Morningside Heights
Morningside Heights is a neighborhood on the West Side of Upper Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by Morningside Drive to the east, 125th Street to the north, 110th Street to the south, and Riverside Drive to the west. Morningside Heights borders Central Harlem and Morningside Park to the east, Manhattanville to the north, the Manhattan Valley section of the Upper West Side to the south, and Riverside Park to the west. Broadway is the neighborhood's main thoroughfare, running north–south.
Morningside Heights, located on a high plateau between Morningside and Riverside Parks, was hard to access until the late 19th century and was sparsely developed except for the Bloomingdale and Leake and Watts asylums. Morningside Heights and the Upper West Side were considered part of the Bloomingdale District until Morningside Park was finished in the late 19th century. Large-scale development started in the 1890s with academic and cultural institutions. By the 1900s, public transportation construction and the neighborhood's first subway line led to Morningside Heights being developed into a residential neighborhood. Morningside Heights was mostly developed by the 1930s. During the mid-20th century, as the institutions within Morningside Heights expanded, cultural tensions grew between residents who were affiliated with institutions and those who were not. After a period of decline, the neighborhood started to gentrify in the 1980s and 1990s.
A large portion of Morningside Heights is part of the campus of Columbia University, a private Ivy League university. Morningside Heights contains numerous other educational institutions such as Teachers College, Barnard College, the Manhattan School of Music, Bank Street College of Education, Union Theological Seminary, and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Additionally, Morningside Heights includes several religious institutions, including the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Riverside Church, the Church of Notre Dame, Corpus Christi Church, and Interchurch Center. The neighborhood also contains other architectural landmarks, such as St. Luke's Hospital and Grant's Tomb.
Morningside Heights is part of Manhattan Community District 9. It is patrolled by the 26th Precinct of the New York City Police Department with fire services being provided by the New York City Fire Department's Engine Company 47 and Engine Company 37/Ladder Company 40. Politically it is represented by the New York City Council's 7th District.
History
Precolonial and colonial period
Initially, Manhattan was settled by the Lenape Native Americans, who referred to the area nearby as "Muscota" or "Muscoota", meaning "place of rushes". The nearest Native American settlements were Rechewanis and Konaande Kongh in present-day Central Park, to the southeast of modern Morningside Heights. Additionally, a Native American path in the area was adapted into part of modern-day Riverside Drive. However, the region remained relatively hard to access because of the steep topography. Prior to the beginning of the 18th century, most travel within modern New York City was made via water, since there were few roads in the region.Dutch settlers occupied Manhattan in the early 17th century and called the nearby area "Vredendal", meaning "peaceful dale". The western boundary of New Harlem was drawn through the present-day Morningside Park in 1666, running from 74th Street at the East River to 124th Street at the North River on the neighborhood's western edge. The area to the west of the boundary, present-day Morningside Heights, was originally the common lands of British-occupied New York. In 1686, New York colonial governor Thomas Dongan granted the city of New York the patent to a triangular area between West 107th to 124th Streets, extending west to the Hudson River. The city sold the land to Jacob De Key in 1701. An easy connection to the rest of the modern-day city was made two years later, when Bloomingdale Road was extended north from Lower Manhattan to 117th Street. Harman Vandewater acquired part of the De Key farm by 1735, and it was called Vandewater Heights by 1738.
On September 16, 1776, the Battle of Harlem Heights was fought in the area, with the most intense fighting occurring in a sloping wheat field that is now the location of Barnard College. A plaque by the Columbia University gate on 117th Street and Broadway commemorates this battle. Vandewater Heights was sold by 1785 to James W. De Peyster. His brother, Nicholas De Peyster, bought the land directly to the west, along the shoreline.
19th-century development
Though a grid for Manhattan Island would be laid out in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, the present-day Morningside Heights would remain sparsely developed for the next half-century, with the exception of the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum and the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum. The Society for New York Hospital had started buying lots between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenues north of 113th Street in 1816, and opened the Bloomingdale Asylum in 1821. Leake and Watts Services purchased the Society's land east of Amsterdam Avenue between 110th and 113th Streets in 1834, and Ithiel Town's design for the Leake and Watts Asylum was completed in 1843. In addition, the Croton Aqueduct ran above ground through the modern neighborhood, opening in 1842.Through the late 19th century, Bloomingdale Road was the only connection to the rest of Manhattan. A stagecoach line along Bloomingdale Road, founded in 1819, was expanded to modern Morningside Heights and Manhattanville four years later. Mansions were developed on the shore, and William Dixon erected small wood-frame houses on 110th Street, which would be referred to as "Dixonville". In 1846, the Hudson River Railroad was built along the Hudson River waterfront, connecting New York City to Albany.
By an act of the New York State Legislature passed in 1865, the commissioners of Central Park had the responsibility of executing the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 within Upper Manhattan. The same year, Central Park commissioner William R. Martin put forth the first proposal for a park and scenic road along the Hudson River, which later became Riverside Park and Riverside Drive. On the opposite side of the modern-day neighborhood, to the east, Central Park commissioner Andrew Haswell Green proposed Morningside Park in 1867 to avoid the expense of expanding the Manhattan street grid across extremely steep terrain. Landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted was hired for both projects: he designed Riverside Drive and Park in 1873–1875, and he co-designed Morningside Park with Calvert Vaux in 1873, with further revisions to the latter in 1887. The section of Riverside Drive and Park in the Bloomingdale District, of which modern-day Morningside Heights was considered to be part, was completed by 1880. Morningside Park was completed in 1895.
Though several other infrastructure improvements were made, development in the region above 110th Street was slow until the 1890s. Broadway, a wide avenue with medians, opened in 1868 as the "Boulevard" and replaced the former Bloomingdale Road. New pipes for the Croton Aqueduct were laid in 1865, and a still-extant gatehouse at 113th Street was erected later. Plans to relocate the Bloomingdale Asylum were considered as early as 1870, but the Panic of 1873 stalled any additional planning for the rest of the decade. The Ninth Avenue elevated was extended north from the Bloomingdale District to Harlem in 1879, but its route largely skipped the highlands north of 110th Street, as its route shifted eastward at 110th Street. An elevated station at 110th Street and Manhattan Avenue was not opened until 1903, and even then, it was hard to access due to the steep topography. Thus, while the Upper West Side to the south and Hamilton Heights to the north were developed with row houses by the 1880s, the intervening area had almost no new development. The Real Estate Record and Guide stated that it was "difficult to explore the region without a guide" because of the lack of development there.
1890s through 1930s
In 1886, real estate figures and politicians started advocating for the relocation of both asylums in the neighborhood. The asylums were seen as holding up development in the area. The Bloomingdale Asylum had twice rejected offers to purchase its land: first in 1880, when Ulysses S. Grant advocated for a world's fair to be held there three years later, and then in 1888, when the area was being considered as the site of the World's Columbian Exposition to be held during 1892.The Bloomingdale Asylum moved to a site in suburban Westchester County in 1888, followed by the Leake and Watts Asylum three years later. Their respective campuses were purchased by Columbia University, which could not expand their existing campus at the present site of Rockefeller Center in Midtown Manhattan; and the Episcopal Diocese of New York, which had been looking for sites to build their main cathedral, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Several other educational institutions were soon constructed in the area, including Barnard College, Teachers College, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and Union Theological Seminary. Medical institutions moved there as well, such as St. Luke's Hospital and the Woman's Hospital.
New name and first residential buildings
In the 1890s, following Morningside Park's completion, several figures began advocating for the use of the name "Morningside Heights" for the region between 110th and 125th Streets. The name "Bloomingdale" was also used for the area around the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum. However, other names such as "Morningside Hill" and "Riverside Heights" were used for the area. When construction started on Columbia University, Teachers College, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and St. Luke's Hospital in the mid-1890s, no single name was commonly used for the neighborhood. Two names eventually gained the most use; "Morningside Heights" was preferred by the two colleges, while "Cathedral Heights" was preferred by St. John's and St. Luke's. After about 1898, "Morningside Heights" became the most generally accepted, although the diocese at St. John's continued to call the neighborhood "Cathedral Heights" well into the 20th century.Additionally, Manhattan's population was growing rapidly, exceeding one million in 1890. Speculative developers, hoping to cater to Morningside Heights' institutions and Manhattan's increasing population, started erecting the first row houses in the area in 1892–1893. These early buildings were designed in the Colonial, Georgian, or Renaissance Revival styles, in contrast to the architecture of the older row houses in nearby neighborhoods. These developers saw mixed success: while some houses sold quickly, others languished for a decade or were foreclosed. The Morningside Protective Association, established in 1896, unsuccessfully attempted to limit the proliferation of low-rise development. The first tenements in Morningside Heights were built toward the end of the 1890s and were among the only Old Law Tenements built in the neighborhood.