Beginning in the 1920’s an aspiring Ohio writer named Percy Loomis Sperr began taking photographs of New York City.  Sperr’s photos were intended to accompany the text of his various literary projects, but when the images sold better than his prose a new career was born.

“His New York,” wrote the New York Times, “is a city of horse-drawn milk wagons and brooding mansions, snack bar shacks and clamorous shipping docks, fleeting men in straw hats, strangely empty streets and demolition sites destined for skyscrapers like the Woolworth Building.” (NYT’s, March 14, 2000)

His body of work was massive—of the 54,000 old NYC photos maintained by the New York Public Library some 30,000 are credited to Sperr.

Until his death in 1964 Sperr saw himself as a storyteller. ”I am not much of a camera fan,” he wrote.

The images that follow were captured by Sperr in the Inwood section of northern Manhattan:

The post Inwood: Through the Lens of Percy Loomis Sperr appeared first on | My Inwood.

Ever positive Park Terrace Gardens porter James Rigual broke out in song the day after New York was slammed by a historic blizzard. Thanks James, and the rest of the crew, for digging us out.

Check out the below photo gallery:

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On Seaman Avenue, at the west end of 204th Street, sit twin houses that date back to the 1920’s.

The two-family homes, with their terra cotta tile roofs and whimsical brick patterns, stand out on a street otherwise dominated by much taller apartment buildings.

As early as 1930 Morris Galt owned the home on the right, 114 Seaman Avenue.

Galt, who was fifty-four at the time of the 1930 Federal Census, was born in Russia around 1876.  A builder by trade, he immigrated to the United States in 1890.  Morris Galt and his wife, Leah, had three children, Irving, Bernice and Mildred.  Irving would later become a New York State Assistant Attorney General.

While Morris was off on work sites around the city, he specialized in garage structures, Leah stayed active in the community.  Mrs. Galt was an organizer of the Sisterhood of the Inwood Hebrew Congregation, located at 111 Vermilyea Avenue, and a founder of the Inwood Chapter of Hadassah.  The family spoke Yiddish at home—as did many of their neighbors who were also of Russian descent.

Leah Galt died in 1948.

Her husband, Morris, passed away in 1955.

Their former home, squeezed between two apartment houses, remains part of the Inwood landscape.

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On the northeast border of Inwood Hill Park runs a sleepy, two-block long street named Indian Road. Today the co-op lined street with its namesake café is well known to residents of northern Manhattan, but there was a time when locals referred to the byway by another name—“Cold Spring Road.”

Sometime after the turn of the century, as real estate developers eyed the unspoiled region, Inwood residents saw a flurry of name changes. Emerson Street became West 207th, Hawthorne Street became West 204th and Cold Spring Road became Indian Road.

Given the history of Native American habitation in Inwood Hill Park the name “Indian Road” today makes perfect sense, as did “Cold Spring Road” for early settlers.

Cold Spring Road took its name from a bubbling spring, which once flowed freely near an ancient Tulip tree in the area now referred to as the Gaelic Field.

Generations of Inwood residents, as well as the Native American who came before them, enjoyed the refreshing waters of the spring at “Cold Spring Hollow.”

“One of the many attractions in the park,” wrote the New York Times in 1923, “is a spring of cold water. Cold Spring Road takes its name from the stream.” (New York Times, June 10, 1923)

So how did the name fall out of use and what happened to the Cold Spring?

Just before the turn of the century Pop Seeley, an old boatman who operated a small marina and concession stand near the spring, did the unthinkable. He cut off access to the spring.

“As this spring interfered with Seeley’s sale of soft drinks to boatmen,” wrote one witness, “he put a padlock on the spring house, and filled in with earth the space where the water appeared outside, so that the overflow runs into the creek below the level of the tide.” (James Reuel Smith, The Springs and Wells of Manhattan and the Bronx, New York City, at the End of the Nineteenth Century)

Not long afterwards a home adjacent to Seeley’s was mistakenly burned down in a case of suspected arson.

“The fire engine had such a time getting there that it did not reach the place until half past four!,” wrote Smith. “Even the next day many believed that it was Seeley’s house which had burned, and the cause of the fire was said to be incendiary resentment over Seeley’s having closed the “Cold Spring.”

So went the spring and so went Cold Spring Road.

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In 1925 five-year-old Fred Tarzian’s family moved into a rented apartment on Vermilyea Avenue between Academy and West 204^th Streets. His mother and stepfather were both Armenian. Illness left Mr. Tarzian unable to work and the family was quite poor.  Fred, who would later attend P.S. 52, played in the empty lots and construction sites that were commonplace in the developing neighborhood.   There were no playgrounds.

In 1929, when Fred was 12, his family moved west of Broadway to an apartment building on West 207^th Street and Seaman Avenue.   His new home, across from Inwood Hill Park, opened up a new and wild environment. He roamed freely through the park where he listened to the ancient tales of an “Indian Princess,” drank from the legendary Cold Spring and befriended beekeeper Michael Fesslian, a fellow Armenian, who lived in a shack just north of the ruins of the old House of Mercy.

The oral history that follows was collected from Fred Tarzian by Sanford Gaster and published in 1993 in a psychology dissertation titled “A Study of an Urban Community and Its Children, 1890-1991)

Percy Loomis Sperr took the photographs.

On Inwood Hill “there was this man—also an Armenian—who lived all alone in the park—a hermit. But he wasn’t really a hermit; he was a very sociable man. He lived in a one-room little house, a house he had built. He had several beehives and he would collect the honey and sell it to the people who came up there. He would also collect grape leaves and sell them, and a lot of the neighborhood knew about him.”

“I got to know him “by walking through the park. It also happens that I’m Armenian, too, and so I was able to converse with him in Armenian as well as English. He also had several cats, which was—he had several pets and was a very nice man. He had several fingers missing from one hand, but he was a very competent, sociable person.“

“And a lot of me in the neighborhood would like to go up to his house in the late afternoon when they came home from work, and they would build a fire outdoors, and they would cook their evening meal up there, and sometime they would share it with me.”

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The two-story, two-family brick home on 47 Seaman Avenue across from Beak Street was constructed in 1925.

Described in an early real estate advertisement as “a lovely brick and marble Queen Ann home,” the house is one of a handful of single and two-family homes that add historic character to the Inwood neighborhood in northern Manhattan.

Though rumors persist that the house was once the former residence of Harry Houdini, the legend seems unlikely. His widow, Bess Houdini, however, did indeed live in the neighborhood. Bess moved to 67 Payson Avenue, just blocks away, after Harry’s 1926 death.

While not a Houdini home, the fact that the house stands today, nearly a century after its construction, seems an almost magical feat.

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In 1894 brothers Lionel and Norman Wurts founded an architectural photography firm in New York City.

Over an eighty-five-year span the brothers, and later Lionel’s son, Richard, photographed New York City landmarks for a host of important clients.

Their vast body of work includes images of the Woolworth building under construction, stunning interiors of the old Penn Station as well as more modest structures including the old Dyckman farmhouse on the northern end of Manhattan.

The images below were captured by the Wurts Brothers in the Inwood section of Manhattan.

Today the Museum of the City of New York retains some 45,000 Wurts Brothers photographs and negatives. Many of them can be viewed online.

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Near the dawn of the Twentieth century, before the motion picture industry moved to Hollywood, New York City filmmakers churned out silent movies from a makeshift studio atop a boiler factory on West 56th Street and Eleventh Avenue.

The early sound stage of the Independent Motion Picture Company, later Universal, was well-suited to interior shots– but when producers needed to film a “wild and woolly” western the crew headed to northern Manhattan where the dirt roads, hills and trails could still pass for the American west.

As early as 1909 IMP constructed an outdoor set near Dyckman Street and Broadway.

“With a stock company including Mary Pickford, Florence Lawrence, Owen Moore, Thomas Ince, King Baggott and George Loane Tucker,” one industry writer stated,  “they managed to turn out two single reels a day.” (New York Dramatic Mirror, 1917)

“The IMP Studio,” wrote Billboard, “ is located in a new place, near Broadway and Dyckman Street, New York.  The new studio is of the open-air type, and through the summer months is being utilized to good advantage.”  (Billboard, August 31, 1912)

“Residents of the northern end of Manhattan,” a reporter later opined, “perhaps would scoff at the suggestion that less than two decades ago their neighborhood had a touch of frontier life with cowboy and Indian costumes to be seen there.  Nonetheless, one of the earliest exterior locations for motion pictures was a place known as Dyckman’s Hill, where western thrillers were ground out.”

“A handicap was the Broadway streetcar lines,” the account continued. “The trolley poles of that time, tradition has it, were hidden behind teepees or by some other artifice.  But the cars had a habit of getting within the camera’s scope and there was no way to camouflage them.”

Witnesses to this pioneering uptown film set claimed that silent star Wallace Reid, described as the greatest on-screen lover of all time, was discovered on the Dyckman Street movie lot.  “It was his duty, according to legend, to watch for approaching cars and warn the director so the latter could halt activities while they passed.”  (Daily Sentinel, February 14, 1927)

Within years apartment buildings covered the old movie lot.  The moving picture folks briefly set up shop across the Hudson River in Fort Lee, New Jersey before relocating to California.

In 1912 Independent Moving Pictures was sold to the Universal Film Manufacturing Company.

IMP’s matinee idol, Wallace Reid, described by Cecil B. DeMille as a “180 pound diamond,” succumbed to morphine addiction in 1923.  He was 31.

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On a quiet stretch of Broadway, across from Fort Tryon Park, on the northern end of Manhattan, rests a forlorn monument to a grand automotive era.

Some say the old Packard dealership might soon be razed.  Torn down.  Wiped off the map.

Of course that would be a shame.  The familiar old building once glimmered like a jewel box—a grand and glorious showcase for displaying the latest automobiles of the day.

Albert Kahn designed the building, with its graceful curves, in 1926. The foremost industrial architect of his generation, Kahn designed some 2,000 building over a career that spanned fifty years.  He is often referred to as the “Father of Detroit architecture.”  All of the above made him the go to guy for a design like 4650 Broadway.

Peel back another layer of history and a fascinating World War II tale appears.  During that awful fight the building served as headquarters for the 716th Military Police Battalion.

But that was many years ago.  Today developers have their sights on the aging beauty.  Her fate remains undetermined.

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Inwood is full of historic treasures—single family homes, a marble arch from the 1850’s, even a mile marker from the old Post Road. Below is a list of endangered sites in the neighborhood. Not one of these locations is protected by landmark status. None, with the exception of Holy Trinity, have any signage at all.

I’m often asked, “What would you protect in the neighborhood” if given historic designation powers?

Here’s my list:

Seaman-Drake Arch

This 1850’s arch once served as the entrance to the historic Seaman-Drake estate. The arch, constructed of locally quarried marble, is the second oldest structure in the neighborhood. Only the Dyckman House is older. Privately owned, the arch could be torn down tomorrow. (Broadway and West 216^th Street)

Hurst House

Built by renowned architect James O’Connor in 1912, the home served as the private residence of William Hurst, his wife, Minnie, and their ten children. Now owned by the Seventh Day Adventists, who run the school next door, the home has been bricked up since the 1980’s. Like many sites on this list the home has zero preservation status. (West 215^th Street and Park Terrace West)

The Packard Building

On a quiet stretch of Broadway, across from Fort Tryon Park, on the northern end of Manhattan, rests a forlorn monument to a grand automotive era. Some say the old Packard dealership might soon be razed. Torn down. Wiped off the map. Today developers have their sights on the aging beauty. Her fate remains undetermined.

Single and Two Family Homes

These smaller homes tucked in among taller apartment buildings give Inwood a unique feel, but they have no historic designation.   Any one of them could be torn down to make room for development. (Various locations around Inwood)

Holy Trinity Church

Ground was broken on the site of this Cumming Street Church in the spring of 1923. The parish house was designed by Jefferson Memorial architect John Russell Pope. The church, with fewer than 40 congregants, is now considering a complete tear down scenario in which the land rights would be leased to a developer. (Cumming Street between Seaman Avenue and Broadway)

Sanitation Smokestacks

On 215th Street, near Tenth Avenue, sit three massive smokestacks, which have towered over the Inwood skyline, east of Broadway, since 1934. Would these familiar features of Inwood’s skyline survive a neighborhood-rezoning plan?

Gaslight Lamppost

This often-overlooked relic of a gaslight era is one of two 1860’s vintage lampposts to survive in the city of New York. (West 211^th Street and Broadway)

12-Mile Marker of old Post Road

This anonymous mile marker, its number wiped clean by the ravages of time, once told travelers they were 12 miles from City Hall in downtown Manhattan. Similar markers ticked off the miles to Albany in a path now followed by Route 9. (Broadway entrance to Isham Park near West 212^th Street)

Old Slave Cemetery

Covered by an auto-body shop and public school this might be one of the saddest historic locations in the neighborhood. Once the burying ground for the slaves of Inwood’s early families, this site has been neglected and forgotten. A plaque, recognizing the significance of the site, at the very least, seems in order.

The post Endangered Inwood: Historic Sites and Buildings appeared first on | My Inwood.

From early Dutch settlers, to eastern Europeans, Irish and Dominicans, the story of Inwood has always been an immigrant’s tale—and so it was with a “colony” of Japanese who settled the region in the years surrounding World War I.

These early arrivals consisted of some thirty-five families and were led by Dr. Minosuke Yamaguchi.

Yamaguchi, a leader of the National Temperance League of Japan, was a well-known speaker on the anti-Saloon League circuit.  He also ran an art supply shop on Dyckman Street.

While not allowed serve in the military the Japanese of early Inwood proudly tended to “War Gardens” throughout the neighborhood.

Japanese artist Toshi Shimizu, later renowned for his battlefield paintings during World War II, lived at 38 Post Avenue.  His early works had familiar neighborhood titles that included Road to the Ferryboat, Impression of Dyckman Street, Summer Evening on Sherman Avenue and Hill Along the Hudson.

What follows is a 1917 description of Inwood’s Japanese “colony” printed in the New York Herald:

New York Herald
August 9, 1917

Japanese Win Commendation for Model West Side Colony
Thirty-Five Families in Settlement, Many Converts to Christianity, Are Well-Behaved and Prosperous—Take Steps to Erect Church

To New York’s numerous “colonies” of foreigners, a new one has recently been added, far uptown on the west side.  It is a “colony” of Japanese, and residents in the Inwood section affirm that there could be no better neighbors.

There are thirty-five families in the settlement.  All of them are well to do, the men being prosperous businessmen and members of various professions.  Among them are enough converts to Christianity to warrant the erection of a church, and a campaign for that purpose is already under way.  At the present time the members of the “colony” worship in the Mount Washington Presbyterian Church at Broadway and Dyckman Street.

The recognized leader of the “colony” is Dr. Minosuke Yamaguchi, who lives at No. 38 Post Avenue.  He came to this country twenty years ago, after having preached the Methodist faith in his native land.  He owns an art store at Dyckman Street and Sherman Avenue, but is interested in medicine and has his medical degree.

Several of the families have taken up “war gardening,” and may be seen every afternoon toiling on their plots and thus “doing their bit,” though they are aliens and exempt.

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The citizens of Inwood were up in arms during the summer of 1900. An injustice of historic proportions was in play. An aging neighborhood landmark, the former Nagle homestead, commonly referred to as “The Century House,” was threatened with destruction.

The two-story home, with the low, pointed roof sat near the bank of the Harlem River, near the present West 213^th Street, in the middle of a planned roadway.

The structure was marked for demolition.   Progress said some.

But not if a group of early Inwood historic preservationists could prevent the old home’s demolition.

Even at the turn of the twentieth century New Yorkers were sickened to see so many important old buildings vanish into the modern landscape—The Century House was, after all, a tangible connection to Manhattan’s early settlement.

Jan Nagle II, whose father had been one of the region’s founding fathers, built the home in 1736. The home predated the nearby Dyckman House by nearly fifty years.

During the Revolutionary War, three of Nagle’s sons, all lifelong bachelors, occupied the home.

“We may conclude that the family remained at their home during that ruthless period,” wrote historian Reginald Pelham Bolton, “and, probably by reason that officers were quartered there, managed to preserve their property from the destruction that befell others.” (Washington Heights, Manhattan: Its Eventful Past, Bolton, 1924)

There are reports that General William Heath made the house his headquarters prior to the fall of nearby Fort Washington.

The dwelling figured so much into local lore that the preservationists explored possibility of relocating the structure.

But masonry was heavy lifting and the home’s timbers were terribly decayed. The house would not likely survive a move.

“Road be damned,” cried the preservationists. Why not build a park around the home?

“This would give the people of the neighborhood a breathing spot near the river, and the scheme would make the destruction of the house unnecessary,” wrote the New York Tribune, “besides making the little park attractive because of its antique centerpiece.” (New York Tribune, August 12^th, 1900)

And what a quaint centerpiece the Century House would have been.

“It faced south,” wrote Bolton, “ a broad piazza extending across the front, and had two floors, the upper one a half-attic with a row of little windows looking out under the eaves. The interior was about thirty-six feet wide by eighteen feet deep.” (Washington Heights, Manhattan: Its Eventful Past, Bolton, 1924)

The walls of the cellared home were two and a half feet thick and constructed of local rock and stray bricks. The mortar that held the house together was a mix of oyster shells, lime and even bits of animal bones and lobster claws.

A circular staircase that led to the attic contained a secret hiding spot accessible only by pulling a knob wood carved into the half landing.

Heavy chestnut doors and shutters hung from hand-forged hinges.

“There is no particular historical reason for advocating the preservation of this old house,” conceded the Tribune scribe, “unless, like every other house a hundred of more years old, it was the only original, Simon pure ‘Washington’s headquarters;’ but it should be restored as one of the best specimens of pre-Revolutionary architecture.” (New York Tribune, August 12^th, 1900)

Sadly, the Century House was destroyed by fire in 1903.

The post Inwood’s Century House: An Early Preservation Attempt appeared first on | My Inwood.

“For half a century or more Mr. John F. Seaman and his wife, Ann D., were well known persons of wealth and social standing. They occupied a city house in the winter and a conspicuous and well-known marble mansion at Kingsbridge in the summer. They never had any children, and as both husband and wife were rich in their individual rights they were naturally regarded with considerable solicitude in their later years by their heirs at law and collateral relatives.” New York Herald, July 10, 1890.

“She’d been a stunning beauty in her youth.”

So they said.

“Ann and John were the plainest folks you’d meet on a day’s walk,” commented one neighbor.

But their estate, now the site of a housing cooperative called Park Terrace Gardens, was anything but plain.

If bits of Oz, Narnia and Disneyland were drizzled onto a hilltop overlooking the Harlem and Hudson Rivers where the island of Manhattan nearly kisses the continent the resulting creation might have resembled the Drake-Seaman estate.

Serene and unspoiled farmland surrounded the palace in the valley below. Downtown was but a dream.

The Seaman’s sprawling grounds, gleaming statuary and castle-like marble house at the apex of the hill led John Seaman to name his property “Mount Olympus on the Hudson.”

Neighbors had another title—they called the hilltop manor “Seaman’s Folly“— a rebuke aimed at the couple’s ostentatious display of wealth.

Ann Drake Seaman was an wildly wealthy woman with an enthralling family history—a real life descendent of swashbuckling explorer Sir Francis Drake—but like the neighbor said, terribly plain.

Periodically she’d go to town to buy shoes; which proved an awful ordeal for the shopkeeper.  After spending hours trying on footwear Mrs. Seaman would place a large order only to cancel the purchase just as storeowner finished loading the goods into her waiting coach. “Terrible quality,” she would mutter.

Her temperament a spirited mix of mean and playful.

This wicked behavior kept many away from the mansion, which wasn’t a bother for the reclusive Ann who reserved all affection for her beloved Johnnie and an ever-growing retinue of poodles.

“Mrs. Seaman was always very fond of dogs,” remarked one journalist. “Whenever one of them died she would have a handsome monument erected in its memory. She also had strong sentiments regarding her own burial. ‘I want my coffin placed in the vault beside my husband’s,’ she would say. ‘Then drop the key inside and leave us for the judgment day.’” (New York Herald, August 23, 1891)

Another reporter, describing Ann’s pet cemetery, wrote, “The gravestones, white and gilded, shine with a peculiar beauty through the foliage.” (New York Herald, August 29, 1869)

Ann’s need to memorialize her beloved poodles was boundless.

“Over the entrance to the Seaman estate is a high marble archway,” wrote the New York Herald, “erected to the memory of a dog.” (New York Herald, October 9, 1904)

The arch, which miraculously survives today on a now bustling Broadway, was wide enough to clear a team of horses before the coachman began his ascent of Mount Olympus.

Ann Drake Seaman and John Ferris Seaman had been puttering about their Garden of Eden since around 1850. One news report states that her father, Thomas Drake, who died in 1800 when Ann was two years old, had willed the property to Ann. (New York Herald, February 21, 1900)

The arch was completed around 1870 at a cost of $30,000.

Ann and John both descended from lineages that span many chapters of American history.

John’s father, Valentine Seaman, was a visionary man of medicine who both introduced a small pox vaccine to a fledgling United States and created the nation’s first school of nursing.

In addition to descending from Sir Francis Drake on her father’s side, a fact of which she was quite proud, Ann’s maternal relatives had achieved fabulous fame and prosperity. Her mother was Susan Morgan, whose family launched a financial and banking dynasty.

Throughout their marriage Ann insisted on keeping the couple’s finances separate.

John had inherited, then lost, a sizable fortune, but Ann’s bank accounts and downtown real estate holdings would have been considered generational wealth had the couple produced any children, which they did not.

Ann and Johnnie had married inside Trinity Church in 1837.

The 1860 Federal Census shows John and Ann sharing the marble castle with four servants, Mary J. Vanderzee, age 11 (black), Jane Egberts, age 30 (black) Caroline Kelly, 19 (Irish) and James Steward 26, (black).

Nearby neighbors included William Bradley Isham, John Cumming, Isaac Dyckman, Jacob Post and sea captain William Flitner.

End of the Dream

In the spring of 1872 tragedy visited Mount Olympus. John Seaman and his brother, Thomas, drowned together in a terrible accident.

Ann never recovered from Johnnie’s death. Her eccentric behavior became increasingly acute.

Then, like a whisp of smoke, she seemed to disappear completely.

A one-sentence notice in the New York Evening Post recorded her death on March 4, 1878. The cause was not noted. A later account stated she died within two weeks of catching a cold. (New York Herald, July 19, 1890)

But the newspapers weren’t finished with the Widow Seaman. Intimate moments of this intensely private woman’s life soon played out like a soap opera as countless kinfolk battled for Ann Drake-Seaman’s millions. The combined estate was said to be worth as much as five million dollars.

The Trouble with Larry

In her final years Ann Drake Seaman invited a distant relative, Lawrence Drake, to share her home on Mount Olympus.

Visitors described Larry Drake’s surreal new realm.

“The parlors are capacious, with ceilings sixteen feet high, and would do for the throne rooms of a small empire or the east room of a presidential mansion. Venetian mirrors reflect distances and apparently double the size.” (New York Herald, August 29, 1869)

Shocked guests bore witness to a bizarre dynamic that had taken hold in John Seaman’s absence.

“He was king,” wrote one newspaper of Lawrence Drake. “His will was law and the old lady obeyed it.”

“The marble palace was a prison,” the account continued, “rather an asylum for the insane. In the course of time, it is alleged, she began to harbor the delusion that Lawrence Drake owned the marble prison and that it was through his goodness of heart that she was permitted to live there. She spent hours dusting imaginary dust off the furniture. Then she would toss gold pieces into the air and leave them on the carpets. When callers came she would introduce them to the coins as if they were human beings.” (New York Herald, August 21, 1891)

Persons unfamiliar to friends and neighbors were crashed out in every available room. Some would later demand a share of the estate.  It was a weird scene.

Larry Drake strode though the home’s gilded corridors liked he owned the place.

Perhaps in his mind he already did.

The Second Will

During this period Ann Drake Seaman allegedly drew up a new will.

While she had previously planned to donate the bulk of her estate to charity, Larry would now receive nearly everything.

“In this document,” reported the Herald, “she gave Lawrence Drake, a second cousin, and his family the bulk of her property. The will also includes a few more relatives, to whom she made moderate bequests, and the charities were left out in the cold.” (New York Herald, July 10, 1890)

145 so-called relatives contested the will. Many hadn’t seen Ann in years.

Some called the document an outright forgery. Others questioned Larry’s influence over the mentally infirm and aged millionaire. Lawrence Drake’s legitimacy as a true relative was also contested.

“Lawrence Drake claims to have been the second cousin of Mrs. Seaman,” one witness told the court. “Why his grandfather’s mother was only a half great-grandaunt to him.” (New York Herald, August 21, 1891)

Media Coverage

Newspapers breathlessly relayed the latest salacious details from the courtroom.

“Numerous eccentricities, as well as feebleness of body and mind and failure of memory are attributed to Mrs. Seaman by the contestants of her will, as disqualifying her from making a lawful disposition of her property,” wrote one journalist. (New York Herald, July 10, 1890)

Perhaps she had lost her mind after the death of her husband?

Details emerged that Ann nearly drowned in the Harlem River not long after her husband’s death under similar circumstances.

In February of 1873 she fell from the gangplank of the Tiger Lily, a paddle steamboat that plied the waters between her home on Spuyten Duyvil Creek and the High Bridge to the south.

“She smilingly said when brought ashore,” reported the press, ‘Why, I could have sailed around for years without any harm.’ She consented after a time to reward the sailor who had rescued her, and give him twenty-five cents. Subsequently she was persuaded to give him $5.” (New York Herald, August 23, 1891)

But was Ann Drake Seaman the “imbecile” her relatives portrayed in the courtroom?

Some felt she was simply an eccentric.

“There were times when she would startle those about her by her unexpected bursts of shrewdness. ‘Yes, I know Lawrence Drake gives me fine presents,’ she once said, ‘but he buys them with my own money.’” (New York Herald, August 23, 1891)

In November of 1890 the case took a sinister turn when a lawyer named Townsend was pushed off the high cliffs of the Palisades nearly opposite the marble mansion.  The plaintiff’s attorney claimed to have discovered important evidence before he was silenced. Another litigator, George Wilson, received an anonymous post card not long after that read, “Take care you don’t follow Townsend.”  Wilson told reporters that he was not afraid as the case rolled on.  (Omaha Daily Bee, 1891)

Conclusion

In the end Lawrence Drake won the battle over the Seaman-Drake estate. A judge dismissed the lawsuit and admitted the will to probate in 1893, though the complainants continued to argue over the division “as though no will had been made.” (The World, February 21, 1900)

Drake sold the property to Thomas Dwyer in 1906. Dwyer resided on the estate, using the arch as an office for his architectural firm, through the 1930’s.

In 1938 Dwyer sold the Seaman Mansion to real estate developers who, without ceremony, demolished the former “Mount Olympus” to make room for a four hundred unit housing complex called Park Terrace Gardens.

Today the only visible traces of this once magnificent estate are Seaman Avenue and Ann’s crumbling marble arch—her monument to a dog.

Ann and Johnnie are buried in St. Paul’s Cemetery in Mount Vernon, New York where together they await judgment day.

The post Annie’s Millions: A Nineteenth Century Tale of Uptown Greed appeared first on | My Inwood.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar The basketball great recalled growing up in Inwood’s Dyckman Houses in a 2013 New York Magazine profile: “The northern side of Dyckman Street was Irish, and the southern side was Jewish. I would walk from where I lived in the Dyckman projects up to P.S. 52—my mom decided that I could walk to school alone, but I had to walk right through the Irish section of the neighborhood. Later on, as an adult, I found out that she used to follow me, from a half-block behind, to make sure that nothing happened.”

C.K.G. Billings This industrialist and noted horseman built his stables and later a grand castle-like estate, “Tryon Hall,” in what is now Fort Tryon Park.

Ruth Brall  Sculptor best known for her busts of African American leaders. Her work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum and the National Academy. Lived at 45 Park Terrace West.

Max Brauer This German political exile lived at both 10 Park Terrace East and 687 West 204^th Street during World War II. In 1946, after a decade on U.S. soil, Brauer returned to Germany where he was sworn in a Hamburg’s first post-war Mayor.

Elisha Brooks One of the Brooks Brothers of clothing fame.  Had a home on Inwood Hill. An 1869 New York Herald description survives: “The house stands back from the river about 200 feet, and is a large stuccoed mansion, appearing like brown stone, in fine order, and worthy of occupancy by the first lord of the soil. Mr. Brooks’ place is one of the finest on the Hudson. The structure alone, without the elegant grounds, would be a fit abode for kings.”

Jim Carroll Author of the Basketball Diaries; the cult classic memoir later turned into a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Lived at 585 Isham Street.

Edward Punnett Chrystie Artist, photographer and architect. Lived at 50 Park Terrace East. During his time in the neighborhood, he took countless photos of Inwood Hill Park, Fort Tryon and even a spectacular photo the Seaman-Drake arch which still stands today on 215th and Broadway.

Chris Claremont Comic writer once lived at 10 Park Terrace East. Claremont, who made a cameo in the 2014 film X-Men: Days of Future Past, sometimes incorporated Inwood into his work. In a 1972 comic titled Night of the Dragon an epic showdown plays out in Inwood Hill Park where, “amidst the gentle trees overlooking the Hudson River, Iron Fist and the powerful Steel Serpent wage a savage fight for survival.”

Thomas Collentine   North River Pier 92 hiring boss whose murder inspired “On the Waterfront.” Lived at 39 Post Avenue.

Arthur Daley Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times sportswriter. Lived at both 96 Park Terrace West and 260 Seaman Avenue.

Thomas Dwyer Purchased the old Seaman Mansion in 1906 and used the still surviving Broadway arch as office space for his architectural firm. Dwyer worked mainly on municipal projects, monuments and museums.  His Soldiers’ and Sailors’ monument on Riverside Drive remains part of Manhattan’s urban landscape.

Lorrie Goulet Award winning sculptor. Studied at the Inwood Pottery Works as a child. Lived on West 218^th Street.

Jesse Root Grant   Son of U.S. President and Union General Ulysses S. Grant lived off Dyckman Street after marrying a local widow.

William Davis Hassler Turn of the century photographer lived at 150 Vermilyea Avenue #44.

Gustave Herz Early spark plug inventor. Lived on West 215^th Street.

Sidney Hoff   A popular cartoonist, Hoff’s children’s book, Danny the Dinosaur, sold more than ten million copies. Lived at 585 West 214^th Street.

Bess Houdini The widow lived at 67 Payson Avenue after Harry’s death.

William H. Hurst President of the New York Stock Quotation Telegraph Company. Served as Grand Jury foreman in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire inquiry. His former home stands today on Park Terrace East and West 215^th Street.

Samuel Isham This son of William Bradley Isham became an internationally known artist, though he is best known for his 1905 book titled “History of American Painting.”

Joseph Keppler Founder and illustrator of Puck Magazine. Lived atop Inwood Hill.

Walter Koenig Actor who played Ensign Pavel Chekov on Star Trek. Born in Chicago, Koenig’s parents, Lithuanian immigrants, moved the family to Inwood when Koenig was young. The future science and weapons officer attended P.S. 52, I.S. 98 as well as the Fieldston School in Riverdale before joining the crew of the Enterprise.

Lionel Mapleson Former Metropolitan Opera librarian and creator of the Mapleson Cylinders. Lived at 10 Park Terrace East.

Lin-Manuel Miranda Actor and creator of In the Heights and Hamilton. Former resident of Park Terrace Gardens.

John James Powers World War II Congressional Medal of Honor winner. According to the posthumous citation: “He sacrificed his life when he deliberately dove his plane from 18,000 feet to an extremely low altitude before release in order to insure a direct hit on the Japanese aircraft carrier, making good his words to his pilots prior to takeoff: “Remember—the folks back home are counting on us. I am going to get a direct hit if I have to lay it on the flight deck.”  Attended Public School 52.

Arthur Sarnoff Artist best known for his depiction of dogs playing poker. Lived in Park Terrace Gardens.

Antonio Sbarbaro Drummer for the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.  His Livery Stable Blues was the first Jazz single ever released. Lived at 35 Thayer Street.

Henry Stern The former New York City Parks Commissioner, who grew up in the neighborhood, once described Inwood as being “almost as little known to New Yorkers as to the residents of Illinois.”

Isidor Straus Former Macy’s owner had a home on Inwood Hill. He and wife, Ida, perished aboard the Titanic.

Edward van Sloan Played vampire hunter Professor Abraham Van Helsing opposite Bela Lugosi’s Dracula. Resided at 230 Seaman Avenue.

William “Boss” Tweed Once lived inside Libby Castle, which stood in what is now Fort Tryon Park.

Dr. Leopold Weiss Brother of Harry Houdini. Lived at 57 Park Terrace West.

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In northern Manhattan, between Seaman Avenue and Inwood Hill Park, runs what is said to be the borough’s shortest named street—and, measuring just one block, Beak Street is tiny indeed.

Beak Street was named by the Board of Aldermen on May 11, 1925.  And, while the Board gave no attribution for the name, if we dig deep into Inwood history we will discover Mr. and Mrs. Albert L. Beak living within blocks of the itty-bitty street that now bears their name.

As early as 1855, according to census records, Albert Beak, 31, his wife Cornelia, 29, and their five-year-old daughter, also Cornelia, lived near Dyckman Street not far from the Hudson River.

Other occupants of the home included Albert’s 68-year-old mother, Elizabeth, Bridget McCabe, a 28-year-old Irish servant, Catherine McCabe, 19, presumably Bridget’s sister, another Irish servant, John Slater, 30, and Albert Beak’s cousin, Mary Fabes, 27, who listed her title as “Governess“.  (1855 New York State Census)

When the Beaks moved into the neighborhood, the region, then called “Tubby Hook,” was sparsely populated.

Local neighbors included sea captain William Flitner, whose family founded the Inwood Public Library, and Samuel Thompson, a wealthy contractor who built the nearby Mount Washington Presbyterian Church where the Beaks were devout congregants.

Albert Beak had immigrated to New York from England and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1854.

He was in the umbrella business.  His company, Doubleday & Beak, was located at 136 William Street.

Cornelia Sherman Beak was a native New Yorker and judge’s daughter. Her father, Alpheus Sherman, was a legendary jurist and New York State Senator.  Cornelia was one of twelve children.

Albert and Cornelia were married in 1850.

On October 25, 1862 the Beaks lost their ten-year-old daughter.  Cornelia was the couple’s only child.  One can’t help but wonder if Albert’s grief hastened his own demise—he would die of pleurisy (a lung disorder) just months later on New Year’s Eve.  He was 46-years-old.

In the spring of 1863 auctioneer A. J. Bleeker announced the sale of the Beak’s “Splendid mansion and grounds at Tubby Hook…compromising about three acres of land with a full view of the North River (now the Hudson River).”

The property, on “high ground,” had a “fine garden,” not to mention both “fruit and shade trees”.  The 44×46 brick house had marble mantles and was “finished in an elegant manner.”  The home had “hot and cold water throughout” as well as gas provided by the Harlem Gas Company.  A “fine stable” sat on the property.   (New York Times, April 29, 1862)

Cornelia Beak died in 1885.  She was buried alongside Albert and young daughter in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Now, more than a century after their brief time in the neighborhood, tiny Beak Street, named after an umbrella merchant, remains a tribute to this Inwood founding family.

The post Beak Street: The Umbrella Merchant Behind Manhattan’s Shortest Street appeared first on | My Inwood.

A trip uptown along Broadway from Academy Street to West 212th in 1926.

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On the northwest corner of West 207^th Street and Post Avenue, in the shadow of the elevated subway tracks, sits a two story beige brick building with a near-triangular shape.

The building on an island-like plot, bordered by West 207^th Street, Post Avenue and Tenth Avenue, seems a bit out of place amid the other six to eight story apartment buildings that surround the squat little structure.

The building, constructed around 1911, was designed originally as a movie house—and if you look at the site from above it is easy to imagine how the irregular plot worked as a theater space.

In 1939, twenty-eight years after this Inwood nickelodeon opened, architects were called in to give the building a facelift. The architectural firm of Walker, Foley & Smith supervised the conversion of the movie house into retail and residential space.

Upstairs the architects created five two-room apartments where before there had been office space.

The downstairs was converted into a beer garden flanked by several retail spaces.

“The exterior,” described in a news account, “has been painted chocolate brown and white, and a colonial entrance has been provided to the apartments on Post Avenue. The two-room apartments have cooking recesses in the living room with complete cooking equipment. Steel casement windows have also been installed.” (New York Sun, February 25, 1939)

In the 1960’s the building was home to an Irish bar called the Ol’ Shilling. Weekends saw bands from Ireland playing into the wee hours of the night. According to one myinwood.net reader children were allowed inside to listen as the bands practiced during the day.

Today this urban misfit houses a barbershop, a fashion store and several other small businesses—Its east facing façade now a popular canvas for local graffiti artists.

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Imagine the waters of the Dyckman Marina so fouled that only the eel fishermen, who gathered around a sewage discharge pipe favored by their slippery prey, could stomach the stench.

By the early 1900’s that was the situation in northern Manhattan.  And the situation had become unbearable. Unbreathable, really.

The population of the surrounding area, called Inwood, some twelve miles from downtown, had exploded since the arrival of subway services in 1906.

Now, any fisherman will tell you, eels love raw sewage, kind of like pigs take to slop, but people—not so much.

In 1916 city leaders announced a modern solution to the sickening scenario.

They proposed building Manhattan’s first sewage treatment plant at the far western end of Dyckman Street; where the thoroughfare meets the Hudson River. (Old timers called the spot Tubby Hook)

“Formerly,” reported the New York Tribune, “the sewer at this point discharged at the edge of the shore line without treatment, and an intolerable nuisance resulted.” (New York Herald, October 1, 1916)

Three years and nearly $80,000 later the plant opened to about as much fanfare as one might expect for the opening of a sewage treatment station—that being very little.

But something incredible had happened all the same.

“The plant,” it was reported, “is located in a modest building west of the tracks of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Company and is intended to remove all impurities from the sewage flowing from an area of 315 acres, extending from West 173^rd Street, in the Washington Heights district, to Emerson Street (now West 207^th Street), just south of the Spuyten Duyvil.”

Some 7,000,000 gallons of raw sewage were processed within the squat brick building daily. Inside the plant two fourteen-foot diameter screens and a two-story grit chamber were used to filter out unwanted debris. From there the sewage, “screened and washed,” was pumped through a sixteen-inch pipe to the middle of the Hudson where it was deposited on the river bottom.

Decades later, in 1935, the Public Works Department erected signs that warned bathers about the lingering hazards of swimming in the Hudson—typhoid fever, dysentery…the usual culprits.

A long way from safe, but the water certainly did smell better.

About the only folks unhappy with the Dyckman Street solution were the eel fishermen.

“This new fandango business,” wrote one fish and game columnist, “has killed eel fishing at the Dyckman Street pier. The eels don’t like water when all the real sewer life has been chased out of it. Eels know what they like to live on.”

“Purification of water,” the writer cheekily continued, “is a direct attack on the conservation, propagation and protection of eels.”

The plant operated round-the-clock until as recently as the 1950’s, sharing space, for many years, with the legendary Dyckman Street Ferry.

Plant Memories

Former Inwood resident Herb Maruska recalls:

“Around 1954, and my father, Paul Max, and I were walking along Dyckman Street when we came to the Hudson River. The gate to the sewage treatment plant was open. My father said to me ‘Let’s see what’s in here.’ So we walked inside. There I saw a large circular tank, with sewage water flowing into it. There was a large porous wheel situated in the tank, which was rotating slowly around. This filter wheel was tilted at maybe 20 degrees to horizontal. The tank was filled with floating human excrement. The wheel came up out of the water at the front end of the tank. Here they had a large brush, which swept across the top edge of the filter wheel. The brush swept all of the sh*t off the wheel and dropped it down into a 55 gallon drum. When the 55 gallon drum was full, an employee moved it aside and replaced it with a new one. My father said to me, ‘Herbert, this is the Sh*t Brushing Plant. If you do not study in school, you will wind up working here! Disgusting!’ I became terribly frightened. When we got home to Vermilyea Avenue, I cracked open my books, and from then on, I studied day and night. I was the first member of my family to gradate from college. I went to New York University just across the Harlem River. I spent my career working as an engineer, and I never shoveled any sh*t.”

The post A River of Poop: The Dyckman Street Solution appeared first on | My Inwood.

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 ago,  was rich in history; having been attended by members of many of region’s founding families.

The land on which the three-story building was erected had been a gift of Isaac Michael Dyckman whose colonial farmhouse still stands on Broadway and West 204th Street.

But Inwood was changing—and the rapidity of the transformation was astonishing.

The elevated subway had arrived just two years earlier and transported thousands of new arrivals from downtown.  New buildings sprung up at a dizzying pace.

Old-timers, as old-timers tend to do, fondly recalled a more peaceful time—like those enjoyed by the school’s earliest pupils.

It was against this backdrop that 31-year old Charlotte Drennan Treiber penned a nostalgic ode to Public School 52.  Charlotte and her husband, Fredrick, would eventually settle into an apartment house at 4919 Broadway, just a block and a half from the Academy Street schoolhouse.   The Treibers had two children, William and Charlotte.  William, the couple’s first child, was born the year the poem (which follows) was written.

The old building was demolished in 1956 to make room for a new facility, but thanks to Treiber’s poem the spirit of the first Inwood school house lives on.

A Tribute to Public School 52
By Charlotte Drennan Treiber

How dear to my heart is the old Black Horse Tavern,
And the large weeping willow that near Broadway grew.
And out dear little church, with its portals thrown open,
To welcome the friends that my infancy knew.
But now times have changed, and the streets have been widened.
The willows are gone, and the old tavern too;
But the church still remains, without any marked change
Except the high roads partly hiding the view.
Oh! the old deep spring well, with its clear sparkling water,
Is not far away, though quite hidden from view.

How dear to my heart is the old Inwood School House
As fond recollections present it to view.
It was there I first entered its portals of knowledge,
And played many games that my childhood once knew.
The assembly room, halls, and the classrooms were cheerful.
There were little, low benches, of which I could tell.
The first printed reading book, how often I used it,
And the brown covered blank book, from which I could spell.
Oh! the many paged blank book, so useful for lessons;
The little brown blank book, that served me so well.

How well I remember the platform’s stern warnings,
Forewarnings of things that we ought not to do;
And our dear, loving teachers, with patience untiring,
Who taught us, and drilled us, till our lessons we knew.
At that time all Inwood seemed peaceful and quiet,
But now cars have come, and brought with them much din.
By the noise unaffected, we feel very grateful
That Inwood’s more advanced than it formerly has been
Oh! the old tower school bell, the little brass hand bell,
That called us to duty, and strict discipline.

In times that are past, perhaps you remember,
The walk from the cars in the hot scorching sun,
And high Inwood Hill, with its large handsome dwellings;
That are now replaced by fine institutions,
The old Bolton Road, with its windings and turns,
Is the scene of great sport, on the long, winter nights
For some, steering bobs, might descend as like lightning,
While others, perhaps, could not steer to the right.
Oh! the old-fashioned stone walks, that toward us seemed coming;
And the light on the snow partly baffled our sight.

Charlotte Drennan Treiber

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Imagine an Inwood Hill nearly stripped of trees. British and Hessian troops entrenched up and down the ridge. Common soldiers gathered around small cooking fires, shooting dice with repurposed musket-balls, the soft lead hammered into squares.

Not far off an officer pulls a corkscrew from his gear. Wine, increasingly scarce as the War dragged on, made service on the hill nearly tolerable. Stemware, liberated from civilians, adds a touch of civility to the affair.

Yes, even in time of war, there was drink to be had on Inwood Hill.

In 1913 a group of amateur archeologists found many a “dead soldier” in the former British encampment.

Below is a description of the find—ripped from the newspaper:

New York Herald
July 6, 1913

Find Corkscrews of Vintage 1776
Relics of the Revolution Proclaim Prowess of British Soldiers Encamped at Inwood

Corkscrews proclaiming the valor of British troops as flagon men were unearthed last Sunday at Inwood in a quest for relics of the War of the American Revolution.

Long corkscrews, short ones and small folding ones were in the array which yesterday was presented for the inspection of the historian. The brave men who bore them are long since dust, and many a “dead soldier” was lying shattered in that same pit from which these reminders of merry bouts were dug. Buttons of the Seventy-first and the Seventeenth regiments were found among the shards where shattered wine glasses and once portly bottles were disclosed by the seekers.

Reginald Pelham Bolton, and other local historians who were present at the excavating are of the opinion that the British soldiery must have cast aside this valuable equipment about 1777 or 1778, for good wine can last forever and choice liquors at last grow scarce. The relics were found in a pit near the site of huts in which British warriors once lived.

These same gallant regiments were afterward captured at the Battle of Stony Point, and many were long imprisoned where they found little which reminded them of the conviviality of the good old days on the northern end of Manhattan Island.

The moralist may adorn the tale by saying that had it not been for the corkscrews they would not have fallen into the trap of patriot foe, or the easy-going philosopher may interpret them to mean that good wine strengthened them to avert an evil day. When the centennial of peace between Great Britain and the United States is celebrated good wines may yet be brought bubbling into the light of day by these very implements once held by the Redcoats of Old.

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