Manhattanville, Manhattan
Manhattanville is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is bordered on the north by 135th Street; on the south by 122nd and 125th Streets; on the west by Hudson River; and on the east by Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and the campus of City College.
Throughout the nineteenth century, Manhattanville bustled around a wharf active with ferry and daily river conveyances. It was the first station on the Hudson River Railroad running north from the city, and the hub of daily stage coach, omnibus and streetcar lines. Situated near Bloomingdale Road, its hotels, houses of entertainment and post office made it an alluring destination of suburban retreat from the city, yet its direct proximity to the Hudson River also made it an invaluable industrial entry point for construction materials and other freight bound for Upper Manhattan. With the construction of road and railway viaducts over the valley in which the town sat, Manhattanville, increasingly absorbed into the growing city, became a marginalized industrial area. In the early 2000s, the neighborhood became the site of a major planned expansion of Columbia University, which has campuses in Morningside Heights to the south and Washington Heights to the north.
Manhattanville is part of Manhattan Community District 9, and its primary ZIP Codes are 10027 and 10031. It is patrolled by the 26th Precinct of the New York City Police Department.
Name and geography
The neighborhood is known as Manhattanville, after a village on the same site. Manhattanville is located west of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, between approximately 135th Street to the north and 122nd and 125th Streets to the south. The southern boundary sits on a steep slope that ascends to a high plateau which contains the neighborhood of Morningside Heights.Manhattanville is sometimes also known as West Harlem or West Central Harlem, after its location near Harlem. However, the West Harlem name is sometimes applied to a broader area that roughly corresponds with Manhattan Community District 9, which extends south to 110th Street and north to 155th Street.
History
Colonial period and establishment
The village of Manhattanville was founded in 1806 and quickly gained prominence as an outpost of the city. The village grew around the crossroads of Bloomingdale Road and Manhattan Street, now roughly Broadway and 125th Street.The village's original streets were laid out by Jacob Schieffelin and other wealthy merchants, mostly Quakers, who had country seats in the area.
The town thrived as a result of the development of Manhattan Street from the Hudson River, whose convenient access also became a crucial catalyst in the growth of the older village of Harlem to the southeast on the Harlem River. Situated at approximately the same latitude, Harlem and Manhattanville flourished together throughout the 19th century as the two most prominent villages in upper Manhattan.
Manhattanville sits in a valley formerly called Moertje David's Vly during the Dutch Colonial period and as Harlem Cove during the English Colonial period. During the American Revolutionary War, the valley was also known as the Hollow Way, where the main action of the Battle of Harlem Heights began under the command of General George Washington. During the War of 1812 the valley's southern ridges figured as the site of the Manhattanville Pass, whose defense fortifications and breastworks included Fort Laight and Blockhouse No. 4, which became the sites of Morningside Gardens Houses and PS 36, respectively.
Manhattanville's early population was a diverse and eclectic mix of intermarried American patriots and British loyalists; at least one prominent former African slave trader ; slave owners and enslaved African-Americans; Quaker anti-slavery activists and free black abolitionists; tradesmen, poor laborers and wealthy industrialists. Many were affiliated with the same institutions, principally the historic New York City landmarked St. Mary's Protestant Episcopal Church, organized in 1823, which was the first Episcopal church to dissolve pew rent in 1831, and the Manhattanville Free School still at their original sites. Manhattanville's most prominent resident was industrialist Daniel F. Tiemann, owner of the D. F. Tiemann & Company Color Works, who was also Mayor of New York City from 1858 to 1859. The Tiemann laboratory and factory which was originally located on 23rd Street and Fourth Avenue in Gramercy, near Madison Square Park, relocated uptown to Manhattanville in 1832, in part due to an underground spring of running water at the new uptown location, which is today the site of 560 Riverside Drive.
Immigration and urbanization
According to Eric K. Washington, "With Manhattanville's formation, the new village quickly became a significant suburban destination along the Bloomingdale Road ... Manhattanville flourished naturally as a nexus of various transportation arteries." In the late nineteenth century, Manhattanville experienced a development boom of residential buildings, churches, hospitals, institutional construction, and transportation made it a desirable location for the brewery business.Later noteworthy population changes occurred around the mid-19th century following the opening of the Hudson River Railroad in 1850, with an influx of mostly Catholic Irish and Germans. After the American Civil War, the Jewish immigrant population that began to distinguish itself in Harlem gradually filtered into the western blocks of Manhattanville. Other prominent 19th-century Manhattanville institutions included the Academy of Convent of the Sacred Heart and Manhattan College.
In 1904, the opening of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company 's new Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line, now part of the on the New York City Subway, galvanized Manhattanville's radical transformation from rural exburb to an extension of the growing city, with the elevated railway providing rapid transit downtown. Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican immigrants moved into the area during the 20th century. By the 1970s, the southern part of Manhattanville was being filled by Columbia and Barnard College students, staff and faculty, as the university continued to expand.
West 125th Street has experienced a general economic upturn since the end of the 1990s. Many of the buildings below 125th Street have converted to cooperative ownership as the area experiences continuing gentrification and increasing demand for housing. In collaboration with the community, the city has developed a plan for the 125th Street corridor focusing on reinforcing and building upon its strengths as an arts and cultural corridor.
21st century
University expansions
Manhattanville is the site of a planned major expansion of Columbia University. The university purchased several square blocks of the neighborhood between 125th and 133rd Streets on the south and north and between Broadway and 12th Avenue on the east side of Broadway from 131 to 134, west of the housing projects. According to the plan, the physical plant of those blocks will be partly demolished to construct a new campus, secondary school and park land, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano. Local residents feared the impact of the further gentrification from this expansion in addition to the possible, and controversial, use of eminent domain. In 2006, Columbia built a new School of Social Work on Amsterdam Avenue at 122nd Street. In June 2007, the New York City Department of City Planning certified that Columbia's application for the rezoning is complete. This action launched the public review and comment period under the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, which lasted until the end of 2007. In December of the same year, the New York City Council voted to approve Columbia's proposed rezoning of the site. Renzo Piano Workshop designed three structures for the Manhattanville Campus; these structure were complete by 2018.Other colleges have been building dormitories in the area as well. To the north, the 589-student dorm The Towers finished construction in June 2006 as an extension of the City College of New York on St. Nicholas Terrace. This is the first time that City College has housed students on the campus. Occupancy began in August 2006. To the south, near 122nd Street, the Manhattan School of Music also built a dormitory around 2003. In 2006, Jewish Theological Seminary of America opened a smaller dormitory on 122nd Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.
In August 2009, at 135th Street and Convent Avenue, City College completed the construction of a new School of Architecture and Urban Design building. Based on a pre-existing 1950s structure, the old Cohen Library on South Campus, this redesign and reconstruction by Rafael Viñoly Architects is intended to add a modern aesthetic to the eclectic architectural mix in the area.