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.

King's Crown Hotel, ca. 1905. Built in 1909 to the plans of the firm of Naville & Bagge, the Beaux-Arts structure was original the Hotel Westminster, and later the King's Crown Hotel, where some residents lived long term. In the 1930s the hotel was home to both physicists Leó Szilárd and Enrico Fermi. They met accidentally in the lobby of their building in 1939 and that encounter would go on to produce what one science writer described as "one of the more colorful - and contentious - partnerships in the history of science." The partnership played a major role in the Manhattan Project and the eventual creation of the atomic bomb. The building was purchased by Columbia University in the early 1980s and is now a residence for law school students.

St. Luke's Hospital, 1904. In 1896, St. Luke's Hospital (founded in 1858 on Fifth Avenue at 54th Street) moved uptown. Ernest Flagg designed the grand hospital at the start of his career. The French Renaissance style complex was to have nine five-story, mansard-roofed pavilions connected to a central building topped by an impressive dome. Construction began in 1896 and continued for more than two decades. Only seven of the nine planned pavilions were built, and four remain today. The dome was removed in the 1960s and over time architectural details have been lost, while the complex has been crowded in by the modern Stuyvesant Pavilion on its west side. In the early 1990s, the deteriorating marble cornice was removed and replaced with a concrete/fiberglass replica. The four remaining pavilions were either empty or administrative and doctors’ offices before the buildings were sold in 2016. They are currently undergoing construction as part of a luxury residential conversion with the preservation of both the exterior and some historical elements of the interior structure included. The work is planned to be completed by the end of 2019.

Eglise De Notre Dame ARCHITECT: Daus & Otto DATE: 1909-10 STYLE: French This church on the corner of Morningside Heights and 114th Street expresses a square building, Greek Cross in plan, by the shallow eastern portico and the semicircular apse. The principal facade on the east is dominated by a handsome pedimented portico, carried on four fluted Corinthian columns. The pediment and cornice are strengthened by well-detailed modillions. The order and regularity of this style are seen in the repetition of the principal portico motif in shallow projection on the south side. Here four pilasters take the place of the columns of the east front while their height and the pediment above them are similar and reinforce the quality of symmetry. Another feature reminiscent of French antecedents is the band of swagged garlands which follows the entablature for the entire perimeter of the building, similar to that on the Church of the Madeleine in Paris and so typical of Nineteenth-Century classicism.

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

This view looking west into the park from 120th Street and Morningside Avenue shows the Morningside Drive overlook at the top of the steep east-west rise. Preserving views across the park and from the park towards Harlem and Long Island was a key concept of the Olmsted and Vaux design for Morningside Park.

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.

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!).

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.

Carl Schurz Memorial, 1913. The Carl Schurz Memorial was designed by Austrian-born American sculptor Karl Bitter in conjunction with renowned architect Henry Bacon. Carl Schurz was a Union general in the Civil War, Secretary of the Interior, a U.S. Senator (as well as a lawyer and journalist) who immigrated from Germany after the revolutions of 1848-49. After settling in America, he established a reputation as a skilled orator and anti-imperialist. Following his military and political careers, Schurz lived in New York City from 1881 until his death in 1906. While this statue is situated on the west side just outside Morningside Park, he is also honored on the east side. Carl Schurz Park in Yorkville is the location of Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the New York City mayor.

Morningside Park ARCHITECT: Frederick Law Olmsted; Calvert Vaux DATE: 1873-95 STYLE: Park Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, renowned landscape designers at the time, also designed included Central Park, Prospect Park, and Riverside Park and Drive. They transformed the long, narrow, and unusual site into a picturesque park by respecting and enhancing its inherent beauties and possibilities, including the views both eastward and westward. The most important features of Morningside Park include the massive buttressed masonry retaining wall with parapet, overlook bays, and entrance stairways, natural rock outcroppings, carefully worked-out “designed” rockwork and plantings, curvilinear walk system, and small open meadows along the southern and eastern sides

Morningside Park (undated postcard).

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.

Within twenty years of the park’s completion this grand overlook at West 116th Street and Morningside Drive was completely redesigned to incorporate the Carl Schurz Memorial. While an impressive work in its own right, the monument completed negates the Olmsted and Vaux design intent for this space. The monument faces inward and robs visitors of much of the grand view out over the city and towards Long Island. We’ve watched untold numbers of visitors to this spot immediately proceed to the edge of the monument and peer over trying to recapture that view. The monument also served as a backdrop for this famous photo of The Who from 1968.

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.

My Archive Spring 2019 "September 1989: Playing at the Peace Fountain sculpted by Greg Wyatt, and installed in 1985. The park was a great place to play in the 1980s and I’m very lucky that my grandmother marched me out nearly every day of her visits to watch ongoing construction at the cathedral, including getting to speak with sculptor Simon Verity and his assistants who were working at the Portal of Paradise at the west facade. This photo was taken during one of my Brooklyn-born grandmother’s visits during which she’d encourage me to be more interested in my city. She would have me stand and watch the construction of 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. Someone living in our building was from an area near Barcelona and had brought me a 1992 Summer Olympics T-shirt, which is what I’m wearing. Barcelona had been selected as the host city on October 17, 1986." —James Russiello

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!

405 West 114th Street Daus & Otto, 1910; Cross & Cross, 1914 New York City Individual Landmark State and National Registers of Historic Places This French Neo-Classical church was donated by Geraldine Redmond after her son was cured at the famous pilgrimage site and sanctuary at Notre Dame de Lourdes in France. Its interior grotto recalls the grotto of its namesake.

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

Casa Italiana ARCHITECT: McKim, Mead & White; William M. Kendall DATE: 1926-27 STYLE: Neo-Italian Renaissance Casa ltaliana, a neo-Italian Renaissance style institutional building, was designed as a center for Italian studies by the prestigious architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White. Built in 1926-27, it is located on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University at Amsterdam Avenue and 117th Street. Casa ItaIiana had its beginnings in 1914 when a group of students of Italian descent organized an ItaIian club at Columbia College in an effort to promulgate knowledge of modern Italy. In 1920 a group of 25 students formalized themselves into the Circolo Italiano.

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