The Other Manhattan: Seeing the Sights from the City's Northern Tip
By Sandy Lawrence Edry
November has always been my favorite time of the year to walk around New York City. It’s a border month, a transition between fall and winter, when the air turns crisp and the Halloween decorations are taken down to be replaced by strings of twinkling holiday lights. Each year at this time I set out on an extended walkabout in the city -- as sort of a final farewell to autumn.
A couple of years back, I decided to take my travels northwards to the George Washington Bridge. So I put on a pair of old pants, comfortable sneakers and my favorite fleece pullover, grabbed some bottled water and ventured forth from my Upper West Side apartment for the nearly 90 block jaunt. I took a route that mostly ran through Riverside Park, with the Hudson River my constant leftward companion and the transitioning neighborhoods of Morningside Heights, then Harlem and into Washington Heights on my right.
But always before me was the bridge, growing steadily larger as I approached it, until soon I could see its mammoth erector set legs reach down towards the bank of the river. I could see the outline of something else, too. At first I thought that I had to be mistaken. Why would it be there? Yet as I came closer, it was clearly true. Sheltered beneath the 4,760-foot span of the suspension bridge, was a tiny red lighthouse, as seemingly out of place as a kitten in the Roman Colosseum.
This was but the first of many surprises I found while walking around Manhattan’s little known northern tip. Collectively called Washington Heights and Inwood, the area is a patchwork of ethnically diverse neighborhoods running from newly resurgent Harlem’s upper boundary at 155th Street to the Bronx border. These neighborhoods--considered the countryside as recently as the early 1900s--hide a treasure trove of history, natural beauty and culture that even most lifelong New Yorkers are barely aware of.
Since my first trip to the lighthouse, I have made a few other small tours of the vicinity, seeing many of its sites, but always in discrete chunks, never as a unified whole. Now that I have a couple of free days, it’s time to put my sneakers back on and revisit past discoveries like the opulent architecture of Audubon Terrace and the genteel charm of the Morris-Jumel Mansion, as well as see what new ones await me. (I’m told there are Indian caves in Inwood Hill Park.)
My visit begins at the area’s best-known cultural attraction, The Cloisters Museum, which is fast becoming my favorite museum in the city. The Cloisters is situated in the heart of picturesque Fort Tryon Park and is a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe. Like everyone else who is here, I move through the castle-ly structure in a hushed silence, studying the seamless way architectural fragments like a 12th century chapter house from France have been incorporated into the edifice, and stopping to look at the collection’s majestic Unicorn Tapestries. Soon, I find myself sitting on the marble parapet that hems the Cuxa Cloister’s inner garden, letting my mind drift off in quiet meditation.
That serenity stays with me when I walk out into the park. Fort Tryon isn’t as well known as its midtown sibling, but I find it much more engaging. It sits on top of a rocky ridge and has dozens of meandering paths that I lazily follow, passing by beautifully landscaped gardens and hillside lawns. Further along I reach the Plaza Terrace and gaze out at breathtaking views of the Hudson River and the nearly pristine New Jersey Palisades to the west.
Now hungry after my morning trek, I drop by the park’s recently renovated New Leaf Cafe for a quick hot dog and soda before calling a cab to take me the 35 blocks to my next destination: Audubon Terrace Historic District.
As I step through the wrought iron gates and into an expansive courtyard, I am once again struck by how out of place these Beaux-Arts buildings are on a mostly nondescript stretch of Broadway. The complex, covering an entire block between 155th and 156th streets, was built as a cultural center on a section of naturalist James Audubon’s former estate and its current occupants include the Hispanic Society of America, the American Numismatic Society and the private American Academy of Arts and Letters.
While the Numismatic Society’s exhibit on the “World of Coins” is always eclectic fun, the Hispanic Society is the focal point of my visit. The first time I came here, I wrongly assumed this was a place dedicated to Latino culture--understandable given the area’s large Dominican population. But the Society’s founding in 1904 predated the neighborhood’s demographic shift and takes Hispanic in the classic sense of the word. Now as I look at paintings by Goya and El Greco, I am amazed that such an obscure museum can be home to one of the finest collections of Spanish artwork and culture outside the Iberian Peninsula.
Early American history and 20th century African American culture share the stage at my next set of stops. Several blocks to the north and east of Audubon Terrace is another historic district that is centered around the Morris-Jumel Mansion. The mansion was built in 1765 by a British colonel as his summer residence, and is the oldest remaining residential structure in Manhattan. As I wander through the house, I can easily picture George Washington strategizing in the parlor (it was his headquarters during the Battle of Harlem Heights) or an elderly and broken Aaron Burr sleeping in one of the upstairs bedrooms. (Burr was at one point married to the estate’s controversial yet colorful owner.) I start chatting with a museum staffer who, with a little coaxing, tells me about the ghost that is said to haunt the grandfather clock in the downstairs foyer.
But checking my own timepiece I realize it’s nearly 4 p.m. and I have to rush around the corner to catch what a friend recently told me will be the most unique musical performance I have ever seen.
I hurry down the 162nd Street, passing quaint old row houses that line Sylvan Terrace and the limestone buildings and brownstones that once housed African American greats including Paul Robeson and Duke Ellington. Today, that cultural history lives on—especially in the home of one Marjorie Eliot, a jazz pianist, who for more than five years has opened her cramped apartment every weekend to any and all who drop by for a free concert. I take a seat on one of the folded metal chairs that are crammed into Eliot’s living room—the overflow is in her kitchen and hallway—and listen in awe as she pounds out the standards with a trio of other performers.
When the concert ends, I start back uptown, the music still playing in my head. I walk to Hudson Heights, an enchanting enclave with a mix of longtime elderly German Jewish residents and a newer generation of Upper West Side transplants, all passing each other along Ft. Washington Avenue. The street takes its name from the Revolutionary War garrison that stood on the hill near 183rd Street. This was the site of one of the Continental Army’s worst defeats--considered the “Alamo of the American Revolution.” When Manhattan fell to the British, more than 2,700 American soldiers were captured here, most who later died in harbor prisons. The outlines of the stone wall are still visible in vest-pocket Bennett Park.
Lingering there for a few moments, I consider heading down to see the lighthouse again, which I had come to learn was immortalized in the 1942 children’s book The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, by Hildegarde H. Swift. But my stomach talks me out of it. Fortunately, I have a choice of tasty restaurants in the vicinity and soon settle on Bleu Evolution, a funkily decorated bistro that serves something the manager describes as “American eclectic” or “Fusion California” cuisine. Whatever the name, I heartily enjoy a grilled asparagus, artichoke and feta appetizer followed by the wild mushroom ravioli in pesto marinara sauce.
The next morning, I set out for a hike in the last primeval forest and salt marsh in Manhattan -- up in Inwood Hill Park. To get there, I take the A train to 207th Street and walk west two blocks to Seaman Avenue. Once inside, I walk north past the playground and the ballfields and head towards the marsh, home to a wide range of bird species that seasonally includes Canada geese, mallards, herons and hawks.
I swing around the water’s edge and make my way to a large rock at the southwest corner of the soccer field. This spot, according to a plaque embedded there, was the very place where Peter Minuit purchased Manhattan in 1626--although, truth be told, several locations in the city have vied for this hard-to-prove honor. The stone also marks the entry point to the park’s hiking trails and in just a few steps, I am surrounded by towering tulip trees. Up a steep hillside, I see the rock ledges and outcroppings that once served as caves for the Lenape Indians.
From here, two main paths divert, and today I choose the more scenic one to the right. The trail slopes upward and around the hill, taking me past a beautiful view of Spuyten Duyvil, the narrow channel separating Manhattan from the Bronx, and under the Henry Hudson Bridge. I pick up the pace a bit, and follow the path to a footbridge that takes me down to the river. Ten minutes later I arrive at the Dyckman Marina. The marina was once an eyesore but the city leased it to new management who opened last year a seasonal restaurant called the Tubby Hook Café. The place has proven to be such a runaway success (on a typical Sunday hundreds of people can pack the place for its Latin Jazz night) that the owners plan on turning it into a year-round facility scheduled to reopen around Christmas.
My final stop is the nearby Dyckman Farmhouse Museum at 204th Street and Broadway. This is the only farmhouse left standing in Manhattan and a peek into the past when the area was populated by more animals than people. The Dyckmans came as Dutch settlers in the mid-1600s and, for several generations, they farmed vast fields and orchards of cherry, pear and apple trees. The original house was destroyed by the British during the Revolutionary War and was rebuilt by the family its current location in 1784. Even then this was a busy thoroughfare, although at the time, it was cattle and pigs that traveled the road, brought from upstate on the way to the slaughterhouses downtown. The museum’s exhibits are modest by current standards, but the staff has done an admirable job of detailing the area’s history.
After wandering through the farmhouse, I step out onto the front porch that looks onto Broadway. I close my eyes and let my mind peel back the centuries, transforming the screeching of a bus’s brakes into the squealing of pigs and stripping away the asphalt and concrete to watch the apple and cherry trees rise again. In the sounds of people’s footfalls, I can almost hear the British and Hessian troops marching and in the alleyways between buildings I can almost get a glimpse of a Lenape hunter stalking his prey.
After all, if a little red lighthouse can still be here, why can’t he?