Clik here to view.
The Story of Mount Washington: AKA Inwood Hill
In 1840 a Scotch Irish builder by the name of Samuel Thomson bought a huge tract of woodland on the northern end of Manhattan. Thomson christened his new estate “Mount Washington” in honor of what had...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Veitch Collection: Inwood Photographs Rediscovered
Dry goods store of Robert Veitch. Once located on Dyckman Street just west of Broadway. From turn of the century penny postcard by Robert Veitch. Sometime in the mid-1800′s grocer Robert Veitch opened...
View ArticleClik here to view.
4930 Broadway: An Inwood Storefront
4930 Broadway: Southeast corner of 207th Street and Broadway. Recently, a neighbor asked me to research the southeast corner of Broadway and 207th Street (4930 Broadway). She was curious what...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Inwood Hill Park: Historical Timeline
Inwood Hill Park Inwood Hill is a 196-acre park located on the northern tip of Manhattan. The words “wild” and “untamed” are often used to describe the meandering trails, caves, cliffs and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Inwood’s Hurst House: Then and Now
Top photo shows grand staircase inside the Hurst residence on 215th Street and Park Terrace East in 1920′s. (Photo courtesy of Hurst family) Lower photo taken in 2012. (Photo by Cole Thompson) In 1912...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Greening of Inwood: The Children’s Garden of P.S. 52
Inwood under construction in 1905. Inwood boomed with the thump of heavy equipment at the dawn of 1905. The newly arrived elevated subway had ushered in unprecedented development. Apartment houses...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Inwood Apartment Rentals in 1936
Colonial Gardens real estate brochure. Courtesy of the New York Real Estate Brochure Collection, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University. As many of you know, I both sell and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Buried City: The Blizzard of 1888
Blizzard of 1888, 11th Street. In March of 1888 New York City was slammed by one of the most devastating blizzards in recorded history. From March 11th to 15ththe city was buried underneath a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Park Terrace Gardens Rises from the Ruins of the Old Seaman Mansion
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Exile in Inwood: The Max Brauer Story
In 1933 Nazi storm troopers entered the home of Max Brauer, the Socialist mayor of Altona, a working class German suburb just west of Hamburg. Brauer and other leaders who publicly denounced Hitler had...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Inwood’s Dyckman Street Ferry
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...
View ArticleClik here to view.
On Thin Ice: A 1932 Drowning on the Spuyen Duyvil
Firemen and rescue workers search icy inlet in Inwood Hill Park for bodies after tragic skating accident on Christmas Eve of 1932. (Photo from collection of Cole Thompson) On Christmas Eve of 1932 some...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The 1903 Fort George Subway Tunnel Disaster
“The tunnel with its long row of dimly shining electric bulbs becomes a banging, hissing, vibrating pandemonium; a dozen compressed-air drills thud away in all directions, with boys pouring water into...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Stephen “Sonny” Kole: Six-Year-Old Hudson River Swimmer
In a world of helicopter parenting it is hard to imagine letting a child swim across the Hudson River, but in 1939 six-year-old Stephen “Sonny” Kole became a media darling for his dangerous river...
View Article“The Acapulco Divers of the Spuyten Duyvil” : An Oral History with Former...
Former Inwood resident Mike Boland recalls cliff diving into the Spuyten Duyvil:
View ArticleClik here to view.
1935 Police Beat: Babe Ruth Hits Pedestrian on Seaman Avenue
Babe Ruth poses with a 1926 Nash. On a summer evening in 1935 Julia Straus, a fifty-eight year old resident of 72 Seaman Avenue had a run in with the most famous athlete in baseball—Babe Ruth....
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Sea Captain of Dyckman Street: William Ladd Flitner
One of Captain Flitner’s ships, The Constellation. There was a time when everyone in northern Manhattan was familiar with the name William Ladd Flitner. He was after all a bona-fide sea captain who...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Vikings in Our Midst: The Legend of the “Inwood Stone”
“Two heads cut off and thrown high into the tree have only the winds with which to scheme.” –Old Norse Proverb Hervor dying after battle with the Huns. Painting by Peter Nicolai Arbo. In the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
57 Park Terrace West: The Houdini Connection
Houdini and his youngest brother Doctor Leopold Weiss. On the evening of October 6, 1962, Dr. Leopold Weiss, the estranged brother of Harry Houdini, stood on the parapet of his northern Manhattan...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Seal on the Spuyten Duyvil
In the Spring of 2015 a lone seal frolicked in the waters of the Spuyten Duyvil. While the Inwood sighting was rare, seals have appeared in northern Manhattan before. In 2009 a harbor seal spent...
View Article