The Leake and Watts Orphan House was erected in 1843, and the massive Greek Revival structure is an unlikely survivor in an ever-changing city. Designed by architect Ithiel Town as a home for orphaned children with the funds from a wealthy New York lawyer, the building was the largest edifice in Morningside Heights until the construction of the neighboring St. John the Divine began in 1892. (The Cathedral is still officially unfinished more than 11 decades later.) The orphanage moved to Yonkers when the church purchased the building in 1887, and the asylum stands on land intended for the south transept of the cathedral. (See the above parenthetical for the reason this has not necessitated the demolition of the building.) The architectural writer, David Dunlap, described the scene as this: "The situation has yielded a happy architectural incongruity: two ample porticos with broad triangular pediments on giant Ionic colonnades, nestled at the base of an unfinished Romanesque-Gothic cathedral. From some vantages on the verdant grounds, it looks as if an ancient Greek temple stumbled into some medieval village." While the building was not demolished for construction, it was largely ignored by the church and might have been taken down due to safety concerns eventually. But in the early 2000s, the Cathedral reversed it hands-off plan for the asylum. With a massive restoration effort completed in 2006 and the building renamed the Town Building, for its architect, the once decaying structure has become home of the Cathedral’s Textile Conservation Lab, and the Cathedral’s social service and neighborhood outreach programming. A coop in the nearby parking lot is also the home base for the Cathedral's three peacocks, Phil, Jim, and Harry.

Regent Theater ARCHITECT: Thomas W. Lamb DATE: 1912-13 STYLE: Theater An elegant architectural design, the Regent was built to elevate the presentation of movies and was one of the first luxurious movie theaters in New York City. The theater was controlled by the real estate interests of the Little family, prominent printers, for nearly forty years. Located in Harlem at the comer of two thoroughfares which were popular for entertainment venues, the Regent was operated as a movie and vaudeville house for some fifty years, as an innovative setting for movie presentations.

The Mount Morris Park neighborhood is a residential area in central Harlem, bounded by 125th and 117th Streets from north to south, by Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard to the west, and by Marcus Garvey Memorial Park to the east. The park, known as Mount Morris Park until 1973, has always been the centerpiece of the neighborhood. Besides the park, the area is characterized by attractive low-scale rowhouses, townhouses and institutional buildings, including many churches. Stylistically, most of the architecture found in Mount Morris Park is Romanesque Revival, French Neo-Grec and Queen Anne, as well as Classical and Renaissance. There is also much transition among styles in the architecture here, which results in a charming, eclectic mix, and the neighborhood retains a strong turn-of-the-20th-century architectural character today. With the opening of the elevated transit line in Harlem in 1872, development in Manhattan pushed northward into former farmlands. Speculative building began in 1878, and several booms in Harlem real estate soon followed. New York City in the 1880s and 1890s saw some of the most elegant construction designed by prominent local architects, and this neighborhood was no exception. The row of houses that line Mount Morris Park West and face the park were compared with Fifth Avenue mansions in 1903 by the New York Herald. At the turn of the 20th century, German Protestants and Jews commissioned many church and synagogue buildings that survive today. By 1920 the area had become a middle-class neighborhood of mainly Jewish, Caribbean and African-American families. The new residents acquired and adapted institutional and residential buildings to suit their religious and cultural needs, while some of the single-family houses were converted to multi-family. The neighborhood struggled during the Depression and ensuing decades, but the quality construction of earlier years remained remarkably extant. In 1971, New York City designated the Mount Morris Park Historic District, and in 1973 the district was placed on the National Register, with its boundaries expanded in 1996. Since that time, the area has been enjoying a revival thanks in part to the overall exceptional craftsmanship of the built environment.

Graham Court Apartments, 1933. More than those of any other Harlem apartment house, Graham Court's expansive suites suggest the ideal of an entire row house set at a single level. It is still considered Harlem's finest luxury apartment house. Graham Court's underground stable, situated directly below the court, was considered a major amenity for tenants, as was the roof's warren of extra servants' rooms. The typical apartment featured a parlor and dining room suite with a pantry, kitchen, and maid's room, four or more bedrooms, and up to three baths. The illusion of being in a house is reinforced by the separation of family bedrooms along a private hall beyond the public spaces and the similar isolation of the kitchen and servants' quarters. The building was erected by William Waldorf Astor, one of the world's richest men and one of the largest owners of Harlem real estate. Even today, his WWA monogram embellishes the structure. The Astor family owned Graham Court until 1928; the first African Americans moved in five years later. The building's new owners rented to black tenants but scaled back services and staff, divided some apartments, and raised Depression-era rents. New residents included Dr. Cyril Harold Dolly, assistant visiting physician at Harlem Hospital, who helped to found the Consolidated Tenants League in response to these changes. The writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston was a guest here for an extended period of time.

As the city grew and changed, Olmsted and Vaux’s design for Morning Side Park changed with it. In their first plan of 1873 the grandest of the park entrances was to be at the corner of Manhattan Ave and West 110th Street (Cathedral Parkway). This corner was closest to the northwest corner of Central Park just a short block away and one can imagine the designers envisioning park goers strolling back and forth between the two parks. Here we see a major change that most certainly made them rethink that approach. This 1879 eastward looking view of the elevated train tracks built along 110th Street just south of what would become Morningside Park, show what a changed prospect now presented itself to the designers. Olmsted and Vaux’s second 1887 plan for the park took into account this dramatically changed condition. It retained but played down the southern entrance and made more of the grand staircase leading into the middle of the park from Morningside Drive at 116th Street.

Open-Air Pulpit: Howells & Stokes, 1913

110th Street Curve, also known as “suicide curve,” 1913. In 1879, the elevated tracks of the IRT Ninth Avenue Line were extended northward from the 104th Street station. At 110th Street, the trestle turned 90 degrees to the right on 110th Street, before turning uptown again at Eighth Avenue. The 110th Street station and adjacent tracks earned the nickname “suicide curve,” as the high elevated railway had become a destination for jumpers. In 1927, the New York Times reported that local business owners were concerned that the curve’s reputation was a deterrent to customers. The Ninth Avenue El ceased operations in June, 1940, and the railway was dismantled shortly thereafter. While many sources claim the tracks stood a dizzy 100 feet above street level, a 1940 dispatch in the New York Times quoted the project superintendent overseeing the trestle's demolition, who claimed a maximum height of 56 feet. Today, the elevated tracks former right of way is still visible at the southeast corner of 110th Street and Columbus Avenue: older buildings are set back from the corner, while more recent single-story construction occupies the land once underneath the tracks.

New York Public Library, 115th Street branch. July 18, 1928. The 115th Street branch, a Carnegie-funded library designed by McKim, Mead & White, opened in November, 1908. The small, three-story Renaissance Revival building is styled as an Italian palazzo, with a heavily rusticated limestone facade and symmetrical arched windows. In 2017, the library was renamed the Harry Belafonte 115th Street Library, after the musician, activist, and Harlem resident.

In the closing decades of the 19th century, New York underwent a profound physical and cultural transformation. Fueled by the wealth of the exploding financial and manufacturing sectors, the city rapidly evolved into a world-class metropolis. The bold ambitions of civic and business leaders, architects, and engineers of the era manifested in landmarks such as the vast Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the stately U.S. Custom House, the towering Municipal Building, and the original terminus of New York City’s first official subway line—the ornate City Hall stop. The sweeping interior spaces common to all of these structures, and hundreds of others, depended upon a venerable Mediterranean building technology adapted to contemporary American construction: arched tile ceilings—or vaults—that were not only self-supporting but could also bear the weight of floors or roofs above them. These vaults were designed and built by a single New York firm, founded by Spanish immigrant Rafael Guastavino (1842-1908) and later headed by his son Rafael Jr. (1872-1950). The Guastavinos’ patented system for building domes and vaults involved multiple layers of thin ceramic tiles bonded with quick-drying mortar. The resulting structures were not only exceptionally strong, but also lightweight, easy to build, and inherently beautiful, thanks to intricate patterns of exposed tile that formed finished, decorative surfaces. Guastavino vaults figured prominently in more than 1,000 projects across the nation, including 200 in Manhattan alone. During its 73-year history, the Guastavino Company helped build some of the most impressive interior spaces in America—veritable palaces for the people. This list based on MCNY's exhibition Palaces for the People, contains many of Guastavino's masterpieces in the five boroughs, both those that remain and those that have been lost to the wrecking ball.

Block House No. 1. This stone fort, which sits on top of the large rock, is the oldest original structure in Central Park (Cleopatra's Needle was created elsewhere and moved). It is one of a number of fortifications built in the area during the War of 1812 (and the only one that survives). Despite the threat that prompted their construction, none of the forts were used in wartime combat and they were abandoned when the war ended, soon after being built. It was later used for ammunition storage.

When you’re planning to build some of the world’s most spectacular and challenging tunnels, you need to know ahead of time what you’ll be digging through. Is it soil, sand, or stone? Is the stone strong and secure or friable and likely to collapse? To know what the bedrock is like, you need a drill rig to dig it out from hundreds of feet below the surface. The drill extracts geological core borings, cylindrical samples that provide a cross-section of subsurface conditions and let engineers know whether the area is good for tunneling and what construction methods should be used. The drill bits are tubular and loaded with shot or embedded with diamonds to cut around the core, like a drinking straw plunging into a milkshake (except really, really hard!).

Parkway Hospital, August 3, 1928. The Parkway Hospital, a private 70-bed facility on the north side of Central Park, opened to the public on January 5, 1929. The West 110th Street building became the Italian Hospital during the 1950s. In 1973, Italian merged with Columbus Hospital, creating the Cabrini Medical Center and shifting care to a new facility in Gramercy Park.

Ansehe Chesed Synagogue ca. 1910 Jewish residents were a significant presence in post-Civil War Harlem, which at the turn of the twentieth century was the nation's pre-eminent middle class Jewish neighborhood. If, in their religious structures, Harlem's Jews avoided Christianity's distinctive Gothic mode, but they were not averse to presenting a "churchly" appearance. Temple Ansche Chesed was completed in 1909 on a fine corner site at Seventh Avenue and West 114th Street. The structure is built of brick, limestone, and terra cotta. It was lit naturally by means of an enormous skylight, the stained glass of which depicted traditional Jewish symbols. Congregation Ansche Chesed was a Reform congregation, with mixed seating for men and women and prayers conducted in English. It also boasted a fine organ. Since 1927, the congregation has worshipped in a similar building by Edward Shire located at 251 West 100th Street. Reflecting Harlem's history of changing demographics, Temple Ansche Chesed was adapted in 1926 as Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, a Spanish Roman Catholic church, and then became Mount Neboh Baptist Church in 1980.

Morningside Heights holds a very different ground than the Upper West Side - probably because it is home to Columbia University, Barnard College, the Manhattan School of Music, and other smaller schools. 🏫📚✍️ Explore the area between the Hudson and the Manhattan Schist…

How did New York build one of the largest Cathedrals in the world? Not quickly, using traditional craftsmen, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine took a century to reach its current state. As the seat of the Episcopal Diocese of New York St. John The Divine remains in active use to this day. This blog is adapted from Historic District Council's Six to Celebrate, which can be viewed here.

Cathedral of St. John the Divine interior ca. 1959 The Guastavino Company pushed the limits of traditional tile vaulting further than any previous builders. Guastavino Jr.’s building method for the dome of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine required no support during construction, yet created a highly stable shell only 4.5 inches thick at its crown. The 135-foot span was erected in a mere 15 weeks. Originally intended as a temporary, inexpensive cover for the crossing of the cathedral’s two main axes, the dome remains in place today—a testament to its solid construction.

Ansche Chesed Synagogue, ca. 1910. The Congregation Ansche Chesed was established in 1828 by a group of German, Dutch and Polish Jews who split off from Congregation B'nai Jeshurun. The community was originally based on the Lower East Side and their first purpose-built synagogue was on Norfolk Street (now the Angel Orensanz Center). As the city expanded northward, the community moved in that direction as well. After calling a number of buildings home the congregation, now consisting of traditional German Jews and recent immigrants, settled in a new building in fashionable Harlem on 114th Street. The grand synagogue was fashioned as neo-Classical temple with a large portico and massive columns. Designed by Edward I. Shire, the cornerstone dates the building with dual dates, 1908 and 5668, on the Hebrew calendar. The building served the community well, but by the 1920s a larger space as needed. A new synagogue was constructed on the corner of 100th Street and West End Avenue. The community moved to that space in 1928. The building at 114th Street became the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal (Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Milagrosa), which served the Hispanic community in Harlem. Since 1980, it has housed the Mount Neboh Baptist Church.

Cathedral of St. John The Divine. Heins & LaFarge won the design competition for their Byzantine/Romanesque/Gothic cathedral conception. One of its most prominent features is the Guastavino tiled dome, constructed as a temporary roof during fundraising for the massive central crossing tower, which was never completed. The cathedral famously suffered many setbacks, including waning public interest to provide funds, significant design alterations, the replacement of Heins & LaFarge with Ralph Adams Cram, and building hiatuses during two world wars. Despite its uneven developmental history, the cathedral remains a fascinating juxtaposition of styles and construction technologies. Its subsidiary structures were built around the Close in Gothic variations. In spite of being an international icon, the complex remains unprotected by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. In 2007, the cathedral leased the Close’s southeast parcel for the construction of a residential high-rise, and there is currently a proposal to build two residential high-rises next to the Cathedral’s north wall. The Greek Revival Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum, restored in 2006 and currently the home of the cathedral’s tapestry conservation studio, is Morningside Heights’ oldest extant structure.

Harlem churches have been an important part of the historical shaping of the neighborhood. For decades, they have been centers for community bonding and healing. Many of these churches have been involved with social movements like the fight for civil rights and the abolition of slavery. Many historic Harlem churches have lost some of their popularity as time has passed, but they still hold spiritual importance in their neighborhoods. As property values rise in an ever-gentrifying city, a few churches have been struggling to stay open as tithes and parishioners have dwindled. However, the members remain hopeful. On this walk, interact with structures of beauty and importance in the Harlem community.

Graham Court Apartments 1923–1937 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard Designed by Clinton & Russell, 1899–1901 This complex was built by major Harlem landowner William Waldorf Astor as a luxury apartment house. Designed in the Italian Renaissance style, the complex features a grand gated-entryway leading to a large, landscaped interior court which provides an abundance of light and air as well as passive recreation space for the residents. Several years after this building was completed the architects designed a similarly luxurious sister building, the Apthorp Apartments, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Graham Court was designated a New York City landmark in 1984.

Graham Court Apartments, 1905. Graham Court is large luxury apartment building that was financed by William Waldorf Astor and designed by the firm of Clinton & Russell in 1901. Constructed during a period of massive residential development in Harlem, the Italian Renaissance structure is quadrangle with the four sides surrounding a grand central courtyard. The apartments were marketed for middle and upper class residents. These tenants were entirely white until Graham Court was integrated in the late 1920s (one of the last major apartment buildings in Harlem to do so). It became a fashionable address for Harlem's black residents in the 1930s and 1940s. The building was designated a landmark in 1984 and has undergone renovations in the last few decades to restore some of the grandeur lost in the financially chaotic decades between 1960 and and 1990.

The upper portion of Central Park is perhaps the less visited section of New York's man-made oasis but includes some lovely areas. Take a look at some of the lesser-known spots in the park.

Cathedral of St. John the Devine, ca. 1913. The massive Cathedral of St. John, the principal church of the Episcopal diocese of New York, is the largest church in the United States and one of the largest in the world. Designed by the Heins & LaFarge firm in 1891, the Cathedral's construction began its long journey in 1892 when the first stone was laid. The design was transferred to the firm of Cram and Ferguson in 1911, when the crossing and eastern end of church was completed. The resulting change in architects caused the Cathedral's Nave to have a French Gothic influence while the sanctuary and choir taking a Romanesque Style. The initial length of the cathedral was completed in 1941 (in part due to a colossal fundraising campaign amongst New Yorkers) and the cathedral was opened, marking a pause its construction that would last until 1979. The Very Reverend James Parks then spurred another round of construction and renovation, employing masons to continue the work. However, the great Cathedral remains unfinished, the last additions having been made in 2007, as its stone on stone construction is both expensive and painstaking. Even in its unfinished state, it remains one of the most important Anglican churches in the world.

The Wadleigh High School for Girls 215-25 W. 114th Street, Harlem 1902 Hailed as “a triumph of architectural skill,” The Wadleigh High School for Girls was among the first public high schools built in New York City and the first high school for girls. Designed in the Colligate Gothic style by school architect C.B.J. Snyder, the impressive red brick and buff limestone structure boasts a 125-foot tower. Constructed at a total cost of $900,000 inclusive of furnishings and equipment, The Wadleigh’s 3,000 student capacity had 80 classrooms, 3 gymnasia and a 1,500-seat auditorium and was the first school building to have electric elevators. In February 1903, the New York Times described The Wadleigh as “the finest high school building in the world.” Notable alumnae include actresses Jean Stapleton and Isabel Sanford.

In this view from 1911 we see the rugged topography of the site which is just one block wide but 13 blocks long. The Olmsted and Vaux design highlights the natural setting by creating two linear path systems, one broad and meandering and the other cutting through the Manhattan schist and hugging a massive buttressed retaining wall along the park’s western edge.

Cathedral of St. John the Divine ca. 1904 In competition among most of the leading architects of the day, the magnificent Romanesque Revival scheme of Heins and La Farge was selected for construction of an American cathedral. Only the choir and apse and a rough masonry shell at the crossing were completed when Ralph Adams Cram gained control of the design for the rest of the building, which then was carried out in French Gothic Style.

This photo shows tunneling under Central Park for the Lenox Line. Unlike cut and cover, these tunnels are deep underground and cannot be built by digging through the street. Drillers made holes for dynamite that helped explode the rock, and then excavators removed the spoil and cleared the way for the shield, a device that kept workers safe as they dug. The shield is a temporary support that acts to protect the workers from falling debris as they chip away at rocks ahead of the shield and put in place permanent support walls behind it. Sandhogs used pickaxes, shovels, air powered drills, and sometimes dynamite, to break through the rock.

The park was designated a Scenic Landmark of New York City in 2008. Today there are only ten other designated Scenic landmarks in the city. This photo shows the Washington and Lafayette monument in the small triangle formed at the intersection of Morningside Avenue and Manhattan Avenue on the eastern edge of the park at 114th Street. The triangle is included in the Scenic Landmark designation. The statue was added to the triangle just a few years after the park’s completion and is by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty. In the right hand corner of this photo in the far distance we can make out the park overlook at 116th Street on the western edge of the park. As we said, it’s a narrow park!

135 West 115th Street. Remodeled apartments, 1941.

My Archive Spring 2019 "Back when my Brooklyn-born grandmother would revisit the city once a year in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, she’d berate for not being more interested in my city. She’d march me out to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine because as she’d say, it’s not every day that you witness the construction of a cathedral. I was there in a stroller, playing at the newly installed Peace Fountain sculpted by Greg Wyatt. The park was a great place to play in the 1980s and I’m very lucky for my grandmother for marching me out nearly every day to watch sculptor Simon Verity and his assistants first chalk out and then sculpt the jamb figures at the Portal of Paradise. There are a lot of photos of me looking very bored, but we stood there for long periods each day watching, during which time the sculptor spoke to us, and my grandmother inquired if there was a training program I could join. He politely explained that it was nice that I was local but I was too young to be part of the cathedral works (my first in a long line of rejections). I was fortunate to see his amazing Yorkminster west portal figures while living in the UK and his work at NYC’s Hanover Square. I remember we posed my dad under the New York Apocalypse featuring the World Trade Center carving because he was handling maintenance plans for one of the buildings depicted in that carving nearby the World Trade Center. Coincidentally, the photograph is dated September 11, 1991 only because the outing correlated to a family birthday. We had no idea at the time that that would be the exact date featured at the start of The Big Lebowski (1998)." —James Russiello

Elevated railroad at 110th Street and 8th Avenue, ca. 1895.