Noted photographer Berenice Abbott took this shot of an old wooden house wedged between two apartment buildings, in 1938. I am guessing that it was built some time between 1845 and 1870.Its street address was 542 Cathedral Parkway, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. It was in the neighborhood of Morningside Heights, near Columbia University. Cathedral Parkway is the part of West 110th Street between Morningside Drive and Amsterdam Avenue. It is named for the nearby Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
Even by the early 1900s, the rural world that this house had been built for was long gone. Cathedral Parkway was being filled with large and elegant apartment buildings. The Britannia, for example, was a few steps away from this little house, at 527 Cathedral Parkway. George Gershwin was a resident of one of the apartment buildings at 110th and Amsterdam; he wrote Rhapsody in Blue while living there.Sadly, the house was demolished in the 1980s. It had only survived as long as this because the lot was too narrow to attract developers.
The Museum of the City of New York has a page on this photograph, the image of which I found at the NYPL Digital Gallery. St. John the Divine and 110th Street both deserve their own future posts, by the way.
You might also like to read about the oldest remaining structure in Morningside Heights, the Leake and Watts Orphan House, over at Inside the Apple.
6 comments:
You might like this article that appeared recently in the NY Times - old houses with front porches in Harlem on Astor Row...
Grace - Thank you, I'll have a look at that! :)
I think it's very sad that they tore down the little wooden house!
I saw an interesting program on TV once about people who refused to sell their homes and the developers just built up all around their property.
Hairball - It is sad. I remember seeing a couple of wooden houses in the East 80s (88th Street I think) when I was little and i was looking for those, to write about, when I found this one. And there was an old barn behind an apartment building in my neighborhood, where there was the coolest secondhand bookstore ever. It was a real red barn, in Manhattan! All gone now, I think. So, so sad and horrible.
Maybe I'll do a little series on these old wooden structures in NYC. I love them! :)
It's deplorable and outrageous. The historical commission should have done their function in preserving historical sites, houses, such as these, which bore memorable pieces of history.
We are grateful to people like you for reminding us of these precious gems.
JessQ - Thank you; I would like to write more posts like this.
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