after the tornado had swept by, and broke many windows and skylights, killed poultry and frightened women and children.

New York Tribune Illustrated – July 14, 1901

The tornado first touched the earth on the summit of the bluff between One-hundred-and-ninety-fourth and Two Hundredth streets. Many trees were prostrated on the high ground, and two hundred linear feet of the sheds of Durando’s Abbey Hotel were blown down, much of the wreckage being carried over the steep bluff into the valley below. The cloud rushed down the declivity as if impelled by a resistless weight, wrecking the stately forest trees which had long been the pride of the neighborhood by breaking them off at distances varying from two to twenty feet from the ground, denuding great trunks of their branches and tearing others from the ground by their roots. The destruction on the William H. Hayes estate, where the Abbey hotel is situated was perhaps greater than at any other place. Charles H. Aitken, a game fowl breeder, who livees at the foot of the bluff, was the worst sufferer, except one. His little barn was demolished by the tempest and falling trees, and his two horses were imprisoned beneath the wreckage. They had not been taken out at 4 o’clock last Monday afternoon, although enough of the debris had been removed to enable their owner to know they were unharmed and to permit the animals to be fed and watered.

Two greenhouses belonging to H.L. Battleman, the florist, about three hundred yards out in the valley from Mr. Aitken’s place, were in the track of the whirlwind, and were demolished. Three others were just outside the path of the storm, and escaped.

New York Tribune Illustrated – July 14, 1901

The Kingsbridge Road down the hillside from the Boulevard and Eleventh Avenue was rendered impassable by the rush of water. The Muschenheim place, on the top of the bluff, suffered severely. Many of the trees cherished by A.T. Stewart while he owned the property were uprooted, and nearly all the others were denuded of their branches, or their trunks were broken in two. The L.H. Libby place, once the property of William H. Tweed, was also greatly damaged by the tornado. Among the roadways, besides the Kingsbridge Road, which were badly washed by the flood were the Bridge road, between Tryon Terrace and the Abbey; the winding road from the Abbey to the Kingsbridge Road; Lafayette Boulevard and French Boulevard. All the unpaved streets and paths leading down the hills in the vicinity were converted into brooks by the rush of water”.

Click here to read more Inwood history.

“The body of Senator Wagner was a spectacle never to be forgotten.  The head was burnt and charred beyond the possibility of recognition, the legs were burnt off and the trunk bruised and disfigured…Later in the night he was identified by his gold watch, bearing the initials “W.W” his diary and several newspaper slips giving the election returns of his Senatorial district.”—The New York Truth, January 15, 1882.

Railroad Stories, 1935.

On the evening of January 13, 1882 the Western Express from Chicago pulled into Albany twenty-three minutes late.  The State Legislature had just let out for the weekend and the Tammany Hall politicians were eager to get back to New York City for the weekend.

Demand for seats was so great that the railroad took on an extra fifteen cars accommodate the 500 new passengers.  The fifteen new hitches included eight gleaming palace cars designed by burgeoning railroad tycoon and State Senator Webster Wagner. In addition, two extra engines were added to  accommodate the additional weight as well as make up for lost time.

Wagner, on-board the train,  proudly described his parlors of luxury, or “rolling stock,” as he was fond of saying, to reporters and colleagues as champagne poured freely.

The trip was a jolly one. Snow settled softly alongside the tracks as the train barreled ever southward.

As the ride progressed the night turned into a booze fueled bacchanalia—the drunken passengers unaware of the impending disaster that lay around the bend.

Just after the Chicago express passed the hairpin turn where the Hudson River meets the Spuyten Duyvil, the locomotive came to an abrupt stop.  Perhaps a drunken reveler had pulled the air brake as a gag?

Harper’s Weekly cartoon, February 4, 1882.

Webster Wagner was not amused.  He politely excused himself from the lavishly detailed palace car and stepped into the snowy night to investigate.

It was the last time he would be seen alive.

Standing above the cut William R. Murray, a brass moulder’s apprentice at the local foundry,  watched as the pending tragedy played out before his eyes.

In later testimony, Murray recalled standing on the stoop of Kilcullen’s Hotel gazing curiously at the stalled train some 125 feet below the hotel and saloon.

Kilcullen’s was a popular watering hole for the foundry workers at the Johnson Ironworks, which once produced munitions alongside the peaceful banks of the Spuyten Duyvil—and on a Friday night the saloon was likely packed.

Spuyten Duyvil in 1883, Johnson Ironworks on right and Inwood Hill on left.

From the safety of his perch, Murray watch as another train, the Tarrytown Special, also heading south, sped through the cut on a collision course with the rear end of the unsuspecting Chicago Express.

A brakeman on the train from Albany, in a vain attempt to warn off the approaching train,  ran towards the Tarrytown train frantically waving his signal lantern.  The Tarrytown engineer sounded his whistle seconds before slamming into the stalled train.

Soon the pure, snow-covered banks of the Spuyten Duyvil were a kaleidoscope of blood and flames. Screams pierced the night as volunteers waded through the inferno to pull survivors out of the collision before they burned alive.

Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, January 21, 1882.

Other resourceful volunteers, worried the boilers might explode,  rolled giant snowballs towards the overheated engine cars.  Some even pelted survivors, their clothes ablaze, with snowballs in a desperate attempt to save human life.

The disaster had such a profound impact on the railroad industry that the Spuyten Duyvil disaster was featured on the cover of Railroad Stories, a pulp magazine for train enthusiasts, more than half a century later.

Below, in its entirety, is the harrowing account published by Railroad Stories in 1935.

Railroad Stories, 1935
The Wreck at Spuyten Duyvil
By H.R. Edwards

A light snow was swirling around the Chicago-New York Express as she double-headed out of Albany at 3:06—twenty-six minutes late—on a gray afternoon of 1882, straightened her “string of varnish” after leaving the yards, and settled down for the 142-mile run to New York City.

It was Friday the 13^th.  Although there were thirteen wooden cars in that train, the possibility of a jinx didn’t seem to worry the seventy-seven politicians who were traveling southward from the New York State capital on free passes given by the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad.

They laughed and roughhoused like schoolboys on a holiday.  As a matter of fact, that’s just what it was.  The State Legislature had adjourned for the weekend, and they were going back to the big city—back to the bright lights of Broadway and the three-story brownstone mansions of Twenty-third Street.

Interior view of parlor car showing the luxury of travel in the 1880′s. Source: Railroad Stories, 1935.

Just behind the two locomotives were coupled two mail cars; then a baggage car and four passenger coaches, all the property of the railroad.  Lastly, and most important, came six parlor cars: the “Red Jacket,” the “Sharon,” the “Vanderbilt,” the “Minnehaha,” the “Empire,” and the “Idlewood” –all built and owned by the Wagner Drawing-Room Car Company, of New York; each valued at about $17,000.

Mr. Wagner himself was riding that train.  Webster Wagner, of Palatine Bridge, N.Y. (some fifty-five miles west of Albany).  Inventor of the sleeping car, president of the Wagner Company, five times elected to the State Senate, and an influential member of its railroad committee.

Webster Wagner, Source: Memorial of Webster Wagner, By L. D. Wells.

Mr. Wagner was sixty-four.  He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a high forehead and blue eyes, and possessing rare vigor for a man of his age, his young son-in-law, Jay Taylor, was riding the same train as parlor-car conductor in charge of the Wagner rolling stock.

The newspapers that day were filled with rumors of a proposed merger between the Wagner Company, capitalized at five million dollars, and the Pullman Company, capitalized at ten million, which would soon be twelve and a half million.  Such a combination would monopolize the field, revolutionize railway travel, and bring immense revenue to the stockholders of both concerns.  It was expected to be the crowning triumph of Webster Wagner’s long and useful career.

Stock certificate signed by Webster Wagner.

Newspaper reporters were trying to get a statement from Mr. Wagner; but, like the good politician that he was, he shook their hands with a genial smile—and talked about other subjects.  As the Chicago Express rumbled through the deepening shadows of the late afternoon, winding the snow-covered banks of the Hudson, he passed around cigars to the political news-hounds and told his life story.

Mr. Wagner revealed that he was born at Palatine Bridge on the second of October, 1817, became interested in transportation at an early age, and was apprenticed to his brother James as a wagon builder.  Later the two brothers went into partnership, but Webster soon decided there was more of a future in railroading, so he reassigned and got a job as station attendant at Palatine Bridge.

He held that job from 1843 to 1860.  During that time he watched the long through trains of comfortless cars go by his station, and one day he stumbled upon the idea that brought him fame and fortune.

“I had never thought of the sleeping car,” Mr. Wagner admitted to the reporters, ”until I saw one of a very clumsy pattern built by a man living near Palatine Bridge.  The man had no capital, no capacity, and not much inventive genius.  I saw right away that his idea was good, but had to be developed.”

William H. Vanderbilt trading card from the 1880′s.

“I hadn’t much capital, either, but I applied to William H. Vanderbilt for permission to use an old coach to illustrate my notion of what a sleeping-car should be. I knew that the Hudson River Railroad was sharing a large amount of business with the night boats that it should have for itself.  Men who needed all the time they could get begrudged the five or six hours lost in traveling between Albany and New York by boat.  It seemed to me that much time could be saved by providing accommodations for merchants and others who would be glad to sleep while they traveled rapidly.”

He broke off abruptly, opened the window and peered out.  The snow had stopped falling. A tiny station rushed by in the gathering twilight.

“The air feels good!” he exclaimed, and closed the window.  “It was quite a problem for me to get the right ventilation in those cars.  Oh, yes, as I was saying, my request for an old car was granted, and I went to work to fit it up with berths.  It took me months to finish that car.  Even then it had to be seen and approved by Commodore Vanderbilt before it could be used on the road.  I urged his son, William H., to persuade the old man to look at my car.  At first the Commodore ignored my request, but finally consented.”

“It was a critical Sunday morning in 1858 when old Vanderbilt and his son were to visit the Thirtieth Street depot in New York to look at my new-fangled contraption.  Before they arrived I walked through the car a dozen or more times to see that everything was all right.  After the Commodore had made his inspection he asked:

“’How many have you got of these things?’

“’There is only one,’ I told him. 

“’Go ahead!’ he said.  ‘Build more! It’s a devilish good thing, and you can’t have too many of them.’

Interior of Wagner Palace Car, 1875.

“I realized then that my fortune was made,” Senator Wagner continued. “With my brother’s help four cars were built at a cost of thirty-two hundred dollars each, and they began running on the first of September, 1868.  The first car had a single tier of berths, and the bedding had to be packed away in a closet at one end of the car, thus occupying valuable space.  Too much, in fact.  The one tier of berths was not profitable enough, so another was installed.  Thus the modern sleeping car came to be.”

“What did you do about ventilation?” one of the reporters reminded the inventor.

“Oh, yes,” was the reply.  “At first the ventilation system was found to be imperfect. The upper berths were too close, as the roof was flat. To overcome that objection I devised and applied the pitched roof, much higher than that of the old cars; thus securing ventilation and eventually the swinging upper berth which was adopted later and is in use today.”

Incidentally, the invention of the elevated roof proved so useful that it was applied not only to sleepers, but also to day coaches. On August 20^th, 1867, Mr. Wagner put into operation his first drawing-room car for day travel. He made several trips abroad to study the English, French and Swiss passenger cars, survived two or three wrecks, and finally, in 1882, was looking forward to a merger with the rival interests of George M. Pullman. (Neither Wagner nor Pullman invented the first sleeping-car. Back in 1843 the Erie Railroad had 2 sleepers, known as “diamond cars” after the shape of their windows, built by John Stephenson. Even before that in 1837, the Cumberland Valley (P.R.R.) had a sleeper, the “Chambersburg,” with 12 berths in 3 tiers but no bedding.)

But Senator Wagner did not live to see the merger consummated. And all because of that hilarious group of politicians who were riding in his drawing-room cars from Albany to New York on Friday the 13^th. At least, that’s what the train crew maintained in the investigations that followed, although no one came forward to name the guilty person.

Everybody agreed that there was quite a bit of drinking among the passengers that afternoon on the Chicago Express, and even two or three of the porters showed signs of intoxication. As Conductor George Hanford testified later:

“We had a lively party on board. All through the cars they were passing bottles, drinking freely, smashing hats, and signing songs. Apparently they were sober when they boarded the train in Albany, but many became drunk after the train started. I had no control over them. Someone, I don’t know who, pulled the rope connecting with the air brakes, and the train came to a standstill, to enable the engineer to pump out the air.”

If pulling the rope was intended to be a joke, it proved to be a ghastly one. The train had stopped a little to the north of Spuyten Duyvil, on the outskirts of New York City. At that point there was a deep cut through a ledge that obstructed a view of the station. On one side rose rocks and high ground. The other side sloped down toward the Hudson River.

Map from New York Herald, January 14, 1882.

Just before entering the cut a southbound train had to round a long curve, and see what was around that curve ahead of them. Previously the N.Y.C. & H.R. had kept flagmen on duty at both ends of the cut, Bill McLaughlin and Richard Griffon, paying them each about thirty dollars a month, but in a wave of economy they had discharged McLaughlin, leaving the dangerous stretch of track insufficiently guarded at the north.

At the moment the express cam to a sudden stop, Senator Wagner was talking to some of his political companions in the Empire, the second car from the rear. One of them was saying:

“I’ve got a couple of friends here who want to get passes from you.”

Nobody knows whether or not the inventor had a presentiment of tragedy on that occasion, but he certainly betrayed uneasiness over the unscheduled stop. He rose and remarked:

“Well, gentlemen, I think I’ll take a look through the train. These confounded railroads have a passion for smashing up my best cars.”

Mr. Wagner left the Empire and hurried back into the end car, the Idlewild. That was about 7 p.m. It was the last time he was seen alive.

Edward Stanford, engineer on the first locomotive, who had been employed on the New York Central for twenty-five years, made several attempts to start his train, but only succeeded in breaking the drawbar connecting the two engines.

The second engineer on the doubleheading express, Archibald Buchanan, who had eighteen years of engine service on that road, said later that he had seventy-five pounds of air on, and it had dropped at once to forty when somebody back on the cars pulled that cord, and he had tried to relieve the brakes by pumping them off. Recharging an air cylinder, he pointed out, took about fifteen minutes.

Meanwhile, George Melius, the hind brakeman, swung into action. This was his story:

“A minute or two after our train stopped I got my lamps, white and red, and walked back to protect the rear. I stood behind my train about two minutes, and then started back around the curve about six or seven car lengths behind my train. It took me about five minutes to walk that distance” – at the investigation later he was made to walk the same distance, which took only two minutes – “and I stood there perhaps two or three minutes.”

“I waited there because I considered the distance sufficient to stop any train. While I was on duty at that point, the Tarrytown local came in sight, seven or eight car lengths from where I stood. Instantly I started waving my red lantern across the track. I think there was time enough to stop the train, even though I judged she was making about forty miles an hour.”

His brother, who was a conductor on the Poughkeepsie train, advised Brakeman Melius to modify that speed estimate in telling his story to the coroner’s jury – “because,” said Conductor Melius, “the Tarrytown local had just stopped at the Spuyten Duyvil depot and could not possibly have picked up so much speed in that distance.” So George modified his story for the official investigation.

At 6:40 p.m. the southbound local had left Tarrytown, N.Y., fourteen miles away, with Frank Burr at the throttle and Patrick Quinn wielding the scoop. Both were men of years experience in engine service on the N.Y.C.

“We were five minutes behind time when we pulled out of Tarrytown,” Burr explained, “because we had waited for the Chicago Express to pass us there. The express went by at 6:15 at high speed, evidently making up for lost time. We stopped at Spuyten Duyvil depot at 7:04. We were then thirteen minutes behind the express.”

The number “thirteen” seems to run like a theme song through the history of this occurrence. It was Friday the 13th, there were thirteen cars on the express, and the local was running thirteen minutes behind the express.

“The northern boundary of Manhattan Island, N.Y. City, as it looked in 1882. This section today is served by two Metropolitan subway-elevated systems. At the upper left is the New York Central main line, which parallels the Hudson River to Albany.” Source: Railroad Stories, 1935.

“After leaving Spuyten Duyvil,” said Engineer Burr, “we entered the cut at the rate of eighteen or twenty miles per hour. There was no danger signal or warning of any kind in the cut. And, I might add, Kilcullen’s Hotel, standing close to the right-of-way, completely shut off our view of the curving track until we were almost on top of the stalled train.”

“We passed out of the cut into the curve – I was looking ahead at the time – when I saw a flagman (Melius) with red and white signals in his hands. He was swinging the red across the down track, upon which we were. At the same time I saw the rear of the express before me.”

“When I first noticed the red light, the flagman was standing not more than two car lengths ahead of me, and the train was not more than thirty-five feet beyond the flagman. Altogether I was not more than three and a half car lengths behind the express when I first sighted her.”

“I put on the air brakes at once, reversed the engine, pulled the throttle wide open, blew the whistle, and did all in my power to stop. But a collision was inevitable. I remained at my post until the engine finally plowed into the rear of the express and stopped there. Then I got out and did what I could do to help with the work of rescue.”

The locomotive of the Tarrytown local was only slightly damaged. Her overhauling was estimated later to be not more than a fifty-dollar job. She was embedded in the parlor car Idlewild. Her headlight, broken but still shining, had pushed its way a dozen feet within the luxurious car, casting a weird glare upon the terrified passengers.

“Scene of Spuyten Duyvil wreck, looking toward the northwest, just after the railroad tracks had been cleared. In the foreground is the creek, which marked the boundary line between Spuyten Duyvil and Manhattan. In the center are shown Kilcullen’s Hotel and Saloon, to which the victims were taken.” Source: Railroad Stories, 1935.

The Idlewild, in its turn, had been partly telescoped into the car ahead, which was the Empire. It was not known then how many persons had been killed or injured, but the engine had a full head of steam and a boiler explosion was feared. An explosion under those circumstances would have added frightfully to the casualty list.

Spuyten Duyvil train crash headline, New York Herald, January 14, 1882.

James Kilcullen, proprietor of the small saloon and hotel near by, had viewed the catastrophe from his doorway, and was one of the first to hasten to the rescue with a ladder, an ax, and a couple of water buckets. Said he:

“If you want to use a shutter or two to carry the victims on, don’t hesitate to tear them off my house.”

Survivors of the wreck who had managed to scramble out of the cars, aided by a number of husky fellows who hurried to the scene from near-by villages, formed a bucket brigade and threw water from the Hudson River onto the last two parlor-cars, which had caught fire almost immediately after the collision.

Engineer Burr was the first to recognize the damage of a boiler explosion. Seizing the fireman’s scoop from Patrick Quinn, he commenced piling great shovelfuls of snow into the furnace. Fortunately, although it was mid-winter, the weather was rather mild, and the snow was soft enough to work with.

Water carriers, who had been emptying their pails onto the flaming cars, followed Burr’s example and dashed them against the locomotive boiler instead. Eventually the fire in the firebox was quenched, and attention was turned once more to the Empire and the Idlewild, from which came the agonizing cries of victims who were slowly burning to death.

Conductor Hanford, of the express, noticed that the occasional pailfulls of water were doing very little to check the blaze. “For God’s sake, hurry!” he cried. “Throw snow onto the fire!”

“In the absence of fire-fighting equipment, the trainmen, passengers and men from nearby farmhouses used huge snowballs to combat the flames and facilitate the task of rescuing survivors from the wreckage.” Source: Railroad Stories, 1935.

And, although badly burned about the face and hands, Hanford started to roll a snowball toward the terrible mass of burning timbers and hissing metal. Soon hundreds of willing hands were pushing great mounds of snow toward the danger spot. Some, braving the fierce heat, ran alongside the blazing cars and tossed the snow in through the windows. Others risked death themselves to drag out both the living and dead from the fiery hell-holes.

To enable rescuers to keep at work while removing the victims, their companions deluged them with water and pelted them with snowballs.

Sketch of crash with inset of Webster Wagner.

At the moment of impact, the lamps in one end of the Empire went out. Those in the other end gave a light, which, pale and sickly though it was, proved to be a blessing. With this illumination every occupant of the Empire was enabled to get out or be carried out alive before a wall of fire made exit impossible; and no one perished in that car.

Until a year and a half before the accident the N.Y.C. & H.R. had lighted cars with candles. General Superintendent John M. Toucey maintained that these were safer than oil lamps; but the traveling public had complained that they could not read by such light, and so oil lamps were substituted.

The cars were heated by the Baker patented process, not by stoves, and the heating apparatus was concealed from view. Nevertheless, according to Conductor Hanford, who had been in train service on that road for eleven years, this system was the cause of the fire, though oil lamps added to the conflagration.

Tons of snow were thrown upon the two cars, and in a short time the volunteer workers had the hills and roadway scraped almost entirely clear of snow. Even this, however, seemed hardly able to abate the heat. Late at night relief came with the arrival of the fire department from Carmansville, a wrecking train from the Thirtieth Street depot, and two or three ambulances made a long and terrible drive through the dark over snow-covered, muddy roads.

The fire apparatus, pumping water from the Hudson, soon put the fire out. But before this happened, the cars had been reduced to a shapeless mass of charred wood and twisted metal.

James Kilcullen threw open his place to the victims, dead and wounded alike. When the grim casualty list was finally counted, there were found to be eight dead – most of them burned beyond recognition – and nineteen persons were seriously injured.

The bodies were carried into Kilcullen’s saloon and there were laid, a ghastly spectacle, upon the floor and billiard tables. Two rival undertakers who had hurried over from Yonkers, N.Y., quarreled with each other as to which one should take charge of the bodies.

Aboard the wrecking train were General Superintendent Toucey, who was in charge of the entire N.Y.C. & H.R. Railroad between New York City and Buffalo, and Division Superintendent Charles Bissell. Both officials remained on the scene of the wreck all night, personally supervising the rescue work and disposal of the ruins.

“Clearing up after the wreck; Manhattan Island in the background; Kilcullen’s Saloon at right.” Source: Railroad Stories, 1935.

By 4 A.M. the two tracks were cleared sufficiently for trains to run in both directions. The trains from New York brought a throng of newspaper reporters and curiosity seekers. Kilcullen’s thirst emporium did a land-office business, scores of men all day long drinking and playing billiards on the very spot where bodies of the wreck victims had been laid a short time before.

The New York Truth, January 15, 1882.

The first of the dead to be identified was Senator Wagner. The famous inventor had perished in the Idlewild, with which he had sought to equip with every appliance of safety and comfort. Sorrowfully his son-in-law, Conductor Jay Taylor, claimed the body. One of the Wagner cars was draped with black and coupled onto a special train taking the Senator back to Palatine Bridge where he was born sixty-four years before, and where he had served the railroad for seventeen years as station agent.

Another of the dead was the Rev. F.X. Marechal, chaplain for Blackwells Island, New York City – the spiritual advisor for inmates of the workhouse, the insane asylum and the almshouse. He, too, was burned to death in the Idlewild.

So were Mr. and Mrs. Park Valentine, a young bride and groom who had been married the night before at a fashionable society wedding in New England. He was twenty-two; she was nineteen.

Conductor Hanford was the last person to see the newlyweds alive. Forcing his way into the shattered and burning car, he saw the devoted pair standing together in the wreckage. Mr. Valentine was trapped beyond all hope of being extricated. His bride was clinging to him; only her clothing was caught in the wreckage.

Hanford said later that if she had been willing to slip out of her clothing and leave her husband she could have been saved. This he urged her to do, but the hysterical girl refused to obey. The heat was too intense for Hanford to stay in there long enough to force her to do this, to save the woman in spite of herself, and so the young couple died together.

Immediately after the accident, according to A.H. Catlin, who had charge of the road’s air-brake equipment, the brakes on the wrecked train were examined and found to be in good working order. Just who had pulled that cord, at the height of revelry back there in one of the cars, will probably never be known.

Mr. Toucey, however, picked on Conductor Hanford and Brakeman Melius, particularly Melius, as the prime scapegoats.

“The collision,” said he, “was a direct result of the violation of Rule Fifty-three.” Following is the rule he referred to, as stated in the N.Y.C. & H.R. Railroad rulebook:

Whenever a train is stopped on a road, or is enabled to proceed at slow rate, the conductor must immediately send a man with red signal at least half a mile back, on double track, and the same distance in both directions if on single track, to stop any approaching train, which signal must be shown while the detention continues.

This must always be done whether another train is expected or not. In carrying out these instructions the utmost promptness is necessary; not a moment must be lost in inquiry as to the cause of stoppage or probably duration; the rear brakeman must go back instantly. Conductors will be held strictly responsible for the prompt enforcement of this rule.

At the coroner’s investigation, the attorney for Melius asked the general superintendent: “Suppose one of the employees cannot read. How should he know what the rules are?”

Mr. Toucey replied: “If there is such a man he ought to leave the employ of the road.”

“Do you know of any such?” persisted the lawyer.

“I do not,” said Mr. Toucey.

Then the truth came out. Although George Melius had been employed in train service on the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad for more than twenty years, he could neither read nor write!

It did not take the coroner’s jury long to reach a verdict. They held that eight persons had been killed “by criminal means and culpable negligence in the performance of their several duties” on the part of brakeman Melius, Conductor Hanford, Engineers Stackford, Buchanan and Burr, General Superintendent Toucey, and the railroad company itself.

Later the grand jury indicted Hanford and Melius on the charge of manslaughter in the fourth degree, and recommended:

(1)   Discontinuance of the use of mineral oil for illumination in cars.
(2)   Use of steam of hot water or hot air heating of cars instead of heating be direct radiation.
(3)   Extension of the block signal system
(4)   Larger train crews
(5)   Employment of signalmen at all dangerous cuts and curves
(6)   Trainmen and others holding responsible positions should be required to read and write.
(7)   Inclusion of water pails and tools boxes containing axes, etc., on every train.
(8)   The practice of giving free passes to legislators and others holding office under our state and city government is contrary to all proper ideas of good public policy and should be prohibited by law.

George Melius, The National Police Gazette, February 4, 1882.

On account of the death of Senator Wagner, who had been a member of important railroad committees, the Senate of New York State also made an investigation. Its report, June 1, 1882, was vague and obviously written by politicians; but was definite about one point, namely, putting the blame upon brakeman Melius and not upon any of the railroad officials.

An aftermath of this disaster was revealed in a recent letter from Richard McCloskey, of Co. 3, Veterans Administration Home, Va., who wrote to Railroad Stories on his seventy-fifth birthday, June 10^th, 1935: “I was a witness of the wreck at Spuyten Duyvil and knew George Melius. About a year after the wreck I boarded a horse car on Second Avenue, New York City, and recognized Melius as the driver. He was well disguised by a long growth of whiskers.”

Spuyten Duyvil Station, 1907.

Northwest view of crash site area across the Spuyten Duyvil shot from Inwood.

If any other Spuyten Duyvil witnesses are still living, the general yardmaster of RAILROAD STORIES wants to hear from them.

“The crying need of the community, in which there are between 15,000 and 20,000 persons, is a branch post office in the region of 207^th Street to serve a section which is growing faster than any other in the city.

 Just now the mail facilities are not much further advanced than they were in the days when the Dyckman’s were the best-known residents in the section and when Inwood was just a hamlet.

That’s a good many years ago, of course, but illustrative of how far behind the times the postal facilities are up here.”  -Letter to the editor of The Sun, December 26, 1918

Dyckman Street station from undated postcard.

In 1904, with the arrival of the elevated subway trains, Inwood’s first apartment buildings, the Solano and Monida, were erected at the northeast corner of Broadway and Dyckman Street.

Newspaper advertisements promised “Country Quiet and Clean Air in the City.”

With inexpensive rents and a new station located on Dyckman Street and Broadway, leases were signed on every apartment before the buildings were ready receive their new tenants.

Solano and Monida Apartment Ad, New York Sun, November 4, 1904

Other real estate investors were quick to pounce on this overlooked territory, and, over the ensuing decade, had frantically, block by block, grabbed up nearly every available piece of property east of Broadway.

Panorama of the Inwood valley in 1916, NYHS.

Natives of the recently rural hamlet on the northern tip of Manhattan were accustomed to the deprivations of country living:

“There was no post office, no telegraph station, no telephone, no electric light—absolutely none of the modern conveniences enjoyed by a rural town,” said the pastor of the Mount Washington Presbyterian Church in a 1914 sermon.  “The nearest drugstore, the nearest market and the nearest doctor was two or three miles away.” (Reverend George Shipman Payson from “Forty Years in the Wilderness”)

207th and 10th Avenue in 1926 (NYHS).

But as the 1920’s approached the ever-growing and diverse community of former downtown folk found themselves without even a way to mail a letter.

New construction was everywhere, but still this Manhattan community had the feel of a frontier town.

The Battle for a Post Office

New York Sun, December 26, 1918.

By 1918, residents were writing into the newspapers clamoring for a postal facility:

“At present the nearest branch post office is the Washington Bridge station, at Amsterdam Avenue and 180^th Street.  It is on Washington Heights, about two miles from the center of Inwood.  What Inwood needs is something nearer home, something more convenient to its residents and the businessmen who have not the time to go down to the Heights to attend to postal matters.” (Letter to the editor of The Sun, December 26, 1918)

Kingsbridge Post Office Station S, (Source “Riverdale, Kingsbridge and Spuyten Duyvil,” William A. Tieck)

New arrivals could also hike north across the Spuyten Duyvil to a well-established station on 226^th Street, “but this serves the Kingsbridge section and has no practical advantage to Inwood.” (The Sun, March 20, 1919)

 On March 16, 1919 a tiny article that should have met with great local enthusiasm appeared in the New York Times announcing a “New Post Office for the Heights”:

Around the corner from proposed Post Office site on northeast Corner of Tenth Avenue and 207th Street in 1926, NYHS.

“The Post Office which is to serve the Dyckman and Inwood Sections is to be erected at the northeast corner of Tenth Avenue and 208^th Street, on property owned by Robert E, Dowling.  A two-story building will be put up on the site and leased to the Government for a long term of years.  The transaction was arranged by John N. Golding as broker.” (New York Times, March 16, 1919)

But the response to the announcement was lukewarm at best—the newcomers were hard to please.

The Sun and New York Herald, February 2, 1920.

“While the people of Inwood welcome the announcement that the section will soon have a post office of its own they deplore the fact that a site could not be found on 207^th Street. 

The latter is the principal street of the section and consequently is the logical place for a post office.

 Moreover, Tenth Avenue, the site of the new post office, is removed from the center of business activity.  Sherman Avenue or Vermilyea Avenue would have been more appropriate.”   (The Sun, March 20, 1919)

More than six months later, despite numerous promises made by postal officials, a post office had yet to materialize:

“TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN—Sir: A mild flutter of excitement was caused in Inwood, just above Washington Heights, by the publication of a statement that Postmaster General Burleson had again promised to open a branch post office in the section.

The neighborhood is probably growing more rapidly than any other in the city, and the residents and business people have been clamoring for better postal service for the last three years.  Announcement has been made time and time again that the Postmaster General had lent an ear to the appeals from the good citizens of the section, but the promises drifted away like thin air, never to be heard of again.  Yet Inwood goes serenely along and hope springs afresh every time mention is made of a promise to open a branch post office to give it to the postal service to which it is justly entitled.” (The Sun, October 9, 1919)

Four months later, in the winter of 1920, the headlines again announced a “Post Office for Inwood.”

207th Street and Sherman Avenue 1926, NYHS.

The new station was slated to open on April 1, 1920 on the west side of Sherman Avenue, between 204^th and 207^th Streets.

Describing the announcement as a “pleasant shock,” one newspaper reader wrote:

“It was only natural that they (Inwood residents) should be surprised, for they have waited patiently for at least two years for the postal authorities to take definite action in the matter of improving the service in their district, which has grown to be an important one.  From time to time rumors have been current that a carrier station would be established in the district, but the project always fell through.”  (The Sun and New York Herald, February 2, 1920)

The reader also expressed joy of news that the post office would not be built on Tenth Avenue as had previously been discussed:

“Moreover, the fact that such an excellent site has been chosen for the new carrier station adds to the joy felt by the well-wishers of Inwood.  The site is convenient to 207th Street, the business center of the district, and is more appropriate for a new station than is the site at 208^th Street and Tenth Avenue, where it was once proposed to erect a carrier station.  The latter site is too far removed from the center of activity and for this reason was objected to by the business people of the district.” (The Sun and New York Herald, February 2, 1920)

Hopes Fade

The Sun and New York Herald, May 25, 1920.

As the summer of 1920 approached the empty promises turned into grim resignation and anger.  One wtiter to the editor of the Sun and Herald vented that “the longed for post office was apparently as far away as ever:”

“Some months ago announcement was made that a site had been secured on the west side of Sherman Avenue between 204^th and 207^th Streets for the erection of a new post office for Inwood, and the residents of that thriving part of the city rejoiced.  

At present there are indications that Inwood is no nearer a new post office than it was before the announcement, and it is said that it has no prospect of getting one until the cost of labor and building material decreases.  In the meantime Inwood must struggle along under its old handicap of poor service.

The residents of Inwood have grown tired of procrastination and want action.” (The Sun and New York Herald, May 25, 1920)

A Post Office at Last

Sometime around 1923, and possibly earlier, Inwood finally received a post office—though not the Sherman Avenue location most in the neighborhood had hoped for.

The site of Inwood’s First Post Office, now an auto parts store located on 3860 Tenth Avenue just south of 207th Street.

According to city directories, Inwood’s first post office was situated on 3860 Tenth Avenue, a few storefronts south of 207^th Street, below the elevated IRT Station.

Judging from vintage photos and buildings records, this early location must have been both a gritty and lively spot.

1926 photo of southwest corner of 207th Street and Tenth Avenue. The Post Office would have been just around the corner on Tenth Avenue.

Currently  an auto parts store,  the original “Inwood Station” shared a block with a bowling alley, a shoe shine parlor, two rooming houses; the Dyckman Hotel and Fagan’s, McDermott’s Moving and Storage, Moran’s Restaurant and Oppenheimer’s Grocery.

Old Post Office Burns, The Sun, February 9, 1934.

Perhaps our best descriptions of the old Tenth Avenue location derive from news accounts of a fire that swept through the post office in the winter of 1934.

Oddly, it was the second time that year  the post office had caught fire, though the damage from the first blaze appears to have been minor.

According to a description in the New York Sun:

“Smoke was discovered seeping through the floor of the building, a one-story “taxpayer,” shortly before 4 o’clock this afternoon.  The cellar was found to be ablaze. Superintendent J. F. Tabin hastily threw several thousands of dollars worth of stamps and a small amount of cash into the safe, and he and other employees fled to the streets.  Some mail was saved before the flames drove the clerks away, but an undetermined amount was destroyed.

Deputy Chief Daniel Carlock, who arrived with the first apparatus, immediately turned in a second alarm.  The Post Office building is adjoined by a five-story apartment house.

Despite the intense cold several thousand persons gathered, and police from the Wadsworth Avenue station had to establish fire lines.  Most of the tenants in the apartment house left their flats, although they were not ordered out by firemen.

The fire, eating through the wooden floor of the Post Office sent out thick clouds of smoke, which added to the difficulty of fighting it.

While the firemen were at work, most of the twenty-five or thirty mail-collectors working out of the branch arrived with the afternoon’s gathering of mail.  A big truck was drawn up to the curb in front of a candy store a block from the burning building, and a temporary post office for receiving the collections was set up in it.

One fireman was cut by glass from one of the big windows of the office, but there were no other injuries. 

Last April the branch post office burned, and was so badly damaged that it had to be closed for more than a month.  Today’s fire is believed to have started from an overheated furnace.” (New York Sun, February 9, 1934)

Another article cited the difficulties faced by fire fighters on a bitterly cold day marked by “an epidemic of blazes”:

“The routine hazards of firemen were increased by frozen fire-plugs, bursting hose lines and the thick sheet of ice that formed almost instantly wherever water fell.  Many firemen were treated for frostbite and exposure during the day.  In the metropolitan area the number of fires was unusually large and though most of them were of a minor nature the fire units were heavily taxed to combat them.

In upper Manhattan two alarms brought a large force of men and half a dozen pieces of apparatus to a blaze, which swept through the one story post office at 3860 Tenth Avenue, near West 206^th Street.  Mail and supplies were carried to safety.” (New York Times, February 10, 1934)

The New Post Office

New Post Office located on 9o Vermilyea Avenue in the late 1930′s.

The current Inwood post office, located on 90 Vermilyea Avenue, was commissioned as part of the United States Government’s public works projects during the Great Depression.

Inwood Station, designed by Brooklyn architect Carroll H. Pratt, was one of twelve new post offices built in Manhattan during the mid to late 1930’s.  Pratt, who specialized in the design of hospitals and banks, also designed the Parkville Station post office in Brooklyn.

Inwood Post office located on 90 Vermilyea Avenue under construction in the 1930′s.

Inwood Post office located on 90 Vermilyea Avenue under construction in the 1930′s.

Inwood Post office located on 90 Vermilyea Avenue under construction in the 1930′s.

Inwood Post office located on 90 Vermilyea Avenue under construction in the 1930′s.

Inwood Post office located on 90 Vermilyea Avenue under construction in the 1930′s.

Inwood Post office located on 90 Vermilyea Avenue under construction in the 1930′s.

Inwood Post office located on 90 Vermilyea Avenue under construction in the 1930′s.

Inwood Post office located on 90 Vermilyea Avenue under construction in the 1930′s.

Designed in 1934, Inwood Station was constructed between 1935 and 1937 by the Globe Building Corporation.

According to a 1937 statement from then Postmaster Albert Goldman, “The new building occupies a site 100 by 100 feet.  It is one and a half stories high, and is constructed of brick with cast stone trim.  The property was purchased by the government for $32,000. The total cost of the land and building is $106,000.” (New York Times, June 27, 1937)

On June 29, 1937, Goldman, believed to have been Gotham’s first Jewish Postmaster, stood before a crowd of nearly a thousand persons and welcomed them to the new facility.

But the day did not go as smoothly as Goldman had hoped.

While the neighborhood, in general, was happy to receive a new post office, many were still out of work and much of Goldman’s message was drowned out by boos and jeers from the impressive crowd; especially at the mention of President Roosevelt’s name.

Postmaster General Albert Goldman receives first mail to be flown into LaGuardia Airport, Queens, NY, December 2, 1939.

According to one news account, “Mr. Goldman spoke in a laudatory vein of President Roosevelt’s building program, which he said provided considerable employment.  Sentiment regarding the reference seemed evenly divided among the 1,000 persons present, according to the volume of cheers and boos.” (New York Sun, June 29, 1937)

After a ribbon cutting ceremony and music provided by both the Post Office Band and the band of Veterans of Foreign Wars, Fort Tryon Post 3037, Goldman entered the new facility and purchased a sheet of 100 one-cent stamps.

Inwood Post office located on 90 Vermilyea Avenue under construction in the 1930′s.

According to the Sun’s description, “The first floor has 10,000 feet of workable area, with a lobby 20 by 52 feet, nine stamp windows, lock box facilities and a parcel post counter 24 feet long.  The second floor contains locker, recreation and lavatory rooms.

The basement, spread over 1,600 square feet, contains the boiler room, fan room, storage room, supply, record and washrooms.

“The new station, Mr. Goldman said, will employ three supervisors, 25 clerks, 26 carriers, 12 substitutes and two laborers.” (New York Sun, December 2, 1939)

Cornerstone from Inwood Station post office on 90 Vermilyea Avenue in Inwood, New York City.

The cornerstone of the post office makes no mention of Postmaster Albert Goldman.

An Inwood Landmark

In 1982 an application was submitted to the United States Department of Interior requesting that Inwood Station be granted historic preservation status.

According to the entry form:

“The Inwood Station Post Office is architecturally significant as an intact representative example of the federal architecture erected as part of the publics works projects initiated by the United States Government during the Great Depression of the 1930’s.”

Inwood Post Office from 1982 application filed with the Department of the Interior.

Inwood Post Office from 1982 application filed with the Department of the Interior.

Inwood Post Office from 1982 application filed with the Department of the Interior.

Inwood Post Office from 1982 application filed with the Department of the Interior.

“Inwood station is a modest and simple Colonial Revival style structure,” the report goes on to state.  “Of particular note on the façade of Inwood Station is the triple-arched arcade of compound round arches that have appeared to be by Federal style architecture.”

“Although the use of a one-story design for 1930’s postal stations in New York City was uncommon, this form was almost always employed in post offices in the remainder of the state.”

Inwood Post Office from 1982 application filed with the Department of the Interior.

“The interior of the post office is laid out in a utilitarian manner with no ceremonial spaces.  The rectangular lobby is entered though a vestibule and there is a large workroom to the rear.  The lobby is entered through a vestibule and there is a large workroom to the rear. The lobby retains some original detail in marble, terrazzo and plaster.” (1982 Department of the Interior application) 

On May 11, 1989 Inwood Station was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Also on the list:  Inwood’s Dyckman farmhouse, the 207th Street subway Yard (Signal Service Building and Tower B), the Dyckman Street Subway station, Fort Tryon Park and the Cloisters and the Mount Washington Presbyterian Church.

Post Office Today 

Inwood Station Postal Facility, 90 Vermilyea Avenue, Inwood, New York City.

Inwood Station Postal Facility, 90 Vermilyea Avenue, Inwood, New York City.

Inwood Station Postal Facility, 90 Vermilyea Avenue, Inwood, New York City.

Inwood Station Postal Facility, 90 Vermilyea Avenue, Inwood, New York City.

Author’s note: My grandfather, Charles Clinton Thompson, (seen below) was the Assistant Postmaster General of Memphis, Tennessee in the 1960′s.  This post is dedicated to “Grandaz.”

Charles Clinton Thompson, Assistant Postmaster General, Memphis, Tennessee.

New York Sun, November 5, 1938.

In early November of 1938 newspapers around the globe trained their headlines on a stunning victory on the Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland.

The heroic story of Seabiscuit, a small, knobby-kneed horse who preferred sleeping to racing, over War Admiral, the four to one favorite, captured everyone’s imagination.

The underdog had slain Goliath and stoked the hopes and dreams of a nation emerging from the Great Depression.

Amid the backdrop of this inspirational tale, New York Sun reporter Gerry Fitch was given the rather tedious assignment of documenting the impending demolition of a once splendid mansion on the northern tip of Manhattan.

New York Sun, November 5, 1938.

The mansion in question, the old Seaman-Drake estate, was nearly a hundred years old and Fitch would soon become well versed, and possibly even enchanted, by its rich, romantic history.

Inwood’s Seaman Mansion in 1892, photo by Ed Wenzel. (Click on photo to enlarge)

Fitch soon realized he too was witnessing an historic moment.  But in his story, the beloved underdog, once dubbed the “Mount Olympus of northern Manhattan,” hadn’t a chance.   A scarcity of real estate combined with a local building boom rendered the once fantastic home obsolete.  The home would soon be razed in order to make room for a five-building housing development to be named Park Terrace Gardens.

A magnificent stable a block away, once also owned by the Seaman family would also be demolished to make room for even more apartment houses.

Seaman Mansion in grander days.

When Fitch visited the home in 1938 the old mansion was truly a shell of its former self.  The statuary, the gleaming white marble, even the stunning cupolas that could once be seen from miles away, had long since been stripped away.

Seaman Mansion ready for demolition in mid-1930′s.

Only one section of the home was still inhabitable.  In that wing lived builder and architect Thomas Dwyer, who had purchased the home from Seaman descendant Lawrence Drake in 1906.

Thomas Dwyer advertisement, New York Society of Architects, 1920.

Dwyer ran his business, The Marble Arch Corporation, from the attic of the arch, which graced the Broadway entrance to the property.  Dwyer, an architect of some note, was well known for his work on municipal projects, monuments and museums around the metropolis.  His Soldiers’ and Sailors’ monument on Riverside Drive remains, even today, part of Manhattan’s urban landscape.

Aquarium in Castle Garden (also called Castle Clinton), 1893, Source: Corbis.

His more fanciful designs included the aquarium inside New York’s former Castle Garden and marble detail work for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

During discussions with Dwyer, reporter Gerry Fitch learned the history of the grand old marble mansion as well as the former stable that was also slated for demolition.

Dwyer was obviously distraught to see his former home taken apart by the wrecker’s ball, but was a builder and a pragmatist.

Standing there, on that November day, Dwyer and Fitch realized the import of what was soon to transpire.  This was the twilight of the old neighborhood, that fleeting moment in history where the knobby-kneed neighborhood favorite is finally defeated by the march of time.

Before: Seaman Mansion seen in 1937 aerial.

After: 1939 aerial shot of Park Terrace Gardens, New York Times, August 13, 1939.

Amazingly, the marble arch, from where Dwyer designed forgotten landmarks of old New York, survived.   The arch, its walls supported by low-slung garages on either side, can be seen today on the west side of Broadway at 216^th Street.

Below is Fitch’s article describing the last days of the old house on the hill.

New York Sun
November 5, 1938
Last Days of Old Mansion
Dwyer House in Inwood Will Soon Give Way to Modern Apartment Buildings
By Gerry Fitch

Inwood is high and handsome and has become so popular that even the many new apartment buildings cannot satisfy all the Manhattanites who have re-discovered this northerly end of the city.  So it is welcome news that a group of five new eight-story apartments, built around large gardens, will shortly be erected on one of Inwood’s highest points, to be ready for occupancy next summer.

Seaman Mansion for sale, New York Times February 2, 1913.

The 118,000 square feet of property to be thus occupied is the tract bounded by Park Terrace West and Park Terrace East, 215^th to 217^th Street.  It is a desolate surface of exposed rock and corroded earth, topped by a gloomy mansion that has made many a passing motorist gaze up toward it as though it might have been a setting for a Bronte novel.  It is of gray stone, with a high square tower, and it stands skeleton-like, windows gaping, stone parapets broken, commanding a view over the Hudson, Harlem and East rivers.

Seaman mansion and arch from a distance in 1903.

This house is known as the Dwyer house. Its present owner, Thomas Dwyer, who was a prominent contractor, has lived in it nearly thirty years; when he bought it long ago it was already fifty years old.  If you climb up to the house you will notice that while most of it could correctly be called a ruin, there is one section that is in neat repair, its bright and curtained windows affording strange contrast to other broken windows made steadily worse by the rocks of passing schoolboys.  This conditioned section is the one Mr. Dwyer has made his own in recent years, hating to leave until, as his “For Sale” sign on the property sets forth, he could find a “perfectly responsible party” with whom he “might take an interest in the improvement of the property.”

Park Terrace Gardens apartment advertisement, August 31, 1939, New York Times.

Such a party was found this week.  In one of the largest sales of vacant Manhattan real estate closed in several years, the Thomas Dwyer family sold the property through Jacob and Emil Leitner, brokers, to a corporation headed by David Rose.  The corporation’s plans for development of the site call for more than two acres of landscaped gardens, the five fireproof buildings occupying a comparatively small portion of land.

A Former Showplace

Each structure—they have been designed by Architect Albert Goldhammer—will contain eighty apartments with suites of three, four and five rooms.  Rentals have not been set, but rentals for attractive suites in the Inwood section are around $75 a month for three and four rooms.

Down will come the Dwyer mansion before many weeks.  Thomas Dwyer will move not far away, however—just down the street known as park Terrace East to an apartment at No. 10.  And when the new buildings are up he can move back to the very plot he has kept for so long.  He hates to see the house come down; he can remember when it was a showplace of northern Manhattan.

Seaman Drake Arch captured in 1911 postcard.

You arrived at the estate and were confronted by an imposing stone arch.  You drove under this and then round and round the grounds in spiral ascendance until you arrived at the great stone steps.  There was an impressive entrance and much outside statuary. Inside were large rooms, with ceilings fifteen feet high; wall niches with more statuary, grand stairways and mantelpieces, conservatories, balconies.

Marble arch in 1929.

It all remains in altered form.  Jammed up against the stone entrance arch—it looks about the size of the one in Washington Square and faces Broadway at 116^thStreet—are now small shops that hide all but the top of the arch.

Seaman Mansion in September, 1937, MCNY.

The grounds have been so dug out in places that they look like a series of trenches surmounted by a sort of old gray army tank that is the towered house.

Mr. Dwyer added a third story of ten rooms, and the tower thirty years ago, but has always been sorry he did.  During late years a number of visitors, failing to observe the lived-in section and thinking the place abandoned, have climbed the stone steps to the entrance and jangled the bell, just to see if it would ring.  That’s what I did, and, believe me, the bell rings.  It is something of a shock to have the door suddenly open and a young man in a bathrobe, obviously disturbed, trying very hard to be polite over the intrusion.  No wonder the Dwyer family is reconciled to moving.

Near Two Subways

The neighborhood is now quickly reached by both the Eighth Avenue and Seventh Avenue subways.  On a nearby height to the south stands the tower of Mr. Rockefeller’s medieval cloisters.  To the north is Baker Field.  Historic Dyckman farmhouse is a few blocks away.  Spuyten Duyvil Creek flows into the Hudson just beyond.  All around are charming English-type one-family brick cottages and new apartment houses, “modernistic” or Colonial in design.

Grenville Hall (5000 Broadway) in 1925. Source: NYHS

Near the beginning of 1913 a truly modern apartment building opened for business on Broadway across the street from Isham Park.

Located at 5,000 Broadway, Grenville Hall was, at the time, the largest elevator building in northern Manhattan.

Designed by architect George F. Pelham, the apartment house was built to accommodate eighty-four families.

With a striking façade, modern amenities, which included steam heat, electric lighting and  refrigerators, nearly every apartment was rented before the project was even completed.

Pelham, a highly respected architect, designed at least seventy Manhattan apartment and office buildings in a career that spanned from the 1890’s through the 1930’s.

George F. Pelham from “Apartment Houses of the Metropolis,” 1908.

The son of architect George Brown Pelham, the younger Pelham’s other projects included the Central Hanover Bank and Trust Company Building (currently the site of JP Morgan Chase), the Chalfonte Hotel on 200 West 70^th Street (still standing as a rental building), as well as the Beaux Arts masterpiece “The Riverdale,” located at 67 Riverside Drive on the upper west side.

Locally, Pelham would win an honorable mention award from the American Institute of Architects in 1915 for his work on 682 Academy Street: “A brick building selected for its straightforward and sensible use of inexpensive materials.”

Pelham’s son, George F. Pelham Jr., would carry on the family tradition, erecting such local landmarks as Castle Village and Hudson View Gardens.

What follows is a 1913 description of 5,000 Broadway—likely the easiest address to remember in all Manhattan.

New York Herald
March 30, 1913
Grenville Hall Marks the Progress of House Numbering in Broadway Up to “5,000.”

Grenville Hall Advertisement, The Sun, April 13, 1913.

“An enviable address is that of Grenville Hall, which is known by the street number 5,000 Broadway, a designation it would seem improbable even old King Cole himself in his jolliest mood ever could have forgotten en route, to his haven, perhaps sans purse, sans watch, sans everything else except his unalterable good humor.

Only a few years have elapsed since No. 5,000 Broadway as the designated street number of a new and modern elevator apartment house was little more than an almost incredible dream of the future improvement of the Dyckman tract, for it is on this north Manhattan table land that Grenville Hall is situated, at the northeast corner of 212^th Street.  George F. Pelham was the architect of the structure, which was erected by the Hazel Real Estate Company, M. Just, president, and G. Hensle, treasurer.

Located almost directly opposite the new Isham Park and within ten minutes’ walk of Van Cortlandt Park and the New York Zoological Park and Botanical Gardens, in the Bronx—also Fort Washington Park, Riverside Drive and the Hudson River, in Manhattan—the new apartments are within easy access of the subway express station at 215^th street and Broadway and the Amsterdam avenue surface cars.  The 207^th street cross-town car line, three blocks to the south, connects with all the local Bronx and Westchester lines.  From 212^th street to City Hall is forty minutes by subway express service.

Grenville Hall Advertisement, The Sun, April 19, 1913.

The most important provisions made by the builders for comfort of tenants include private letter boxes and a mail chute; also tiled bathrooms with shower baths; a Kewanee steam heating plant, Larsen’s insulated refrigerators, a noiseless electric elevator, local and long distance telephone service in each apartment, garbage closets, “jimmy-proof” dumb waiters and entrance door locks, spacious closet room and uniformed hall attendants.  Electric light is furnished under a special arrangement with the owners whereby the tenants receive a discount of ten per cent below the rate usually paid.

Apartments in Grenville Hall are arranged are arranged in suites of two and three rooms with a kitchenette and bath; also three, four and five rooms, exclusive of bath.  The property is under ownership management.

Grenville Hall (5000 Broadway) Spring of 2012.

“Dum vivimus vivamus”
-Motto of the Hoboken Turtle Club

According to legend, as the history of most social clubs is so often based, the Hoboken Turtle Club was founded in 1796. It is reputed to have been the oldest social club in the United States.

The club was the brainchild of John Stevens, a former Captain in George Washington’s Continental army. An inventor, lawyer and treasurer for the State of New Jersey, Stevens amassed a fortune through shrewd real estate investments, the invention of a screw-driven steamboat capable of ocean navigation and marriage into an extremely wealthy family. Among Stevens’ holdings was the Stevens Castle, currently the home to the Stevens Institute of Technology.

But, despite all of Stevens’ accomplishments, he had a problem. Turtles.

According to an 1878 New York Times article, Stevens’ riverfront Hoboken, New Jersey estate was plagued by conniving cold-blooded reptiles, which often poached his prized European chickens.

One day Stevens hired a local shepherd boy to go down to the riverbank to investigate. As the chickens dug for clams on the muddy shore, the boy sprawled out on the ground nearby engrossed in a romance novel.

Suddenly, according to the Times “a huge turtle, with an arched back completely covered with moss, crept out of the river, seized an unsuspecting hen by the leg and dragged her off to his felonious retreat on the river bottom.”

Ever the soldier, Stevens declared war on his hard-shelled nemesis in a most ingenious manner. He summoned a group of wealthy Manhattan businessmen to cross the Hudson to dine on turtle soup. “He was remarkable in his selection of great eaters.”

Hoboken Turtle Club medal.

The Times described the members of the newfound Hoboken Turtle Club as “one of the weightiest assemblages of solid men to be found between Wall Street and the Treasury Department.”

Their motto: “Dum vivimus vivamus,” Latin for, “As we journey through life, let us live by the way.”

The feasts often went on for days and, after several years, the Hoboken Turtle Club had devoured the local supply of turtles.

Soon these powerful men who had been duped into pitching tents on the Jersey side of the Hudson numbered several hundred. Before long they would move their annual feast into the city. By 1878 Tammany Hall was hosting the event. A giant turtle shell emblazoned with the letters “H.T.C “ hung from the balcony.

Hoboken Turtle Club, Yonkers NY Statesman September 20, 1895.

As the years passed, entrance to the club became one of the most coveted memberships in town. In an 1896 speech marking the 100th anniversary of the Turtle Club, the organization’s president, William Sulzer, noted that Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Burr and Clay had all been Turtle Club members.

By the 1890’s, the Turtle Club had fallen on hard times. Membership was down. Still the party went on. Manning the soup kettle for the latter half of the 19th century was a man named John Tarbell; described by many as stout, clean-shaven and secretive. Tarbell’s talents were renowned among turtle aficionados. His turtle soup recipe, a “state secret,” was shared only with the president of the organization. Two days before the guests arrived Tarbell would enter the cookhouse with his turtle, “its flippers tied and its eyes abulge with apprehension.” Forty-eight hours later the turtle would “emerge in a soup that is fragrant, palatable and nutritious.”

Hoboken Turtle Club photographed after relocation to Kingsbridge. Note the Seaman Mansion in the background. (Image courtesy of Don Rice)

In June of 1893 the Turtle Club found a new home in the old Kingsbridge Hotel, once the site of Hyatt’s Tavern; an important drinking establishment dating to the days of the Revolution. William Sperb, a veteran member and turtle enthusiast purchased the old hotel to ensure the club’s survival.

Old Kingsbridge Hotel photographed in 1906, NY-HS.

There, on the Spuyten Duyvil, members achieved truly remarkable levels of excess unheard of even in the Club’s early days. It was not uncommon for a man to drink ten cocktails before breakfast, but the amount of alcohol consumed was hard to measure, because, as a bartender at the King’s Bridge Hotel told one reporter, “the veterans drink their cocktails from pitchers.”

Breakfast was served at 8:00 a.m., and, according to a Times article published that year, “consisted of cocktails, stewed eels, fried eels, baked and fried bluefish, porterhouse steak and turtle steak.”

Members of the Turtle Club were not simply there to dine; they were expected to participate in the preparation of the feast. Famous members, including “such men as John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr adopted the rule that no one could partake of turtle unless he had taken some part in its preparation.” Dinner was served at 4:00 in the afternoon and consisted of boiled eggs, brandy and, of course, turtle soup.

Frank Leslie’s Illustrated September 7,1889.

Surprisingly, the secret to a good turtle soup is not turtle. In 1878 Tarbell confided to a reporter that, “You see, this is turtle soup of the best kind, but there’s not much turtle in it. It wouldn’t do you know. Too much turtle spoils turtle soup…If 1,500 turtles made any better soup than six; we’d have the 1,500. But they wouldn’t; they’d spoil it. It would be so rich, nobody could eat a cupful of it.”

Tarbell’s hearty concoction was so famous it was reportedly served to French General Lafayette when he visited America.

The main ingredients, Tarbell told the reporter in a hushed tone, were vegetables including: potatoes, turnips, cabbage, radishes, peas, beets, tomatoes, cucumbers and cauliflower. Of course there were other ingredients Tarbell refused to divulge.

So what does turtle soup taste like?

Dr. I. I. Hayes, a polar explorer and Club member, compared the taste of turtle to fried seal’s liver and walrus bacon. It was said the soup was so rich that no man could eat more than two plates, but of course, members had consumed a huge breakfast. Not to mention a superhuman number of cocktails.

While many had never tasted seal’s liver and walrus bacon, the 1887 Times article provided this description:

“To receive a turtle soup you must first chop a hard boiled egg very fine in the bottom of your plate. Then you squeeze into the egg the juice of half a lemon, and pour into it, also, a teaspoon full of mellow old Otard brandy from a bottle, which furnishes you a drink at the same time. The egg is to prepare the plate, and the drink is to prepare the stomach. Then your plate is filled with soup, and while the egg struggles from the bottom to float on the surface, you lay aside all earthly thoughts, forgive all your enemies, and forget all your creditors and put a teaspoon full of it into your mouth. Then you remove the spoon and shut your eyes, and your soul, on the wings of sensuous thought, passes outward into lotus land, and for a time you are lost in a dream that is so still, so perfect, and so all absorbing that you wish, lazily and sadly, it might never end. But you swallow the soup and open your eyes, discover that the face of nature is unchanged, and then, your intellect having reasserted its sway, you conclude that the turtle, like the swan, yields its only perfect symphony in its death.”

Unfortunately the Hoboken Turtle Club, whose name had been changed in 1892 to the New York Turtle Club, would once again resume its nomadic existence.

Kingsbridge Hotel in turn of the century postcard by Charles Buck.

On October 27th, 1903, the Old Kingsbridge Hotel was destroyed in a fire that swept through the Kingsbridge area. At least twenty other buildings were destroyed in the inferno.

By 1938, the Club was meeting in the Rathskeller of Manhattan’s Terminal Hotel, where inscribed above the door, a sign read, “When you enter this cellar, you meet a good feller.”

Shortly thereafter the former Hoboken Turtle Club faded into memory.

Read more Inwood history here.

Kangaroo mascot aboard the USS Connecticut, 1908, Source: US Naval Historical Society.

In the Fall of 1909 the battleship Wisconsin sat anchored off of Tubby Hook on the Hudson River preparing for a tour at sea.  On-board was the ship’s mascot, a Kangaroo named Jim Jeffries.

In a bizarre event, which certainly captured my imagination, several sailors, or “bluejackets,” took the kangaroo ashore only to have him escape.  The ensuing chaos on Dyckman Street is definitely one of the more colorful events I have ever come across while researching the history of Inwood.

Let’s turn now to an account published in the Syracuse Herald describing Jim Jeffries’ rampage:

The Syracuse Herald, September 28, 1909.

The Syracuse Herald
September 28, 1909
WHO WANTS A MASCOT?
HOW A KANGAROO KICKED HIMSELF INTO TROUBLE
Was Taken Ashore From a Battleship For an Outing and Did All Kinds of Queer Stunts Until He Was Finally Arrested—Bluejackets Settled the Damages.

“Jim Jeffries has got to leave the battleship Wisconsin, so if you know anyone who can give a big gray “old man” kangaroo a good home, please write the bos’n of that man-of-war before the fleet leaves the North River (Hudson River).

Crewman on board USS Wisconsin in 1901. Source: US Naval Historical Center.

Jack Atkins of No. 1 turret is the particular chum of Jim Jeffries, and hates to hear anything said against his queer looking pet; but even Jack said yesterday, when they took Jim ashore for an airing, that never again would he get shore leave until he goes for good.  Jim disgraced the navy.

Jack Atkins and four of his mates gave up a chance of a run around town to give Jim a sniff of the green trees and grass at the foot of Dyckman street, where the cutter landed Jim and his escort.

When they set him down just at the edge of the lawn Jim gave a couple of hops and sniffed at the green grass. Suddenly his great muscular hind legs beat down on the earth with a force that shot him upward as if driven by a huge steel spring.   The sudden jerk threw the man-o’-war jacks off their even keels, and they were sprawling in a hurrah’s nest in a second.  Jim, with the loose lanyard trailing behind him like a necklace, lapped in a series of strong hops into the trees about the old house.

Jim did not know much about the geography of Dyckman street, and therefore did not realize that, while the ascent to the house from the river is an easy slope, the hill is cut away above the street.  Below the lip of the cliff was a frankfurter dealer’s camp, with a dozen tin kettles boiling merrily.  So when Jim got near the edge of the cliff he gave a jump that carried him well over the verge and landed him with a loud crash in the middle of the stands.

USS Wisconsin, photographed circa 1901-1908 USS Wisconsin. Source: US Naval Historical Society.

No kangaroo ever lit on a frankfurter stand before, so far as is known, and natural history should be interested in hearing the results when Jim sat down in a tin kettle full of the canine product and scalding sauerkraut.  In falling Jim managed to smear himself liberally with mustard so that he looked like a three-sheet poster of the burlesque show as he bounded with frightened squawks up Dyckman street with a fringe of sauerkraut spattered with mustard ornamenting his thick tail.

To policeman Marty Sheehan is due the honor of Jim’s capture. He grabbed the line and belayed it to the off hind leg of a peanut stand at the corner of Broadway.  In two hops the peanut stand was a wreck.  But Sheehan kept his hold.  As he was flying under the subway structure he took a double half hitch round a subway pillar, and Jim was a captive once more.  That ended his shore leave, but it cost the bluejackets a dollar a head to settle for his damage.“

New York City has always been a popular subject when it comes to the world of postcards. I like to call the collection that follows “Postcards from the Edge.” For the most part, I’ve tried to focus on Inwood proper, but other subjects, like the George Washington Bridge, Edgar Allan Poe’s cottage in the Bronx, Castle Village and many, many others, seemed too close to pass up. Enjoy!

Dyckman House, 1918 postcard.

George Washington Bridge at night, undated postcard.

The so called “Farmer’s Bridge” across the Spuyten Duyvil in postcard by Charles Buck.

Views of Old Dyckman Homestead on Harlem Ship Canal in postcard by Charles Buck.

Private residence on the Spuyten Duyvil in postcard by Charles Buck.

Handcolored postcard of the Cloisters, circa 1930′s.

The Cloisters, undated postcard.

Fort Washington Memorial postcard, 1910.

George Washington Bridge by photographer photographer H. W. Hannau.

Hudson River and Palisades postcard, circa 1910.

1950s postcard of George Washington Bridge West Side Highway.

Dyckman station and Fort George postcard.

Harlem River from Fort George, New York by publisher H. Hagemeister, 1910.

Spuyten Duyvil Swing Bridge by Charles Buck, 1906.

Kenny Building Postcard, 308 Dyckman Street

Swimming hole at Tubby Hook. Currently the site of La Marina at the end of Dyckman Street.

Inwood and the Hudson, 1910 Postcard.

Dyckman House sketch

Miramar Pool

Kingsbridge Hotel from postcard by Charles Buck.

Fort George Amusement Park swing ride postcard, 1909.

Fort George Amusement Park, Old Barrel. This huge barrel actually housed a tavern.

Seaman Drake Arch captured in 1911 postcard.

Dyckman House

Dyckman subway postcard, 1909.

Columbia Lion Baker Field in 1930 postcard.

Purchase of Manhattan from the Indians, 1909 postcard.

Old Dyckman Mansion on 218th street.

1905 Singer Sewing Company Postcard.

Fort George, Paradise Park, 1915.

Cloisters vintage postcard.

Castle Village

Hudson River swimmers.

Dyckman Street grocery belonging to Robert Veitch.

Fort George subway tunnel.

Tubby Hook Depot, 1907.

Hudson River and Palisades, 1910 postcard.

Fort Tryon Park wading pool.

Broadway and Dyckman showing old Mount Washington Church.

Dyckman House

House of Mercy

Edgehill Inn, Spuyten Duyvil, 1916.

Century House (Former Nagle homestead)

Inwood and the Hudson

George Washington Bridge

Fort Tryon Hall (Home of C.K.G. Billings)

Dyckman Street Subway Station

Harlem River and Fort George.

Broadway and 230th in 1890.

C.K.G. Billings residence.

Tubby Hook, undated postcard. In the upper right you can see the Mary Magdalene Home and Refuge for Young Women and Girls which was later converted into the Jewish Memorial Hospital.

Arrowhead Inn, 177th and Hudson River, 1914 postcard.

Claremont Hotel

George Washington Bridge

High Bridge

High Bridge

High Bridge Tower

Paterno Castle

Harlem River Speedway

Claremont Hotel

The Cloisters

The Cloisters and Hudson River.

American League Baseball Park, Washington Heights, 168th Street in 1912 postcard.

Fort George Amusement Park

Fort Washington, Lover’s Lane.

George Washington Bridge, 1963.

High Bridge

High Bridge

Harlem River Speedway

Harlem River Speedway

Harlem River Speedway

Harlem River Speedway

Claremont Inn and Riverside Drive

Fort George Amusement Park

Fort George Amusement Park

George Washington Bridge

1909 Hudson Fulton Celebration postcard. The proposed concrete span was never built.

Inwood on the Hudson. Note the old Jewish Memorial Hospital at the western end of Dyckman Street.

Orphan Asylum, Kingsbridge.

Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, Bronx, NY.

Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, Bronx, NY.

Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, Bronx, NY.

Riverside Drive

Harlem River Speedway

West Side Highway

CKG Billings Home, Fort Tryon Hall.

The Cloister

Fort George Amusement Park

Fort Tryon

Fort Washington Point

Fort Washington, Lover’s Lane.

Harlem River view.

Riverside Drive with Paterno Castle on right.

Harlem River Speedway, circa 1905.

Harlem River Speedway

Harlem River Speedway

Abbey Inn and Fort Tryon.

C.K.G. Billings residence

Fort George

Fort Tryon

High Bridge

High Bridge

Hudson River from Fort George

Inwood on the Hudson with old Jewish Memorial Hospital on right.

Harlem River Speedway

Harlem River Speedway

Arrowhead Inn

Claremont Inn

Hudson Fulton celebration postcard.

Hebrew Orphan Asylum

Fort George and Harlem River.

Fort George Amusement Park

Harlem River Speedway

Cabrini Shrine

Fort Tryon Park

Hudson Fulton celebration postcard, 1909.

Libby Castle

NYU Hall of Fame undated postcard.

NYU Hall of Fame postcard.

Fort Washington postcard by Thaddeus Wilkerson.

Abbey Inn and Fort Tryon by Hagemeister, 1912 postcard.

Fort Washington Point by Thaddeus Wilkerson, 1910 postcard.

Sanctuary of Blessed Frances Cabrini Chapel, Washington Heights, NYC 1941, postcard.

Fort Washington Point postcard.

Fort Washington Point The Palisades postcard.

NYU Hall of Fame, 1903 postcard.

Woodland Path, Ft Washington Park, NY by publisher Sontag, 1908 postcard.

Veterans’ Hospital No. 81, Kingsbridge, 1920′s.

Veterans’ Hospital, Kingsbridge, 1953.

Convent of Jesus Mary, Church Street, Kings Bridge, New York by Charles Buck.

Kingsbridge police station, 40th Precinct, Boston Avenue by Charles Buck.

Abbey Inn and Fort Tryon in 1911 postcard.

Ben Riley’s Arrowhead Inn at West 246th Street postcard,1939.

Broadway looking north from 153rd Street in undated postcard.

Broadway looking south from 162nd street in undated postcard.

Claremont Lounge Postcard from 1907.

Fort Washington Park in undated postcard.

Fort Washington Piont along the Hudson River in 1918 postcard.

Grant’s tomb and Riverside Drive postcard, 1929.

Harlem River at 138th Street in 1908 postcard.

Harlem River in 1909 postcard.

Harlem River Speedway Postcard.

High Bridge and Harlem River postcard, 1906.

High Bridge on the Harlem River Postcard, 1907.

High Bridge on the Harlem River Postcard, 1907.

Moonlight on the Hudson in 1905 postcard.

Morris Heights seen from Fort George in undated postcard.

Sailing on the Harlem River in 1907 postcard.

Washington Bridge in undated postcard.

Washington Bridge postcard, 1907.

Washington Heights postcard showing various sites, 1909.

Polo Grounds, 155th Street and Eighth Avenue postcard, undated.

Polo Grounds postcard,1918.

Polo Grounds postcard,1918.

Polo Grounds, 1942 postcard.

Kingsbridge, Public School Number 7, Charles Buck postcard.

Jumel Mansion, 1905 postcard.

Washington Heights Free Library, 1910 postcard.

“The Harlem Ship Canal was formally opened yesterday with elaborate and imposing ceremonies.  The day was the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, and these two great events will now go down into history linked together, although separated by an interval of 120 years.”  (New York Times, June 18, 1895)

“It was a great day for upper New York.  The joining of the waters of the Hudson and East Rivers was celebrated as no similar event has been celebrated since the Erie Canal was opened in 1825.” (Newburgh Daily Journal, June 17, 1895)

Opening of the Harlem Ship Canal, June 17, 1895, Source NYPL.

Opening of the Harlem Ship Canal, June 17, 1895, Source: MC-NY.

The Harlem Ship Canal

On a brilliant spring morning in 1895  thousands of New Yorkers gathered along the shorefronts of the Harlem and Hudson Rivers for the grandest celebration northern Manhattan had ever seen–the opening of the Harlem Ship Canal.

Most on hand saw the new waterway as a boon to commercial activity on the oft overlooked northern end of Gotham.  The Ship Canal would turn Manhattan into a true island and shave some twenty-file miles off the distance ships had to travel from the Hudson River to Long Island Sound.  A full 10 miles of new wharves could soon be added to the Manhattan’s waterfront.

The operation, decades later, would surgically remove Marble Hill from the main island.

Opening of the Harlem Ship Canal, 1895, MC-NY.

A scribe from the New York Herald captured the scene on the Harlem River that glorious day:

Harlem Ship Canal, New York Herald June 17, 1895.

“A sun not too hot, a blue sky, with enough fleecy clouds to please a painter: rivers sparkling in the sunlight, foliage dotting the sides of the gracefully rising hills of the upper Harlem, verdant banks coming down to the water’s edge, evidences of a thriving commerce in the lower stretches of the river, stately warships, with the black and warning muzzles of their guns protruding from their snowy sides: steamers, tugs launches and boats of every description, decked with the gayest bunting, and thousands and thousands of men and women to see them and applaud...” (New York Herald, June 18, 1895)

A simultaneous land parade  snaked its way north in preparation for the opening of the canal; scheduled for noon.

“From the time the first line of boys in blue came in sight until the very last float had passed there was not a moment when you felt able to take your eyes off the spectacle.  To do absolute and impartial justice to the pageant would lame all the laudatory adjectives in the dictionary.” (New York Herald, June 18, 1895)

A more exciting day the region had likely never seen.  Every window along the route was draped in red, white and blue bunting. All levels of society gathered for the event. It was, after all, a celebration for all New Yorkers. “No matter how poor a man he still waved the flag,” the Herald reporter continued.   “And certainly some rich men will have to go without truffles and terrapin for months to make up for their lavish outlay on decorations.“  (New York Herald, June 18, 1895)

The land parade featured a seemingly endless calvacade of floats that celebrated the industry and commerce organizers hoped would result from the opening of the new canal.

Harlem Ship Canal opens, New York Herald, June 18, 1895.

“They were all handsomely decorated,” wrote the New York Times.  “And each was drawn by four powerful horses.  On these floats many interesting trade operations were carried on.  There were brewery exhibits, showing the brewing of beer, and refrigerating machines illustrating the method of making artificial ice.  Small cakes of ice manufactured on the spot were distributed to the people along the route of the parade.  On one float was a group of women making cigarettes.  Wagon building, house construction, piano making, and many other interesting trade operations were shown.  In addition to the men and women on the floats, there were at least 2,000 workmen accompanying the floats on foot.” (New York Times, June 18, 1895)

Harlem Ship Canal opens, New York Herald, June 18, 1895.

The crowds burst into hurrahs and and wild cheers as a succession of marching bands advanced ever northward.  “Especially when the Hebrew orphan boys and their band–the youngest performers in the United States–marched past.” (New York Herald, June 18, 1895)

“Pickpockets were busy during the celebration, and several of them, all professionals, were arrested and locked up at Police Headquarters.  Several watches and pins were found upon them.  They were known to police as James Hill, alias ‘Whitey’ Ryan; James Bates, alias ‘Williams;’ John Bush, Henry Miller, alias ‘Link;’ William J. Williams, George Wilson, alias ‘O’Brien;’ George Jones, alias ‘Roseman;’ Joseph Carney, Thomas Flynn and Joseph Unger.” (New York Herald, June 18, 1895)

Which Way Do We Go?

As early as 1829 the concept of a ship canal connecting the Harlem and Hudson rivers had been explored on the northern tip of Manhattan.   If the challenges of cutting through the solid rock, which surrounded the narrow and winding Spuyten Duyvil Creek, could be surmounted, then Manhattan would finally become a true island.

Harlem Ship Canal opens, The World, June 16, 1895.

In an age of ship travel such a shortcut would have great commercial benefits. Large vessels, instead of rowboats, could easily pass through the canal on their way to and from Long Island Sound.

Harlem Ship Canal, Harper’s Weekly, February 16, 1895.

But first a route needed to be chosen.

On March 3, 1881 Congress passed the River and Harbor act and called for a survey of possible routes for the proposed canal.  Four possible paths were considered:

“First: By way of Sherman’s Creek to Inwood or Tubby Hook, on the Hudson.

Second: From Sherman’s Creek to a bend of Spuyten Duyvil Creek near Johnson’s Foundry.

Third: By a cut through ‘Dyckman’s Meadows to the Spuyten Duyvil. 

Fourth: Through Spuyten Duyvil Creek by way of Kingsbridge.” (Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers, United States Army to the Secretary of War, 1885)

Harlem Ship Canal depicted on a Singer Sewing maching card dated 1907.

Ultimately, it was decided that the cut through “Dyckman’s Meadows” would be both the easiest and least expensive route.  The work, which included the daunting task of rerouting and contouring the Harlem River, came with an estimated price tag of $2.7 million dollars.

Harlem Ship Canal, New York World, January 19, 1890.

According to an article published in 1890, the canal would “save millions of dollars and thousands of hours every year in the conduct of commerce by water in and about New York…develop the  villages of Spuyten Duyvil, Kingsbridge, Morris Dock, High Bridge and the entire upper portion of our city…make transportation in New York Harbor near the confluence of the North and East rivers safer and more rapid by giving to the canal-boats, freight flats, tugs and the small fry of the river trade a better passage about New York City than that around the Battery; to make Manhattan literally the island that it has always been pictured, and give it a complete framework of busy docks slips and bulkheads–this, in a general way, summarizes some of the magnificent results to come from the combined efforts of leading civil engineers, uncouth mud-drenchers and dangerous-looking blasting trappings, whose presence in the picturesque valley between Kingsbridge and the Spuyten Duyvil has for months attracted the attention and inquiry of passengers flying by on the New York Central road on the one side or the Northern road on the the other.” (New York World, January 19, 1890)

Tides

The Corps of Engineers carefully studied the tides and water levels of the Hudson and Harlem Rivers.  One can only imagine their relief when the draftsmen realized that a wedding of the waters was not only possible, but nature would actually lend a hand in making their project a reality.

Schematic of Harlem Ship Canal, Engineering News, Volume 33, 1895.

“It was found that the mean high water in the Hudson is nearly a foot lower than it is in the Harlem, and that the mean rise and fall of the tide in the big river is over two feet less than in the smaller stream.  And it was also demonstrated that high water occurs one hour and four minutes earlier in the Hudson than in the Harlem.  The difference will give a free flow of water east and west, dependent upon the stage of the tides,  the natural and necessary preponderence being toward the Hudson.  Had it been otherwise it would have been practically impossible to have kept an open and unobstructed channel.  Had the difference been too great the operation of the tides rushing in and out would have made navigation difficult and dangerous, if not impossible.  So much has nature come to the assistance of the skilled engineers in working out the problem.“(New York Herald, April 15, 1894)

Navigating the Curve

Today, the Harlem Ship Canal cuts a near straight line from the Harlem River to the Hudson, but initially, the Spuyten Duyvil followed a more circuitous route.

The “island” where more recent generations of children have played baseball, was once the tip of a peninsula.

Harlem Ship Canal map, Engineering News, Volume 33, January-June, 1895.

This peninsula, which resembled the state of Florida on a map,  once extended from the high cliff wall to the north;  today decorated by the giant aquamarine “C”  painted by  Columbia University students in 1952.

From an engineer’s perspective, the obvious choice would have been to blast through the protuberance and create a straight line from river to river.  A direct passage would have been significantly easier to navigate, but the peninsula was home to  foundry of great military significance.

1901 United States War Department map of the Johnson Foundry. (Collection of Cole Thompson)

Constructed in 1853, the Johnson Ironworks was a key component of the American war machine. Producing guns, shot and shells for the United States military, the foundry was considered too important to condemn for the sake of a shipping canal, so a decision was made to go around the facility.   As a result, the original path of the canal followed a semi-circular bend around the ironworks.

Spuyten Duyvil from detail of 1879 real estate map. (Collection of Cole Thompson)

If the goal of the canal had been to make commercial marine activity more convenient, than many wondered why such a winding path had been chosen.

An 1890 issue of the Real Estate Record and Builder’s Guide accused the Corps of Engineers of being penny-wise and pound-foolish, “It has been often wondered at that the Harlem River Commission did not condemn these mills, so as to be able to cut through in a straight line from river to river.  The reason given is that the engineer officer in charge laid down the lines of the improvement so as to avoid excessive costs, which would have been quite severe if the lines had been laid through the rolling-mills.  This will save money but it will cause considerable inconvenience to vessels passing through in future years.  It is not yet, too late to make a change in the plans by condemning this property and running through in a straight line to the Hudson River.”  (In 1923, decades after the Canal opened, the Ironworks were condemned.  In 1936 a direct cut was made through the peninsula leaving behind the “island” we see today. It is important to note that, although geographically separated from the island, Marble Hill is still considered part of Manhattan.)

Making the Cut

On January 9, 1888, a group of some two hundred, mostly Italian laborers, under a charter granted to the “Harlem River Canal Company,” set to work on the proposed canal amid the green farmland known as “Dyckman’s Meadows.”

Harlem Ship Canal under construction, photo by Gilman S. Stanton, circa 1893.

To make the 1,200 foot cut the workers erected dams on either end of the Spuyten Duyvil–one dam at the eastern end of the small stream, where it poured into the Harlem River, and another on the western end along the Hudson.    Between these two man-made structures, designed to keep the water out,  laborers blasted away the surrounding hills and burrowed through  solid rock  to create a channel 350 feet wide and 85 feet deep.

Making the cut through the near-solid dolomite required considerable manpower.

Harlem Ship Canal, New York Herald, April 15, 1894.

“All vehicles were horse-drawn,” wrote Bronx historian William Tieck, “All apparatus was steam-powered.  Much of the work was back-breaking muscle-splitting, manual labor.  To loosen the rock, a blasting agent known as for Forcite was set off in holes made by steam drills.  The loose debris was then hauled on steam-driven tramways to an inclined trestle at the southwest end of the cut; from there it was dumped on land leased from Isaac M. Dyckman as a storage site.“  (Riverdale, Kingsbridge, Spuyten Duyvil: A Historical Epitome of the Northwest Bronx, William A. Tieck, 1968)

Members of the New York Mineralogical Club collecting at a rock dump excavated for Harlem Ship Canal, 1887. (Photo by J. Rosch)

Some of the debris found its way into local construction sites.  The lower portion of Saint Stephen’s Methodist Church in Marble Hill contains rock unearthed in the great dig.

Bones!

In 1891 workers widening the Harlem River Ship Canal found the remains of a Mastodon.

According to one account, “While laborers were working in the Harlem Canal, near Dyckman’s Creek, King’s Bridge, recently, they uncovered a mastodon’s tusk.  Assistant Engineer Doerflinger had it removed with great care, and it was found to be in a great state of preservation. It was four feet long and six inches in diameter at the larger end.  The tusk was sent to the curator of the geological department of the Museum of Natural History, New York.” (The Highland Democrat, December 19, 1891)

The tusk was uncovered sixteen feet below the low tide near the Harlem River where it rested securely in a ancient bed of peat. “The exact location,” according to a report by the Museum of Natural History published in 1891, “of it’s occurrence is in the canal, about fifteen feet from its northern side, and about ten feet west of the center of Broadway.” (New York State Museum Bulletin: The Mastodons, Mammoths and Other Pleistocene Mammals of New York State, January-February, 1921)

Other mastodon remains were uncovered near the Ring Garden on Dyckman Street near Broadway in 1885 and again on Seaman Avenue in 1925.

Dam Trouble

From the very beginning, the dams, designed to keep the water of the Harlem and Hudson Rivers at bay while workers chiseled away deep inside the giant trench, proved ill suited for their all-important task.

Harlem Ship Canal, New York Herald, April 15, 1894.

The westerly dam, along the Hudson River, “consisted of a reinforced double row of piles faced with tongue-and-groove sheet piling and banked over with marsh sod to a width of about six feet on top,” wrote Tieck, a Bronx historian.  “As the mud which covered the bedrock adjacent to the dam was pumped out, the soft ooze beneath the barrier began to move into the cut, causing part of the dam to tilt over and rupture.  Thereafter it required constant attention.“  (Riverdale, Kingsbridge, Spuyten Duyvil: A Historical Epitome of the Northwest Bronx, William A. Tieck, 1968)

On March 16, 1889 a north-easter roared through the valley and swamped the western dam. Work was delayed for ten days as engineers slowly pumped the unfinished canal dry.

Another dam breach occurred on October 24, 1890.

During a record high tide on the night of April 20, 1893 another north-easter tore across the Spuyten Duyvil.  The results were disastrous.

Harlem Ship Canal dam breaks, New York Times, April 22, 1893.

At about 1:30 A.M. “the night watchman, Michael Sullivan, who was attending the engines in the cut,  was surprised by the pouring of torrents of water over the tops of the dams,” a reporter for the Times wrote in a breathtaking description.  “He ran for his life and attempted to scale the excavation. 

Twice he was hurled back into the canal by the force of the waters.  On the third attempt he reached the summit, much bruised and battered.  At this moment both dams collapsed before the enormous pressure, and the waters of the two rivers mingled with a mighty rush…Had the accident occurred at the time of the day tide, when 200 men are employed in the cut, the loss of life would have been appalling.” (New York Times, April 22, 1893)

While the contractors had nearly finished extracting the rock from the canal, most of the machinery sitting on its bed lay ruined beneath the briny water.  Engineers were then left with two choices: “rebuild the dams and pump the water out so that the work might be finished on dry ground, or to let things remain as they were and complete the blasts underwater and dredge out the machinery and rocks together.  The contractors decided to follow the latter plan.  There was about six thousand cubic yards of rock removed in this way.” (New York Herald, April 15, 1894)

In fact, divers operating pneumatic drills toiled beneath the swift and dangerous currents until the project was complete.

A Mischievous Little Tugboat 

Harlem Ship Canal, The World, February 28, 1895.

While most new Yorkers were in favor of the canal, which in theory would bring industry and commerce to a long neglected district of the city, some viewed the project with disdain.  The naysayers felt the canal was unnecessary, cost too much money and that the only people who stood to benefit from the operation were those who had purchased large swathes of real estate along the proposed route.  Perhaps the largest investor of such property was John Jacob Astor IV, one of the wealthiest men in America.

Everyone working on the canal project knew that Astor had hopes of developing unimproved land on both sides of the Harlem after the project was completed.  The possibilities seemed almost endless–the business of wharves, warehouse and factories beckoned.

And Astor, given his investments,  fully expected to be the first to pass through the nearly completed project.  “His intimate friends knew this,” wrote a reporter from the New York World.  “So did the contractors and the workmen employed on the extensive work. 

John Jacob Astor IV.

The workmen had all understood that as soon as a sufficient depth had been reached in the rocky bed a launch guided by the millionaire’s white hands would pass through and be greeted with cheers.  They supposed that many bottle would be opened to celebrate the event and that the launch would be trimmed with gay streamers and bunting. The workmen knew it would be a great day for the Astors when the first steam craft went between the high rocky bluffs from the Hudson to the muddy Harlem, and they looked forward to the gala day.” (The New York World, February 28, 1895)

But Astor’s private celebration was not to pass.

At 1:30 P.M. on February 27, 1895, more than three months before the official opening, “a blunt-nosed little tug, the Lillian M. Hardy, went puffing through the waterway, bumping against big cakes of ice, down into the Harlem. 

The Lillian M. Hardy sneaks into the Harlem Ship Canal, The World, February 28, 1895.

She piped three little, shrill pipes, the captain smiled and the workmen scared up a faint cheer, when they realized that after years of work a steam vessel had passed over the rocky bed without touching.  But there was no Astor, no bunting, no bottle.” (The New York World, February 28, 1895)

In the end, Astor would have to await the official opening like everyone else.  He would later perish aboard the R.M.S. Titanic.

Opening the Canal

June 17, 1895:

Early Monday morning boats began to gather on the Hudson River, near the mouth of the Spuyten Duyvil,  awaiting the signal to enter the newly completed canal.

Harlem Ship Canal opened, The Evening World, June 17, 1895, NIGHT EDITION.

“The United States Cruiser Cincinnati, her brass guns shining brightly in the sun, lay near the New York shore, a little above the drawbridge, and around her the tugs and launches and the private yachts and excursion steamers collected, waiting for the signal to start.” (New York Times, June 18, 1895)

“The fleet of vessels made a pretty sight in the Hudson, waiting for the signal to start.  The tugs, of which there were two dozen or more, were all profusely decorated with flags.  The little steam and electric and naphtha launches puffed around here and there like brilliant-hued Croton bugs, while the Stiletto, the Now Then, the Vamoose, and other marine fliers cruised about on the western side of the river.  The police steamer Patrol arranged the boats in the order in which they were to go throughout the canal.“  (New York Times, June 18, 1895)

US Battleship Cincinnati, circa 1900.

Promptly at noon the big guns of the Cincinnati exploded giving the signal to raise the railroad drawbridge permitting the flotilla to enter the Canal.  The whistles of every ship within earshot responded immediately and the reports of small arms fire from the decks private vessels also soon filled the air.  Other boats included the police tug boat Scandinavian, the tugboat Baltimore, the steamer General Meigs, the William H. Wickham and a seemingly endless string of steam yachts, police patrol boats and private vessels of all shape and size.

New York City Mayor William L. Strong.

Onboard the flagship vessel, the Elaine, William Lafayette Strong, the 90th Mayor of New York City, beamed from behind his thick, salt and pepper mustache and beard.  The former dry goods salesman from Ohio had done much for the city.  A member of the Fusion Party,  a coalition of Republican and anti-Tammany Democrats, Strong created parks, established the Department of Corrections and the Board of Education.  And while the canal predated Strong’s  tenure as Mayor of New York, he certainly cherished his role in this momentous day in New York’s history.

The Wedding of the Waters

Onboard the Elaine,  little Grace McVeigh, the daughter of a member of the North Side League, stood beside Mayor Strong holding a small keg of water draped in the Stars and Stripes.

The child then “preformed the impressive ceremony of wedding the water at the starboard bow of the boat.  A jar of water taken from Lake Erie at Buffalo was produced and the lid being raised, the little goddess of Liberty poured the contents into the East River through the folds of an American flag. Mayor Strong stood beside the child and when the jar had been emptied he inscribed his name on the empty vessel.“  (Elmira,  New York Star Gazette, June 22, 1895)

Harlem Ship Canal opened, The Evening World, June 17, 1895, NIGHT EDITION.

Harlem Ship Canal opened, The Evening World, June 17, 1895, NIGHT EDITION.

Harlem Ship Canal opened, The Evening World, June 17, 1895, NIGHT EDITION.

If published reports are to be believed, a crowd of some half million had gathered along the shorelines of upper Manhattan to witness the spectacle.

“At Spuyten Duyvil a force of 200 police under the the command of Captain Schmittberger, of the Kingsbridge police station, were on duty to preserve order and take care of the crowds which gathered upon the railroad docks along the riverfront and the wooded slopes of the bluff which stretched back from the shore.” (The Evening World, June 17, 1895)

For a few brief moments a small setter-type dog upstaged the festivities.

Frightened by gunfire, the dog had leaped off the deck of a tug into the swirling waters.  Another tug, following in the wake of the first tried, but failed, to pull the terrified pooch aboard.  After several harrowing minutes, “a boatman put out from shore, and with some difficulty pulled the dog into the boat, while the onlookers applauded heartily.” (The Evening World, June 17, 1895)

Harlem Ship canal, New York Herald, May 2, 1895.

Fishing and Fireworks 

Harlem Ship Canal opens, New York Herald, June 18, 1895.

During a ceremony later that afternoon Mayor Strong told the citizens of northern Manhattan that, “Too few New Yorkers realize the importance and the extent of the great uptown district.  I am gradually appreciating it, and I want to tell you boys that I have a great mind to move up here…”

An avid angler, he also lamented having to sacrifice a favored retreat for the construction of the canal, “This canal has spoiled my fishing ground, but still, I am willing to do away with another fishing ground upon account of the city of New York.”

He was not alone in his lamentations.  The previous winter the New York Herald brought attention to the environmental catastrophe looming for the fragile ecosystem that had once existed in the Spuyten Duyvil:  “The life of the bobtail clam, which has had its haunts in the marshy meadows of the Harlem River, is fast drawing to a close. Within six short months the luscious bivalve will cease to exist there, except in the memories of the inhabitants of Fordham Heights, Kingsbridge, and vicinity. No more will the blithesome clam digger, clad in long rubber boots, a short fustian coat, and a red necktie, tie himself to the flats when the tide is out and dig himself a bucketful of this fruit for breakfast. The removal of dams in the long talked of ship canal will put an end to his occupation. It will take away the vocation of the angler for eels, and from a romantic, placid, lagoon-like estuary it will transform the stream into a canal with swift-running currents, in which few of the present inhabitants of its waters can exist. Here and there along the banks of the big ditch a few small submerged nooks may be left in their pristine state, but the locality will never again be the happy hunting ground it has been in the past.”  (New York Herald, 1895)

The day ended with a magnificent display of fireworks. New York Governor Morton, Mayor Strong, and other dignitaries were silhouetted by the light-show from the grandstand “in outlines of sizzling flame, while squirming fires for two miles along the Harlem waterfront turned night into noon-day.” (New York Herald, June 18, 1895)

When the fireworks ended at ten o’clock the crowd dissolved into a “wild, jolly jumble in which men, women, children, carriages, bicycles and policemen were thoroughly mixed up and well shaken.  The marvel is that no one was seriously injured in the crush and darkness.” (New York Herald, June 18, 1895)

The Harlem Ship Canal (aka the Spuyten Duyvil) flows into the Hudson River in 1906 postcard by Charles Buck.

The Harlem Ship Canal in 2013.

Timeline:

1829- Charter granted to the “Harlem River Canal Company” to open the river.

March, 1873- River and Harbor Act, passed by Congress, directed that a survey be made of the Harlem River, near the East River, “for the removal of rocks therefrom.”

1874- Congress again directs an examination of the area with the purpose of establishing a navigable water connection between New York’s two great boundary rivers.

1875- Lieutenant Colonel John Newton of the Corps of Engineers surveys the area and delivers his report to Congress.

March 3, 1881-  Congress approves River and Harbor Act and calls for a complete survey of the area including alternate cuts for the proposed canal.

May 1887-  After years of legal wrangling and appraising land held by private owners, proposals are sought from contractors for the $2.7 million project.

January 9, 1888- Some 200, mostly Italian, laborers begin clearing an estimated 300,000 cubic yards of rock from the area then know as “Dyckman’s Meadows.”

February 28, 1895- Tugboat “Lillian M. Hardy” makes first ever passage of the canal.

Monday June 17, 1895 – Canal opens amid grand festivities and splendid weather.

Detail of 1896 New York Times map. Note the original path of the Spuyten Duyvil Creek around Marble Hill (highlighted in pink).

1916- Part of the old Spuyten Duyvil Creek is filled in.  Marble Hill becomes part of the mainland.

1923- Decades after the Canal opened, the Johnson Ironworks were condemned.

1936- A direct cut was made through the peninsula leaving behind the “island” we see today.

1935 photo shows the Spuyten Duyvil just before the final cut.

2013 satellite image of the Spuyten Duyvil from Google Maps.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INWOOD HISTORY.

There was a time not so long ago when Inwood had a thriving bar scene.  Up, down and between Dyckman Street and 207th, there were some 100, mainly Irish, bars. While a few bars, The Piper’s Kilt, The Liffy, Irish Eyes, as well as a few others still remain, most disappeared as the demographics of the neighborhood changed in the 1960′s and 70′s.

Hedgehog Inn, Academy and Broadway

In his tome to the neighborhood, “The Inwood Book,” John F. McMullen paid tribute to the taverns and pubs of  his generation in a poem entitled, “The Bars.”

Nugents Bar, 1979

What follows is McMullen’s poem accompanied by a series of photographs and advertisements of the Inwood nightlife of McMullen’s generation.  I hope this post sparks more memories and generates more photographs from an Inwood bar scene of not so long ago.

The Bars
Reprinted with the permission of John F. McMullen-aka “JohnMac The Bard.”

I grew up in an Irish/Jewish neighborhood.
The Jewish lads went to school and studied;
the Irish went to the bars.

To be sure, many of us also went to school
and played sports and went out with girls
(no sex, though).
But we went to the bars
underage
after games
after dates
after softball games
before and after dances
to watch the Sunday football game
and for every other damn reason.

The Broadstone
the Willow Tree, Erin’s Isle
Chambers’, McSherry’s, the Inwood Lounge
Doc Fiddler’s, Cassidy’s, Jimmy Ryan’s, Keenan’s Corner
Dolan’s, The Pig n’ Whistle, Freehill’s, Terminal, Old
Shilling
Markey’s, McGolderick’s, Carmor, Rooney’s, Grippo’s,
Minogue’s.
Well, you get the idea.

We knew the bartenders by name.
George Lynch, Pat Gallagher, “Sunshine,” Georgie Costello,
Chris, Fred, Tommy, Mara, Dan, John, Joe, Kathy-in-Erin’s
and they all bought back. “The next one’s on me, Mac”
(and you never leave after a buyback).

We hung out there
we talked
we laughed
we sang
we sometimes fought
…and we drank.

But we didn’t just drink in the bars
we drank in the park
we drank at parties
we drank at football games
we drank at dances (from a hidden flask).

Many slowed down as they grew up
many stopped altogether
and some were stopped only by the grave.

“The drink” was a macho factor.
If you told a fellow he had diabetes,
he’d stop taking sugar.
If you told some of my friends that they shouldn’t drink, they’d say
“What do you mean? I can hold my liquor.”

They planned to drink until they died
and they did.

I still think we had more fun
than the Jewish guys
(unless they were getting laid).

Burnside Pub 1978- 4742 Broadway Near Dyckman- Heights-Inwood Newspaper

Burnside Pub

Burnside Pub, Broadway Between Dyckman and Thayer

Garry Owens, Corner of Dyckman and Vermilyea

HedgeHog Inn

Melody Lounge 1974- Heights Inwood Newspaper

Wigwam Inn, 75 Sherman Avenue, 1960

Archie’s Pub ad, Heights-Inwood, July 7, 1976

Donemay Pub ad, Heights-Inwood, March 28, 1979

Long Valley Pub, 215th and Broadway, Inwood, NYC.

Donemay New Years-1979, Heights-Inwood newspaper

Fort Tryon Seafood, Heights-Inwood, July 7, 1976

Salt and Pepper, Heights-Inwood, March 28, 1979

The Last Stop, The Washington Heights Citizen & The Inwood News, March, 1990

The Last Stop, The Washington Heights Citizen & The Inwood News, May 1990

The Last Stop, The Washington Heights Citizen & The Inwood News, May, 1990

The Last Stop, The Washington Heights Citizen & The Inwood News, Sept., 1990

The Melody Lounge, Heights-Inwood, April 29, 1981

The Melody Lounge, Heights-Inwood, July 7, 1976

Melody Lounge 1974- Heights Inwood Newspaper

Keenan’s, 1979

Hitching Post 1975 Heights-Inwood Newspaper

Garry Owen, 1979

Emerald Tavern, 1979

Donemay Pub Broadway and 213th 1980 – Heights Inwood News

Again, thank you to John F. McMullen for sharing his poem. “The Inwood Book” can be purchased on Amazon. Also a special thanks to Claire Anne Gray of the Piper’s Kilt for providing the wonderful vintage photographs.

I encourage all readers to share their own memories of Inwood’s bar scene of old by using the comment box below. If you have any photos you would like to share please let me know. I will be happy to add them to this post.

Princess Naomie and her grandchildren in 1930′s photo taken by Reginald Bolton.

Author’s note: Published reports and records vary about the spelling of Kennedy’s first name. According to descendants her name was spelled Naomie.

Since moving to Inwood  I’d heard stories of an almost mythical figure known only as Princess Naomie, 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 Naomie.

The story of Naomie 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 Naomie 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 Naomie.

According to the article, in order to reach Naomie, 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 Naomie 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

“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.

Naomie 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 Naomie 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.”

Naomie 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 Naomie, Utica NY Observer, 1932.

But Princess Naomie 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, Naomie 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, Naomie 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.

Naomie 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 Naomie’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 Naomie 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 Naomie.  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 Naomie 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 Naomie 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.

Since writing this post someone did indeed come forward to fill in a few holes in this fascinating tale.

Recently I received an email from a descendant of Princess Naomie named Jewel Van Loenen. Jewel was kind enough to share the photos and press clippings from a family scrapbook that accompany the below text. 

Jewel writes:

Marie Noemie Boulerease Constantine Kennedy Photographed in Inwood Hill Park.

“Princess Naomie was my great grandmother.

My cousin Nora in Louisiana is 85 years old and tells stories about going to Inwood to visit grandma. She also said grandma had several famous friends, Caesar Romero and Red Skelton. Nora’s father and mother came to stay to help train Billy for the fights.

My mother lived in California.  She would write letters to her grandma and her grandma sent her these newspaper articles.

She also sent her beads and a woven basket, both of which I now have.  She only met her grandmother after she was an adult and by then Grandma was quite old.  I met her once when I was about 7 years old.  She is somewhat of a legend in our family.  The cousins that were raised around her have many stories to tell.

New York Sun, August 29, 1934.

In the article from the New York Sun dated August 29, 1934, it says “In the summer her son, Billy Kennedy, former New Jersey lightweight champion, lives with her, and sells picture postcards, cold drinks, ice cream pies and peanuts…….”   It also says,” her only neighbors are Mrs. Aimee Voorhees and her sister, Miss Marie La Prince who have lived in the park for twenty years.”

There are conflicting stories about her birthplace.  She says in the newspaper articles, and on the 1930 Census, Oklahoma City, OK .  On her death Certificate her son reported New Iberia, Louisiana.

She was born October 5, 1871 and record keeping was not as good as today.  I have not found a marriage certificate for her and either of her husbands.  I will keep looking.

Thank you for your interest in grandma.”

Princess Noemie holds court in Inwood Hill Park.

Princess Noemie Mother of Indians.

Princess Noemie article from family scrapbook.

Princess Noemie strikes a pose. (Source: family scrapbook)

Princess Noemie. (Copy accompanied above photo) Source: Kennedy family scrapbook.

Bad Girl by Vina Delmar

In 1928 pulp fiction author Vina Delmar burst onto the publishing scene with “Bad Girl,” a shocking and scandalous exploration of pre-marital sex and pregnancy. At the time of its publication “Bad Girl” was considered so racy it was banned in parts of the country. The petite 23-year-old with porcelain skin and lustrous black hair worn in a bob, seemed perplexed by the controversy surrounding her first novel. “I spent three years and a half working on the book. I wrote it about people I know because I lived among them and saw them daily,” she would tell one critic.

The controversy however, proved extremely profitable. Before the book hit the shelves the young author was given a $10,000 advance.

Vina Delmar

The following year, Delmar, born Alvina Croter in New York City in 1904, published two more lurid tales of modern women living in the big city. Both “Loose Ladies” and “Kept Woman” explored the sex lives of pent up New York women.

“Kept Woman,” for the most part, was set in Inwood, and its pages included descriptions of familiar streets including Dyckman, Vermilyea, 207th and Broadway. Avon Publishing described “Kept Woman” as “a great novel of the life of the ‘other’ woman.”

Kept Woman by Vina Delmar

According to the book jacket, lead character Lillian Cory “was flattered when well-to-do, good-looking Hubert Scott fell in love with her, but she found herself faced with a painful decision when she learned he was married and could not be divorced. Should she suppress her emotions and turn away from him-or should she give in to their love and become his mistress?”

In one scene two cheating couples are making dinner plans when Lillian, the heroine of the story, suggests, “How about the Arras Inn?”

“Why the Arras Inn?” a member of the party asks.

“Because nobody else seems to have thought of a place and the Arras Inn is in my neighborhood and I can duck right home after I’m fed,” Lillian responded.

The book continues:

“The ride back to Inwood was the same as the one to the roadhouse…Hubert drove at twenty miles an hour and Lillian smoked and thought what she would order at the Arras Inn. Lobster for choice. But suppose they didn’t have lobster? A club sandwich, maybe. Or a chicken salad.

When the couples arrived at the Arras Inn, Delmar continued:

The Arras Inn was on Broadway, a few doors off 207th Street. It was a long, narrow place with latticed walls and colored lampshades. There was music, singing, and once or twice a fire to vary the monotony.

Broadway and 207th, 1928, Arras Inn on right.

There was lobster. Everybody ordered lobster. Little talking was done as the party chewed small, thin claws and delved hopefully into large, fat claws. Hubert had mayonnaise all over his mouth. Lillian didn’t think it very becoming. She wanted to tell him to use his napkin, but she was afraid it would make him angry. She kept her eyes resolutely turned away from him.

The waiter came and carried away the shells. Lillian ventured a look at Hubert. There was still some mayonnaise down in the corner of his mouth. May came to the rescue.

“Big Boy,” she said, “wipe your mouth and if your nose needs blowing for God’s sake blow it before it starts to show.”

Hubert wiped his mouth.

Everybody lit cigarettes.”

And so ended an imaginary dinner in an imaginary restaurant on the corner of Two Hundred and Seventh and Broadway—as far a most readers unfamiliar with Inwood would assume.

Arras Inn ad NY Evening Telegram July 1913

But the Arras Inn was a very real place indeed. After all, Vina Delmar was an uptown girl and had likely dined at the Arras Inn on a number of occasions.

Arras Inn 1925

For several decades, beginning not long after the turn of the century, The Arras Inn was considered one of the finest dining establishments in northern Manhattan—and Delmar’s description of the restaurant, when compared to old advertisements, news clippings and vintage photographs, seems completely accurate.

Arras Inn interior from vintage postcard

Located at 4928 Broadway, a few doors south of 207th Street, currently a pawnshop, the Arras Inn provided city dwellers with not only fine food, but also music and entertainment. A 1913 advertisement in the New York Evening Telegraph boasted “dollar fish dinners” and a menu that included crab, steamed clams, chicken gumbo, planked sea bass, soft shell crabs, squab, chicken, corn on the cob, grilled sweet potatoes, Virginia ham, hot corn muffins and cantaloupe.

Arras Inn Interior, 207th Street and Broadway.

Arras Inn New York Evening Telegraph, July 1916

Arras Inn ad in the New York Evening Telegram, July 29 1922

New York Times, 1922 Prohibition raids

After the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919 the management of the Arras Inn thumbed their noses at Prohibition and became one of the better-known speakeasies in the developing young neighborhood.

With a wink and a nod, stealthy bartenders would pour real beer into twelve ounce ceramic mugs emblazoned with the phrase “I’m on the water wagon now.”  To the casual observer it would appear that these lawbreakers were sipping cups of coffee.

In late September 1922, according to the New York Times, a team of Federal and local agents known as “The Dry Squad” raided the Arras Inn where “they said they found 120 bottles of real beer.” Before the team departed they issued summonses to owner Paul Boehn and a waiter named John Cronan who resided at 537 East Thirteenth Street.

New York Times, 1928

On February 11, 1928, after closing for the evening, a fire broke out in the kitchen of the Arras Inn. As smoke billowed from the building a man named Joseph Klein, his wife and two young children were in a deep slumber in their apartment on the second floor.

On Broadway, patrolman Louis Schwartz  reacted without a thought for his own safety and sounded the alarm before running into the smoke filled building to rescue Klein and his family.

Firemen responding to the inferno raised ladders to the window and were able to lower Klein, his wife and two young daughters to safety before the flames engulfed the entire block. Seven other storefronts, including a vegetable store, a tailor and a grocery were completely destroyed in the blaze.

And while the file closed the book on the Arras Inn, Vina Delmar went on to a long and distinguished career as a Hollywood screenwriter.

Arras Inn in 1926

While her books were banned in Boston, her work titillated Tinsletown producers. Even in the late 1920’s, the studios well knew that “sex sells” and treated Delmar like visiting royalty.

Loose Ladies by Vina Delmar

While Delmar would achieve critical acclaim in Hollywood, she was nominated for an Academy Award in 1937 for her screen adaptation of “The Awful Truth,” she found life on the west coast dull and tedious. ‘It’s not a fertile field for a novelist,’ she would once say of her work in California. Like a character in her romance novels, Delmar was a New Yorker through and through and longed for her former haunts in the Bronx and northern Manhattan.

Delmar would later explain that the real life inspirations for her characters were found on the streets, barstools and subways of the only place she had truly felt comfortable—the New York City of her youth.

Women Live Too Long by Vina Delmar

“‘I came to know, first hand, the girls who go to Coney Island, who pack the medium-sized movie theaters and write fan mail, who chew gum, work for a living, put on lipstick in crowded subways, and try to live on $1.60 a day. Some of them are tough and some of them are not. I grew up with these people, and when I decided to write, I wrote about them. It seems to me that if you’re going to write, that’s what you have to do. Don’t wander into strange lands, but write.’”

While pockets of the nation were horrified by Delmar’s graphic depictions of the sexual proclivities of fictitious big city women, no offence was taken in Inwood where the raven-haired enchantress of urban pulp became an unlikely local hero.

In the fall of 1929 O.O. McIntyre wrote in his syndicated New York by Day:

“Inwood, which is the uptown Dyckman Street section glorified in Vina Delmar’s “Kept Woman,” evidently does not resent the chiffon chimera of the ladies in love with love which the novel created. A drug store heralds the Vina Delmar sundae and a little gown shop is to be called The Vina Delmar. Inwood, it might be added, is chiefly a community of self-respecting people with a neighborly flair, and is not hard boiled.”

Vina Del Mar passed away in Los Angeles on January 19, 1990.  She was 86 years old.

Arras Inn, undated photo.

Location of the former Arras Inn, currently a pawn shop.

Miramar Saltwater Pool, Inwood, 1933

As the dog days of summer approached, generations of children in Inwood, and around the City, looked forward to one thing only…The Miramar Saltwater Pool.

Inwood’s Miramar Saltwater Pool in 1927. Source: NYPL

Built in the 1920′s, the massive facility was located on 207th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues. Photos, dating as early as 1927, show a large outdoor pool just west of the University Heights Bridge.

Miramar Pool Ad, The Herald Statesman, July 22, 1932

By the early 1970′s the Miramar was demolished, but the memories live on….

Inwood’s Miramar Saltwater Pool, circa 1956.

MyInwood.net reader Ken Hollerbach was born in Inwood in 1947. Ken lived on 549 Isham Street, attended Good Shepherd, and spent many a summer day lounging at the Miramar.

Ken kindly shared his memories; keeping them alive for future generations.

“I remember those summer days at Miramar; a whole day of fun in the sun for only a buck. They gave you a locker key attached to an elastic strap that you wore around your ankle. The men’s lockers were in the basement, it was always cold and damp down there on the concrete floor. There were also several showers that you had to use before going up to the pool, and then when you went upstairs there was a passage on the side of the building where more showers, like a giant bidet, would finish the job of rinsing you from above and below.

I remember there was a wonderful slide and a high diving board (and two smaller ones) that seemed awfully high to a ten year old. At the shallow end of the pool, there was a “boardwalk” of painted plywood where you could stretch out in the sun.

Miramar pool medal

If you dared to, you could use the “beach” adjacent to the pool. It was the dirtiest sand I ever saw; it was full of soot and would get so hot in the sun that you couldn’t walk across it barefoot.

Miramar Ad, New York Post, May 28, 1948

There was a snack bar/lunch room that overlooked the pool where you could take a break from the sun and enjoy a coke (in a bottle). My mom always packed a sandwich for my brother and me, usually PB&J, and we sure needed the energy after playing “Creature from the Black Lagoon” for hours.

It claimed to be ‘the World’s Largest, Outdoor, Saltwater Pool’ though I doubt that it was the largest. It sure was salty too, which made it a lot easier for us to float and swim. The first time I ever swam in fresh water, I nearly drowned because I didn’t have the buoyancy I was used to in Miramar.

At the end of the day we were usually exhausted and dragged ourselves the four blocks back to Isham Street.

Sunburned and red eyed from the salt, we still couldn’t wait to do it all again the next day.”

Thanks again to Ken Hollerbach for bringing the Miramar back to life. I encourage other readers to share their Inwood memories and photos.

To read more Inwood history, click here.

“Harlem’s Coney Island has one great advantage over Everybody’s Coney Island, and that is it costs only a nickel to get there. Every nickel means a glass of beer or a frankfurter, and every East Sider knows the value of a nickel. That is one great reason why Fort George is popular.” -The Sun, August 13, 1905

Fort George Amusement Park in 1909

In 1895, on the same spot where George Washington and his band of Revolutionaries defended a British assault after the Battle of Brooklyn, a glorious and magnificent amusement park rivaling Coney Island opened near the northeastern end of Manhattan. The Fort George Amusement park was located in what is now Highbridge Park between 190th and 192nd Streets and Amsterdam Avenue.

Fort George Amusement Park postcard.

During its heyday this Gotham wonderland would boast two Ferris wheels, three roller coasters, nine saloons, a pony track, several hotels, a casino, five shooting galleries, a tunnel boat ride, two music halls called the Star and the Trocadero, fortune tellers and more frankfurters, peanuts and pretzels than you can imagine.

Fort George Amusement Park, 197th Street and Amsterdam, 1906.

Located at the end of the Third Avenue Trolley line, the park was a natural and popular destination for locals and residents throughout the city. While the children rode the massive Ferris wheel or took to the Toboggan slide adults could gamble the night away before renting a room in the Fort George Hotel and Casino to celebrate their winnings, or more likely, mourn their losses. There were even areas in the park where, for a fee, Mom and Dad could drop the kids off in a supervised playground setting, while they went off to enjoy “The Human Ostrich” or “The Cave of Winds.”

Initially a loose and disorganized strip of sideshows the park became something truly spectacular under the leadership of Joseph Schenck (left) and his brother Nicholas. The brothers, Russian Jews who immigrated to New York from the ancient Slavic settlement of Rybinsk in 1893, first came to the park as curious visitors. Realizing the fortunes to be made they quickly invested in a beer hall called The Old Barrel.

The Old Barrel bar once located in Fort George.

It was in the Old Barrel that the Schnecks likely met another entrepreneur named Marcus Loew (right) , a park regular who had already amassed a small fortune with a string of theaters and penny arcades. (Loew would later become a Hollywood power-broker heading a theater chain that still bears his name.) Borrowing money from Loew, the brothers Schneck were soon able to open several thrill rides in an area of the park known as Paradise Park.

In a June, 1941  edition of Liberty Magazine, found by New York Wanderer Ben Feldman while rummaging around in a Tennessee junk shop, details of the early days of the park begin to emerge:

“One hot Saturday afternoon in 1905, Joe Schenck, then about twenty-six, took a trolley ride up to Fort George, the highest point on Manhattan Island. That was quite the thing to do in those days–ride to the end of the car line up there to cool off. When Joe arrived he found more than a thousand other New Yorkers strolling about enjoying the breezes. He noticed that there were a beer parlor or two, a couple of shooting galleries, and some tintype stands, and he quickly concluded that this was insufficient entertainment for all those people. He began to talk to some of them, inquiring if they would come up nights, as well as Sundays, if Fort George offered a dance hall, a merry go-round, and other attractions like those at Coney Island. Everybody he questioned said “You bet!” or words to that effect.

Fort George Amusement Park seen from Harlem River in 1905 photo. (Source: MCNY)

Joe took a lease on a small one-story building at Fort George that could be reached only through an alley. He constructed a cheap dance floor in the rear and turned the building into a saloon. He hired an orchestra and an unknown singer named Nora Bayes, put tables around the dance floor, and then waited. But the people just wouldn’t go through the alley, not even through a big sign that proclaimed: “Beer and Dancing in Rear.”

What would be most likely to entice the public? It was brother Nick who suggested that a picture would be better than printed words. Joe hired a man who painted scenes on mirrors behind the bars to make a garish-colored wooden cutout of a huge beer schooner with the foam on the amber contents. The schooner, lighted up at night, could be seen from a distance, and it drew the thirsty in droves. The result was that by summer’s end Joe Schenck had cleaned up several thousand dollars.

Early in the spring of 1906 Joe and Nick began construction of what they called Paradise Park. On a Saturday afternoon in May, they were all set for the opening. They weren’t as enthusiastic as they might have been. After the merry-go-round and the other equipment had been installed, mostly on credit, they had realized, to their horror, that it would be necessary for the public to climb fifty-six steps to get to the park after leaving the trolley cars. They had been so engrossed in building the park on a high, cool spot that they had entirely overlooked that seeming drawback.

Fort George Amusement Park swing ride postcard, 1909.

The brothers held their breath as the first of the Saturday-afternoon crowd began to spill out of their cars. When the visitors saw the amusements up there ahead of them, many were so eager that they took the fifty-six steps two at a time. The next day, Sunday, the same thing happened, and the Schencks knew that their fears about the steps had been unfounded. “And so,” Joe told me, “when we found the public didn’t mind the steps, we put a turnstile in–quick–right at the fifty-sixth step, and charged them ten cents admission. We hadn’t dared do that before.”

Fort George Amusement Park in 1911 postcard

Some New Yorkers had such fond feelings for the park that it became a popular spot for wedding proposals. In fact, in June of 1907 nineteen-year-old Susan Pierce and Raymond Barrett went so far as to tie the knot on the skating rink where they met. The bride, bridegroom and minister all donned roller skates for the nuptials.

It was a first for the park and likely a first for New York. After exchanging vows some 500 couples joined Susan and Raymond on the rink to skate to the popular “Love Me and the World is Mine,” before the happy couple skated off to Atlantic City for their honeymoon.

But as the years passed, neighborhood sentiment towards the park soured.

Initially a boon for the local economy, local residents and real estate developers grew tired of the noise, the drunken crowds and the crime that came to be associated with the park.

“One thing that has always hurt Fort George is the reputation it has had for being a tough resort.  It deserved this reputation to a certain extent, but its toughness was not due to the businessmen there.  It got its bad name from some of the people who went there and from the inactivity of the police“.(The Sun, August 13, 1905)

Former New York City Police Commissioner William McAdoo.

Reforms were promised by then Police Chief William McAdoo, but even the Chief was at a loss to explain why this family establishment had become a magnate for the criminal element.  According to the Sun, “He could not understand why so many holdups occurred at and near Fort George. In one night there were four.”

McAdoo soon established a “dead line” of officers every evening at midnight to scour the woods in the hopes of flushing out highwaymen and other assorted criminals.

McAdoo, as well as the reporter for the Sun, largely blamed the out of control environment on race-mixing.

According to the Sun, “Fights between negroes used to be of nightly occurrence.  They overran the whole place and did pretty much as they pleased.”

McAdoo, put a Sergeant Corcoran in charge of “cutting down on negro attendance.”  He also laid down the law with the owners of two concert halls “frequented by the negroes.”

The Chief threatened fines, jail time and loss of liquor licenses to owners who did not comply.

African Americans surely felt the sting of the Chief’s comments—their attendance plummeted from 2,000 to 300 a night.

Wrote the Sun, “The color line is drawn pretty strongly now at Fort George.  There is one section of it that is patronized almost solely by negroes.  There is a merry-go-round that is almost exclusively by them.”

McAdoo attempted maintain order amid the gamblers, swindlers, palm readers, megaphone men as well as run of the mill drunks and brawlers, but his reforms had little effect.  The park remained a noisy and dangerous place.

New York Herald, February 28, 1910.

By February of 1910, distressed neighbors demanded the music halls and saloons be abolished to make room for a public park.

Local historian and neighborhood activist Reginald Pelham Bolton led local residents in the fight against park. Then president of the Washington Heights Taxpayers’ Association, Bolton paid the resort a visit and reported his findings to the New York Herald:

“Our chief hope, of course, is that the force of public sentiment and the revelations of the evils that exist because of these resorts will decide the city to condemn the property and convert it into a park.”

“After and inspection of some of the resorts I can scarcely believe that the authorities will allow them to continue under present conditions,” said Mr. Bolton. “I have in mind one place where there is only one exit, and in case of fire all of the four or five hundred persons who are in the place would scarcely be able to escape.” (New York Herald, February 28, 1910)

On December 10th, 1911, an arsonist took public sentiment into his own hands and attempted to burn the park to the ground.

According to news accounts an out of control inferno, fanned by strong winds, destroyed the Star Music Hall, the old Fort George Hotel, the dance hall of Paradise Park, a popular tavern and several smaller buildings.

The damage, estimated at $25,000, could have been much worse if not for the daughter of truck farmer Nicholas Ceramer whose cries of “Papa, look at the fire,” allowed her father to sound the alarm. Ceramer emerged from his cottage across from the park just in time to “see a Man about 5 feet 9 inches tall, of stocky build, wearing a black hat and overcoat, run out of the lower floor of the music hall to the south. He gave chase, but failed to overtake the man.”

Two years later, still healing from the scars of the arson attack, the park suffered a fatal blow at the hands of another suspicious fire.

Fort George Amusement Park destroyed by fire, New York Tribune, June 10, 1913.

On June 9th, 1913, a fire described as “the most spectacular ever seen,” engulfed the Fort George Amusement Park. At around two in the morning, Dominick Barnot, the night watchmen for Paradise Park saw that the dance hall was on fire. Barnot ran for help, but within ten minutes the fire, fueled by a strong westerly wind, had become an inferno. One-hundred foot flames seen as far south as 42nd Street were reported that night.

The New York Dramatic Mirror, June 18, 1913.

Firemen and concerned volunteers descended on Fort George, but “the firemen quickly saw that it was their duty to save the property near by and let the park burn…One by one the play places were consumed. The roller coaster was quick to go, and then the Ferris wheel. And after the wheel the merry-go-rounds, the roller skating rink, and all the other things the Schneck Brothers had installed for the entertainment of the public.”

Fort George Amusement Park, 1900

Fort George Amusement Park circa 1900.

Down, but not defeated, the Schencks moved their act across the Hudson River, where they soon opened the wildly popular Palisades Park in New Jersey.

Fort George Amusement Park, 197th Street and Amsterdam, 1906.

And, while Paradise Park was never rebuilt, a generation would remember the glory days and smile knowing they had witnessed a now forgotten piece of New York history. Click here to read more Inwood history.