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91 Payson Avenue: An Art Deco Masterpiece
91 Payson Avenue real estate brochure. Courtesy of the New York Real Estate Brochure Collection, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University. In 1935 a new apartment house opened on...
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Happy Halloween
Every Halloween ghosts and goblins haunt the streets, parks and apartment buildings of Inwood–just as they have for hundreds of years. It is a spooky place where the spirit of a long dead magician...
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Inwood’s First Selfie: The Work of Vermilyea Avenue Photographer William...
Selfie: “A photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.” -Oxford English Dictionary William Davis Hassler selfie,...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Inwood History Night: December 2nd at Indian Road Cafe
LOST INWOOD Where’s the Water? Springs and Wells of Yesteryear -TUESDAY DECEMBER 2nd at 7:30PM- Water. We need it. We gotta have it. Lost Inwood. The Wells and Springs edition. December 2nd at the...
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Happy 150th Birthday “Inwood”
Down there, on old Manhattan, Where land-sharks breed and fatten, They wiped out Tubby Hook. That famous promontory, Renowned in song and story, Which time nor tempest shook, Whose name for aye had...
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Gangsters on the Dyckman Strip: 1931 Shootout Makes National Headlines
New York Times, August 22, 1931 “The final battle in which the bandits were killed was in front of 146 Dyckman Street. Here the bandits were overtaken in a taxicab driven by William Nugent and...
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Happy Holidays Inwood
Happy Holidays Inwood! And what would the season be without a few memories of yesteryear? The accompanying photos were taken on Broadway near Academy Street in December of 1925. The city was entering...
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Inwood’s 215th Street Incinerator Smokestacks
Inwood’s 215th Street Garbage Incinerator, Photograph from January 29, 1937, MCNY. “When the Mayor of New York dedicated the new incinerator at 215th Street and Ninth Avenue a little while ago, he said...
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The Greening of Inwood: The Children’s Garden of P.S. 52
Inwood under construction near the turn of the century. Source: NYHS Inwood boomed with the thump of heavy equipment at the dawn of 1905. The newly arrived elevated subway had ushered in unprecedented...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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