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Manhattanville Timeline
1609
13 Sep
Robert Juet's Half Moon journal during
Henry Hudson's third voyage: "Fair
weather; the wind northerly; at seven
o'clock in the morning, as the flood came
we weighed and turned four miles into
the river; the tide being done we
anchored. Then there came four canoes
aboard, but we suffered none of them to
come into our ship; they brought very
great store of very good oysters aboard,
which we bought for trifles." [near
Manhattanville]
1658
Nieuw Haarlem established at presentday
East 125th Street near East River.
Some villagers have been crossing island
westward to Hudson River inlet called
Moertje David's Vly at present-day West
129th Street to pasture livestock in
valley.
1664
English capture Manhattan.
1666
Governor Richard Nicolls conceives
diagonal boundary from East River at
74th Street to Hudson River at 129th
Street; New Harlem includes all
Manhattan above line.
1712
John Lawrence among three
"disinterested" neighbors to witness first
division of Harlem's Common Lands as
farm lots.
1776
16 Sep Battle of Harlem Heights begins in the
"Hollow Way," as the valley is then known in
general orders of Gen. George
Washington and Revolutionary War
records. American patriot troops defeat
British.
1806
"Manhattan Ville is now forming in the
Ninth Ward of this city...," where sales of
building lots, "principally to tradesmen,"
are observed.
1807
3 Apr The Commissioners' remarks for "Laying
Out Streets and Roads in the City of New
York," note the space from "...the Fifth
(which is the Manhattanville avenue or
Middle road)...to the Sixth avenue...nine
hundred and twenty feet."
17 Aug From the Claremont mansion, the Earl of
Devon watches the test of Robert
Fulton's boat powered by steam instead
of sails, as the so-called "folly" (later
Clermont) voyages up the Hudson to
Albany.
1810
John B. Lawrence builds mansion at West
134th Street and Bloomingdale Road,
demolished 1897.
4 Jul Concern about the "remote situation of
Friends at Manhattanville" leads Quakers
at New York Monthly Meeting "to
appoint a committee to consider
whether any relief could be afforded
them."
1813
May
Thomas M. Finley advertises
Manhattanville Boarding School and
Scientific Academy.
1814
During the War of 1812-15, extensive
fortifications are erected to defend city
against anticipated British attack: Fort
Laight; Block Houses Nos. 3 & 4; the
Manhattanville Pass barrier gate; and
lines of entrenchments to Hudson.
1816
27 Apr
Free Republican Electors of Color, an
organization of free African-American voters,
holds general meeting at Crawford's Hotel in
Manhattanville, a discreet eight-mile distance
away from the city. The organizors resolve to
throw their support behind abolitionist
gubernatorial candidate Daniel D. Tompkins and
the full Republican ticket for being "the
guardians of equal rights and freedom, and the
true friends of injured Africans."
1817
28 Jan
Quakers from Manhattanville deliver
message "in behalf of the poor blacks still
held in bondage" at opening of
Legislature in Albany, which unanimously
concurs with Gov. Daniel D.
Tompkins' recommendation to abolish
slavery entirely in the state by and after
July 4, 1827.
1821
"The Spy," a novel by James Fenimore
Cooper, set partially in pre-Manhattanville
valley of Revolutionary War period.
1823
18 Dec St. Mary's Protestant Episcopal Church
founded as independent parish of St.
Michael's in Bloomingdale. Its Free
School, which "shall be open equally to
all denominations", is also established.
1824
Jacob Schieffelin and Hannah Lawrence
Schieffelin donate 60 by 100 foot lot on
Lawrence Street for erection of St. Mary's
church; cornerstone laid on 15 June.
1827
4 Jul New York State abolishes slavery.
1831
St. Mary's becomes city's first "free pew"
Protestant Episcopal church.
1832
19 Jan
Herman Canon, African-American sexton
of St. Mary's, buried at Harlem Colored
Burying Ground across the island from
Manhattanville.
1833
D.F. Tiemann & Co. Color Works locates in
Manhattanville. It will become the
outstanding commercial feature of the
industrial town.
1834
Cornelius Van Wyck Lawrence becomes
first Mayor of the City of New York
elected by the people.
1835
16-17 Dec
Great Fire destroys most of city
concentrated in lower Manhattan.
1837
Mar
An African-American man acts as a decoy
for well known "blackbirders" Boudinot,
Nash & Lyon, who kidnap George
Thompson, a fugitive from slavery in
Virginia residing in Manhattanville.
Thompson's employer finds him
imprisoned in the Bridewell prison, and
immediately applies for a writ of habeus
corpus. When legal arguments and
lobbying by black abolitionists fail in
April, Thompson is boarded off to the
South by ship.
1838
Oct
Peter Nichols, Sr. and Jr., are appointed
12th Ward committee representatives at
the first Regular Quarterly Meeting of the
"New York Association for the Political
Elevation and Improvement of the
People of Color," organized to press for
African-American male suffrage.
1840s
Influx of mostly Catholic Irish and
southern Germans creates a substantial
presence in workforce and social life of
Manhattanville, now the pocket of
several new small industries, but still a
generally poor community of tenant
farmers and factory workers.
1840
Manhattanville becomes the locus of a
1,215-foot tunnel, the longest in a
"Herculean" aquaduct system, to deliver
pure and plentiful water to the city.
1846
Academy and Convent of the Sacred
Heart founded.
Panorama of the Hudson River by Master
Engraver William Wade illustrates the
village of Manhattanville on the east
bank of the Hudson River as "having a
convenient landing and wharf, and
containing about eighty houses, with five
hundred inhabitants."
1850s
Manhattanville becomes the first station
of new Hudson River Railroad's northbound
route. Tenth Avenue Railroad extended.
1853
Manhattan College founded as Academy
of the Holy Infancy.
Nov 27 Cornerstone laid for Church of the
Annunciation, dedicated during the
following year.
1855
Feb 12
Ward School No. 43 dedicated.
1857
Financial Panic.
1858-60
Daniel F. Tiemann, whose D.F. Tiemann &
Co. Color Works factory and homestead
are located on block between Manhattan
Street and West 127th Street, serves as
New York City's 75th mayor.
1860
St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church
founded.
1862
23 May
Manhattan Dispensary incorporated.
Founder Dr. Louis A. Rodenstein
organizes facility in square frame
building at corner of present 125th
(LaSalle) Street and Tenth (Amsterdam)
Avenue. Broader hospital activities
follow later location on 131st Street. (See
Manhattan Hospital, 1885)
1863
13-17 Jul
New York City Draft Riots.
1865
Population: 2,189, out of 28, 259 in
Twelfth Ward.
25 Apr 4:20pm: Abraham Lincoln's funeral train
reaches Manhattanville, first stop on
route to Albany before heading west.
1870
5 Feb
Sheltering Arms Asylum, founded in 1864
"for the relief of orphans, half-orphans,
the aged, sick and blind," opens in new
Manhattanville facility.
Augusta Lewis Troup (aka "Gussie Lewis"),
Manhattanville-born suffragist (1848), is
elected the first woman officer of a
national union, the Typographical Union
in New Haven.
1873
30 Jul
NYT reports on block framed by 109th
and 110th streets and Boulevard
(Broadway) and Tenth Avenue as a
"plague-spot in Manhattanville."
1879
17 Sep
Two-alarm fire destroys Tiemann Color
Works. "Spontaneous combustion"
reported to be the cause of $50-60,000
damage.
1880s
Advent of Third Avenue "elevated" line
swells Harlem&'s population, whose
overflow trebles Manhattanville's
dwellings from 200 to 600--mostly
tenements just below Manhattan Street
between Broadway and Amsterdam Ave.
1885
12 Dec
Manhattan Hospital at 10th Ave. and
131st St. is first general hospital above
99th St. The two-story brick building,
enlarged with third story in Aug. 1886,
renamed J. Hood Wright Memorial
Hospital in 1895, later Knickerbocker
Hospital in 1913 (relocated to Convent
Ave. in 1926); renamed Arthur C. Logan
Memorial Hospital in 1974.
1889
4 Oct Manhattanville property owners
successfully petition Dock Board for new
Hudson River piers at cost of $150,000,
anticipating area being selected for site
of World's Fair in 1892 (passed over for
Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893).
1890
About 80% of Manhattanville residents
live in five-story tenements with two
suites per floor. Most are foreign-born or
of foreign parentage. Majority of 2,465
new arrivals are Irish, English or Scottish;
1,684 are from Germany; France and
Italy's combined 361 arrivals are on par
with 378 from Eastern Europe; 93 are
from Scandinavia; 13 and 14 from Greece
and the Orient respectively. About 1,000
African Americans reside in the area
already. Most Russian and Polish
immigrants are Jewish, as are some
Germans and American-born residents.
Diversions include three pool rooms,
three bowling alleys, a gymnasium; of
Manhattanville's fifty saloons, Lawrence
St. boasts two frequented by Germans
and two popular with African-Americans.
A large brewery is around the corner.
The middle class encroaches from
Morningside Heights with institutions
such as Cathedral of St. John the Divine,
Columbia University, Teacher's College,
Barnard College and St. Luke's Hospital.
12 Oct The New York Times reports: "The railroad
station at Manhattanville has already
become one of the largest freight
stations in the city, and the brick, lumber,
and building material trade for the entire
west side... up town is beginning to
concentrate in Manhattanville."
1896
4 Oct
The Manhattanville Millionaires' Club,
comprising members of predominantly
German descent, incorporated as a club
for "social recreation."
1897
27 Apr
Grant's Tomb dedicated.
1900
Pop.: 14, 675 out of 462, 227 in 12th Ward.
23 Jun
The Manhattanville Colored Republican
Club of New York City is incorporated in
Albany to "advocate and promote the
principles of the Republican Party
among the Afro-Americans."
1904
New IRT line along Broadway sparks a
building boom. Squatters are swept from
the rocks near Grant's Tomb as
Claremont and Riverside become
fashionable spines southwest of
Manhattan St. and Broadway. Cross
streets above 129th St. between
Amsterdam and Riverside are built up for
moderately priced apartment houses.
Property values drop along Broadway
facing the 52-foot high IRT viaduct.
1907
22 Aug
Ex-Mayor Tiemann's old Manhattanville
dye works again destroyed by fire.
1908-9
English Gothic-style brick church by
Theodore E. Blake, with the firm of
Carrère & Hastings, replaces St. Mary's
frame church on its original site.
Only 128 Manhattanville residents are
homeowners, the rest either renters or
lodgers. By 1909, thirteen hundred
African Americans (more than double
figure of 1900) reside in "clearly defined"
segregated sections. The poorest occupy
the "Darktown" and "Mixed Ale Row"
blocks of old brick tenement on 130th
and 131st Streets; the more well-to-do
on the south side of Lawrence and 126th
Streets; those of "excellant reputation,"
the blocks of 126th Street between
Amsterdam and Claremont Avenues.
1915
12 Sep
John J. Hopper, Fusion Ticket Registrar of
New York County and Manhattanville
historian, initiates city's same-day block
indexing system.
1918
At Manhattanville Day Nursery, Ira Wiles
Solomon establishes the school free-
lunch program.
1920
Name of "Manhattan Street" is jettisoned;
renamed as the oblique continuation of
West 125th Street (now renamed once
again as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Boulevard). West of Morningside Avenue,
former part of West 125th Street
becomes LaSalle Street. West 126th
Street becomes Moylan Place, and West
127th Street becomes Tiemann Place.
1921
Mar Change approved for "Manhattan Street"
subway station to be officially renamed
"125th Street."
1922
13 May
A committee of women social workers
and physicians announce the formation
of a "self-supporting" Manhattanville
Health Society, as well as the
organization of "a novel illness prevention
service among the families of
Manhattanville." The aim is "to purchase
an illness-prevention service and the
services of visiting nurses should illness
come." Proposed full-scale services
include a clinic, a health advisory center,
visiting nurse care for the sick of any age,
pre- and post-natal care for mothers,
baby and child health service for children
up to six, and visits by home nutrition
workers supervised by family physicians.
1924
18 Mar
The Manhattanville Association, "one of
the largest neighborhood organizations
in New York City," allied with the Hudson
Guild and the Henry Street Settlement
led by Lillian Wald, officially denounces
City proposal to appropriate Central Park
or “other open air spaces needed in badly
congested districts" to build a music and
arts center, a project the coalition
otherwise endorsed.
1930s
The Depression and WWII exact toll on
Manhattanville's tenements--neglect,
disrepair, and eventual demolition. As
many returning veterans move
elsewhere, the influx of new arrivals from
Puerto Rico and Blacks from the South
reshuffles Manhattanville's ethnic mix.
Lawrence St. is renamed W. 126th Street.
1940s
Knickerbocker Hospital opens special
ward under Dr. William Duncan Silkworth
that instrumentally contributes to
techniques of combined medicine for
the treatment of alcoholism and to the
growth of Alcoholics Anonymous.
1947
The non-profit Morningside Heights, Inc.,
(David Rockefeller, President) is founded
by Columbia University and a dozen
neighboring institutions. Mission of civic
improvement, ostensibly for whole of
Morningside-Manhattanville area, is
focused south of West 125th Street.
1950s
Teachers College survey of a third of
Manhattanville's 45,000 residents shows
higher rate of accidents, tuberculosis,
pneumonia and infant mortality than in
city as a whole. But survey also reveals a
stable community of multi-religious
Whites, Blacks, Latinos and Asians living
harmoniously within close proximity.
City Slum Clearance Commission chaired
by Robert Moses targets Manhattanville
in major "improvement" campaign. Tens
of thousands of residents must relocate
for creation of Morningside Gardens coop
apartments and lower-income Grant
Houses. White relocation renders the
Grant and Manhattanville "projects"
virtually segregated, occupied almost
exlculsively by Blacks and Latinos.
1969
M. Moran Weston founds Harlem-on-the-
Hudson Development Inc. to advance
Harlem's redevelopment.
1986
Mar
North River Wastewater Treatment Plant
begins operations.
1988
New York State Harlem Urban
Development Corp. issues plan for
Harlem on the Hudson (urban design by
Ehrenkrantz and Eckstut Architects).
1991
Apr North River Plant begins "secondary
treatment" process; Riverbank State Park
constructed on the roof of the facility.
1994
Proposed legislation to create the federal
Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone
identifies the forlorn Manhattanville
waterfront, or "Harlem Piers," as an area
for redevelopment.
1995
Fairway supermarket opens on Marginal
Way, facing the Hudson River at 133rd St.
1998
New York City Parks and Recreation
opens "Cherry Walk," a pedestrian and
bicycle path along the Hudson River
shoreline from 96th to 129th Street.
West Harlem Environmental Action (WE
ACT) and CB9 collaborate on community
based waterfront development plan and
submit "Harlem on the River" proposal to
the City's Economic Development
Corporation (EDC) the following year.
2001
New York EDC issues an "RFP" to
consultants for Harlem Piers Master Plan,
announcing that "Harlem on the River"
plan will serve as benchmark for study.
2002
21 Oct New York City and State unveil West
Harlem Master Plan, developed by EDC
with consultant W Architecture and
Landscape Architecture, to revitalize the
"Harlem Piers" area bounded by 125th
and 135th Streets, Broadway and the
Hudson River, with construction on City owned
waterfront park to begin fall '03.
2003
Columbia University announces plans to
expand into Manhattanville area of West
Harlem.
CCNY begins work on master plan with
consultant George Ranalli Architects.
2004
27 Oct
Centennial of IRT Subway opening.
2006
Bicentennial of Manhattanville.
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