Here is a roundup of a few of the city’s local history highlights of this past year:
Old New York in Black & White. Or, Rather, in Sepia
In February, Sotheby’s offered up for sale what it believed to be the oldest extant photograph of New York City. The photo, a daguerreotype taken circa 1848, depicted a country house on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. “on a continuation of Broadway,” which was known at that time as the Bloomingdale Road. The photograph fetched $62,500 at auction.
Two New City Parks
In late May, a new uptown park opened on the Hudson River at the end of 125th Street. The West Harlem Piers Park built along the bulkhead of the historic Manhattanville docks featured recreational paths and marine piers that echoed the irregular street pattern of the shorefront village that had been founded in 1806, before the city’s grid plan was drawn up in 1811.
A week later in early June, another new city park opened downtown. The sensational High Line, a landscaped esplanade inspired by the Promenade Plantée in Paris, was built upon the defunct elevated railroad beds that had once served lower Manhattan's meat-packing district.
A Landmark Eatery Folds
In late August the dazzling lights of the Tavern on the Green restaurant appeared to have been short-circuited when the city announced it would not renew the current lease. The historic 19th-century structure in Central Park—built as The Sheepfold in 1870—had been a noted eatery since its conversion in 1934. But the restaurant’s most extravagant incarnation was surely that created by the late Hollywood scion Warner LeRoy in 1976. Thirty-three years later, the city decided to award the legendary bauble to Dean Poll, operator of another park restaurant, the Loeb Boathouse.
Anti-Slavery Activity in Chelsea Remembered
In October the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated a row of eleven antebellum townhouses, built in the 1840s, on West 29th Street in Chelsea as the Lamartine Place Historic District. Two of the houses in particular—the neighboring numbers 337 and 339 referred to as the Gibbons-Hopper Houses—were associated as hideouts for fugitive African-American slaves on the Underground Railroad and a visit from abolitionist John Brown. The houses had also been noted as targets during the infamous 3-day long Draft Riots of 1863.
A Grave Recollection in Washington Square
Also in October, the finding of a well-preserved 210-year-old headstone baffled archeologists in Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park. The marker belonged to “James Jackson Who departed this life The 22nd day of September 1799 aged 28 years.” Later identification of Jackson as a well-to-do Irish-born city watchman initially raised the question as to why a man with enough means to afford a headstone should end up in what was then a potter’s field. But then Department of Parks archeologist Joan Geismar also plumbed public records to reveal a published citation of a 1799 ordinance that prohibited such yellow fever victims as Jackson had been from burial elsewhere.
Manhattanville Vernacular Gets a Reprieve
In early December, a state appellate court rejected Columbia University’s manoever to use eminent domain to expand its campus in Manhattanville as unconstitutional. Nick Sprayregen, the proprietor of several buildings in the neighborhood, was among a few surprised victors of the decision. The university’s controversial expansion plans have sparked increasing interest in this forgotten 203-year-old West Harlem neighborhood whose long history is steeped in community activism.
From Pond to Cesspool to Park
Also in December, the little known Collect Pond Park was offered a new lease on life. The tiny green space is the namesake of Manhattan’s largest fresh water lagoon of Colonial days. Fed by an underground spring, the once-bucolic Collect had become so polluted and unsavory that it was filled in by 1811. Since that time the area became the seat of public executions, the Tombs prison, and part of the notorious Five Points slum. The Parks Department’s new landscaping plan promises to restore some historically pastoral charm to the site.
Bronx Cellarmaster's Choice
In late December, construction workers in the Bronx unearthed a network of 19th-century caves that were once used for brewing lager beer. The Ebling Brewery Company, established just after the Civil War in the boroough’s Melrose section, went the way of most American breweries after the Voltead Act ushered in Prohibition in 1920—down the drain. Although the newly-found caves have sparked public interest, the discovery doesn’t seem likely to hinder the development on the site.
An African-American Trailblazer Dies
The year 2009 closed sorrowfully with the news of the death of African-American civil rights activist, lawyer and entrepreneur Percy Sutton on December 26th. The Texas-born Sutton distinguished himself as one of the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. As a lawyer, he represented Malcolm X, and later held the office of Borough President of Manhattan for 12 years from 1965 to 1977. As an entrepreneur he co-founded the Inner City Broadcasting Corporation in 1971 which established the city’s first black radio station, WLIB-AM, and later spearheaded the revitalization of the legendary, but flagging, Apollo. Sutton was 89 years old.
Eric K. Washington - Eric K. Washington is the author of Manhattanville: Old Heart of West Harlem and contributed to the recent MTA-licensed guide book, New ...
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