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Tubby Hook: Now Known as 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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Gun Girl: The Mob Moll of West 207th Street
“A 19-year-old girl with taffy–colored hair, arrested in the investigation of the murder of Paul Volchak in an attempted holdup, today implicated four men in 20 holdups and, police said, confessed that...
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Ode to Public School 52
PS 52 in 1905 postcard by Robert Veitch. In 1908 the students and faculty of Inwood’s Public School 52 celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their red brick schoolhouse. The school, even a century...
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Days of Wine and Redcoats
British hut camp on Dyckman farm from “Relics of the Revolution” by Reginald Pelham Bolton. Imagine an Inwood Hill nearly stripped of trees. British and Hessian troops entrenched up and down the ridge....
View ArticleInwood Trolley Ride
Click on the video and enjoy some eye candy from ages past. A quick set up: The photos, from my personal collection, were shot by an unknown trolley enthusiast sometime in the late 1930’s-40’s. The...
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Votes for Women: Inwood’s Place in the Suffrage Movement
1909 invitation to Suffrage meeting to gather at Seaman Drake arch, image from Library of Congress. In the summer of 1909, a full decade before women were granted the right to vote, members of the...
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The Marble Arch: The Sole Survivor of a Gilded Age
Marble arch, New York Press, October 22, 1905. In the autumn of 1905 a New York newspaper reporter was sent uptown to explore the “quaint structures” that were “among the few remaining relics of great...
View ArticleWest 207th in 1926 Street Photo Montage
1926 photo montage of West 207th Street in the Inwood section of Manhattan. The accompanying music is Dave Brubeck’s It’s a Raggy Waltz. The photos themselves are part of a massive collection spanning...
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215th Street Steps: A Legacy of Neighborhood Preservation
1916 Bromley map. West 215th step street highlighted. In the Fall of 1908 Inwood residents banded together to protect what little remained of their rapidly changing and increasingly urban landscape....
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Country Life in the City: The Marketing of Park Terrace Gardens
Park Terrace Gardens completed. New York Tribune August 13, 1939. In 1939 a five-building, 400-unit apartment complex was completed in the Inwood section of northern Manhattan. The eight story brick...
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Tubby Hook: Now Known as 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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Gun Girl: The Mob Moll of West 207th Street
“A 19-year-old girl with taffy–colored hair, arrested in the investigation of the murder of Paul Volchak in an attempted holdup, today implicated four men in 20 holdups and, police said, confessed that...
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Eliza Hamilton’s Legacy: An Uptown Library
Portrait of Mrs. Alexander Hamilton, Circa 1787. Few institutions can claim a direct connection to founding father Alexander Hamilton, but such is the case with Manhattan’s northernmost branch of the...
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Billy Durando: King of the Harlem River Speedway
Durando’s Dyckman Street Club, Metropolitan Magazine, 1900. Billy Durando was a celebrated personality in turn-of-the-century New York. The silver haired impresario owned a string of roadhouses along...
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Inwood Taverns: Uptown Bar Memories
Irish Brigade, Boradway and Arden Street, closed in 2015. Drinking culture has always held a place in the Inwood section of Manhattan. Decades ago there were a hundred some-odd pubs throughout the...
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Gangster Stories & Rum: Dyckman Street in the 1930’s
Dyckman Street in the 1930’s saw its share of gangster related violence. Neighborhood youth watched from their stoops in awe as wild machine gun shootouts and mob assassinations played out in front of...
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The Twelfth Milestone
Milestone twelve. Embedded in the retaining wall next to the Broadway entrance to Isham Park. On the final day of May, in 1915, a crowd gathered under a ginkgo tree on the northern end of Manhattan....
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Native Son: The Joseph Keppler Collection
Joseph Ferdinand Keppler, Library of Congress. In the late 1800’s an eccentric publisher named Joseph Keppler built a splendid home atop Inwood Hill in the northernmost reaches of Manhattan. Surrounded...
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Named Buildings of Inwood
Named buildings are plentiful in the Inwood section of northern Manhattan. It seemed a worthwhile effort to compile a list. While some of the buildings in this survey have their names clearly posted...
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Resistance on the Subway: The Straphanger Revolt of 1911
On a Wednesday evening more than a century ago frustrated straphangers staged a rush hour revolt on a crowded train bound for Dyckman Street. Many enduring 2017’s “Summer of Hell” can likely relate to...
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