Sydenham Hospital, 1925. Sydenham opened as a private hospital in a Harlem brownstone in 1892. The hospital served mostly African-American patients who lived in the neighborhood. To meet the needs of its growing community, Sydenham moved to West 125th Street and Lenox Avenue in 1924. Though Harlem was a largely African-American neighborhood, the staff of the hospital was reported to be all-white in 1944; likely due to the fact that discrimination within the medical community left little to no opportunities for African American healthcare professionals. To amend this, the hospital employed a desegregation policy, which was radical at the time. Sydenham hired twenty African Americans to its staff and brought six African Americans onto its Board, making it the first full-service hospital to hire black physicians. By 1947, the New York Times wrote that it was "praised...for its inter-racial activities...an example for the entire world," by Eleanor Roosevelt, who spoke at a fundraiser on behalf of the hospital. After the fundraiser, the director Dr. Sigmund L. Friedman made the statement that Sydenham was "the best place to prove that race, creed, and color have no importance in the hospital." The fundraiser that Mrs. Roosevelt spoke at was just one of many attempts to keep the hospital fiscally afloat. Throughout its existence, Sydenham was ridden with money problems. Finally bending to financial strain in 1949, the hospital was transferred from private ownership to New York City's municipal hospital system, though it allowed private patients to continue seeing doctors at Sydenham to "preserve the interracial practice of the hospital." In 1979, Sydenham Hospital became the center of a massive walk-out staged by the Committee for Interns and Residents. When Ed Koch took office as the Mayor in 1977, he reduced city spending on all municipal hospitals. Two hospitals in Harlem, Sydenham and Metropolitan, were slated for closure. Harlem was a "medically underserved area," and the two public hospitals were vital for the community's wellbeing. Additionally, Sydenham's sickle cell anemia clinic, led by Florence Gaynor, was of importance to the medical community at large. Unfortunately, countless public rallies and demonstrations were ignored by the city and in 1980, the city officially closed Sydenham. The hospital was subsequently occupied by "The People's Administration," for 10-days of protest, who brought national attention to the importance of the hospital. Sydenham's demise provided a cautionary lesson. In 1998, reflecting on the changing terrain of public healthcare in New York City, Sharon Lerner wrote in the Village Voice: "The Sydenham blunder paved the way for today’s more clandestine approach to hospital downsizing, in which the city reduces its contribution to the Health and Hospitals Corporation and the agency is thereby ”forced” to make cuts to the public hospitals."

The Park Avenue Baptist church relocated to Riverside Drive and Claremont Avenue between west 120th and 122nd streets, one of the highest points in New York, overlooking the Hudson River, became the Riverside Church. This, "the City's greatest skyscraper church" was funded by John D. Rockefeller Jr. and designed by Henry C. Pelton in 1929. The church consists of a 60x 100 ft low vaulted auditorium designed for the best acoustics and visibility for 2,400 worshippers, with a bowling alley, basketball court, theatre, assembly rooms and a kitchen beneath it, and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial tower based on the façade of Chartes Cathedral. An astonishing 375-ft, it has 21 floors of offices and the largest carillon in the world. Its skyscraper form derived from the competition with commercial and residential towers in the urban fabric due to the rising cost of land as well as the expanded programmatic needs of the church with meeting rooms, classrooms, and social welfare facilities. "the ecclesiastical monument that best symbolizes an era in which modern commercial and social values continue to find their expression in largely traditional forms."

Low Memorial Library Interior STATUS Designated Interior Landmark 116th St & Broadway ARCHITECT: McKim, Mead & White; Charles F. McKim DATE: 1894-97 STYLE: Neo-Classical The design of the Low Library Interior is characterized by a restrained but striking combination of classical ornament and richly colored materials. It is an excellent expression of the classical spirit that so strongly influenced American architecture at the turn of the 20th century. Low Library is an excellent expression of the neo-Classical style. The monumental domed building is the focal point of the campus. Its imposing interior, dominated by a vast central hall with rich, classically-inspired ornament, ranks as one of the finest monumental spaces in New York City

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.

View of Broadway, toward the 116th Street Station, June 14, 1911.

Saint Paul’s Chapel ARCHITECT: Howells & Stokes DATE: 1904-07 STYLE: Byzantine, Italian Renaissance St. Paul’s Chapel attains an altogether pleasing dignity from its beautiful proportions and handsome architectural details. This brick building with limestone trim is highlighted with terra cotta ornament and ornamental bronze carefully integrated into a harmonious ecclesiastical design. Because of its Greek cross plan, surmounted by a high drummed dome over the crossing and its four columned portico (porch) with a Florentine gable, this Byzantine Chapel displaying much Italian Renaissance detail makes an attractive contribution to American architecture.

Union Theological Seminary ARCHITECT: Allen & Collins DATE: 1908-10 STYLE: English Perpendicular Gothic Rising high above the lower buildings adjacent to them, in the quadrangle of the Union Theological Seminary, the Brown Memorial Tower in the southeast corner, and the James Tower set in the middle of the Claremont Avenue side are among the finest examples of the English Perpendicular Gothic style of architecture in New York. There is a sophisticated restraint revealed in their design coupled with delicate precision in the execution of the details that seem to impart a special quality to the masonry. These striking towers are expressions in masonry of the intent of the designer and manifest the art and skill of the master stone carvers who produced them.

West 122nd Street and Riverside Drive John Duncan, 1890–97 New York City Individual and Interior Landmark State and National Registers of Historic Places This Classical Revival mausoleum, the largest in the United States, is the resting place of President Ulysses S. Grant and his wife, Julia Dent Grant. Its design is based on the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Once one of the most popular tourist destinations in the city, it is run by the National Park Service.

We are looking east along West 123rd Street in this view from Amsterdam Avenue. This is the northern boundary of the park. We see the Block House No. 4, a remnant fortification built but never used to defend the city in the war of 1812. PS 36 now sits on this same outcropping. One of the other block houses built at this time still survives in the north woods of Central Park.

Block House #4, ca. 1905. Block House #4 sat on the massive glacial rock outcropping at 123rd Street and Amsterdam Avenue. It was one of a series of stone defense fortifications constructed around the War of 1812. Despite the preparation for the perceived threat of British invasion, the British never made it to Manhattan during the war. The ruins of Block House #4 remained on the outcropping until the 1960s when Public School 36 was constructed on the site. The sections of the school where built directly on the large rock, which can still be seen on the 123rd Street side. A single block house survives in the northern section of Central Park; it is also situated on a large rock outcropping.

Construction on the IRT Broadway—Seventh Avenue Line, near West 122nd Street; May 22, 1901. IRT trains emerge north of West 122nd Street, as the open cut tracks quickly ramp up to the Manhattan Valley Viaduct. In this photo, trench work is structured to avoid interference with active streetcar traffic operated by the Third Avenue Railway System.

Claremont Inn ca. 1896 The Claremont was a charming country inn at Riverside Drive and 124th Street. Built around the turn of the nineteenth century, it was the private residence of Michael Hogan, friend to Prince William and Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother. From 1860 until it closed in 1948, it was a popular destination for New Yorkers seeking a close-by retreat from the bustle of the city. Diners could enjoy rare seafood, such as roe from shad caught in the Claremont's own nets in the Hudson River opposite the inn or dance under the stars on this outdoor garden terrace.

Bancroft Hall Designed and built in 1910 by esteemed architect Emery Roth, Bancroft Hall differed from the general Beaux Arts flavored Morningside Heights. The Vienna Secessionist style building features copper-clad bay windows and a timber Tuscan-style roof. Though designed for apartments, it was purchased to serve as a dormitory by the Teachers College/

This rare early view of the north end of the park looks east-northeast from Amsterdam Avenue near West 122nd Street. We see what we now know as Morningside Drive (it was earlier called both Morningside Avenue and Morningside Avenue West) curving off to the right. We see how the park connected to Amsterdam Avenue. This connection was lost when a public school (PS36) was built in this section of the park in the mid 1960’s.

Charles McKim, 1895–97: New York City Individual and Interior Landmark, State and National Registers of Historic Places Charles McKim designed the campus in the Beaux-Arts style popularized at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Its focal point is Low Library, designed in the Roman Classical style, with Italian Renaissance–inspired classroom buildings flanking it in the forecourt and rear. Fashioned after the Baths of Caracalla and the Pantheon, the library’s granite dome is the country’s largest. The university outgrew Low Library in the 1920s, and a new library named for then president Nicholas Murray Butler was built on the campus’ southern end.

Grant's Tomb ca. 1898 This impressive Classical Revival monument at Riverside Drive and West 122nd Street replaced a modest temporary tomb at Riverside Park. Architect John H. Duncan's competition-winning design was influenced by Mausoleus's Tomb at Halicarnassus in Turkey. Construction began six years after Grant's death in 1885, and the tomb was dedicated on April 27, 1897. In 1902 Julia Dent Grant was laid beside her husband, where they continue to rest side by side in twin black sarcophagi.

Another view of the Block House No. 4 and the exposed manhattan schist face where West 123rd Street was cut through at the northern termination of the park. As we’ve seen in this story, the geology and resulting dramatic topography of a ridge of Manhattan Schist is a defining feature of Morningside Park. In fact, it’s only due to the daunting nature of this rock that Andrew Haswell Green decided to not extend the east-west street grid through this part of Manhattan and instead called for a park to be designed and constructed on this land.

"Riverside Drive, east side, south from and including West 122nd Street, showing the Riverside Church (Baptist). This view was taken from the esplanade of the Tomb of General U.S. Grant, 1936." Riverside Church is a huge Neo-Gothic structure that was opened in 1930. The church was the idea of industrialist and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. and pastor Harry Emerson Fosdick. They envisioned a interdenominational church, that would be open to all Christians in an historic part of the city. The church has a rich history of activism, advocacy and social service ministries. It has also hosted many prominent speakers including Martin Luther King Jr. and many other religious and political leaders.

Janus Court, 1913. Built by private developers in 1910, Janus Court would only function as a private residence for less than a decade. In 1919, Teachers College at Columbia University purchased the building to meet the demand for student housing. It was renamed Seth Low Hall, and is the only Columbia building named for the once university president (the well-known Low Law Library is named for Seth's father, Abiel Abbot Low.

General Ulysses S. Grant Tomb ARCHITECT: John H. Duncan DATE: 1891-97 STYLE: Monument The General Grant National Memorial, the work of architect John H. Duncan, is one of the most impressive monuments in the City. Located on a spectacular site overlooking the Hudson River and Riverside Park, it houses the earthly remains of Ulysses S. Grant, Civil War hero and eighteenth President of the United States, and Julia Dent Grant, his wife, in sarcophagi located side by side. The General Grant National Memorial Interior is dominated by a center crypt with twin sarcophagi holding the bodies of General Grant and his wife. It reflects the classic monumentality of the exterior of the building, and it is one of the most impressive monuments in New York City. The Memorial is a testimony to the devotion Grant inspired among the American people in the late 19th century, and it is a fitting monument to Grant as a Civil War hero and American president.

The Great God Pan, ca. 1907. Originally located (as seen here) at the center of a fountain on the north side of the Columbia campus, the bronze sculpture was actually intended for a very different location. Commission by the Clark family in the 1890s for a location at their Dakota apartment building, the resulting statue was deemed too risque for the apartment house. For a time it was considered for a spot in Central Park, but finally Edward Severin Clark donated the piece to Columbia for its uptown campus. It was installed in 1907 as a working fountain in a grotto on the northeast corner of campus. It was moved, at an unknown point in the 20th century to its current location outside of Lewisohn Hall. Pan, (deemed to risque for the Dakota) by the American artist George Grey Barnard, is depicted in his usual form as half-man (nude), half-goat, playing his traditional pipes. Cast from bronze by the Henry-Bonnard Bronze Co., a local foundry, it was one of Branard's first commissions. His later medieval architectural fragments and sculptures would go to become the foundation for the The Cloisters Museum & Gardens at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Low Memorial Library, c. 1975. President Seth Low founded the Low Memorial Library in honor of his father, Abiel Abbot Low. It was designed in the Neoclassical style by Charles Follen McKim of the renowned architecture firm McKim, Mead, and White, who designed the Beaux-Arts plan that governs Columbia University's campus. The Low Memorial Library was constructed from 1895 until 1897 as the first major building on the new campus. It was meant to be both the visual and the academic focus of the grounds. The building, a Greek cross in plan, was modeled after the Pantheon, with windows inspired by the Baths of Diocletian, and various Classical influences on the outside, including busts of Apollo, Zeus, and Athena. The great hall of the building, octagonal in plan, was designed as the main reading room. The reading room took influence from the Reading Room at the British Museum, which was circular in plan and also covered by a domed ceiling. A circular arrangement of tiered desks surrounded a central reception desk, both of which occupy the space under the rounded ceiling. The ceiling is painted dark blue and adorned with a suspended white sphere meant to represent the moon and night sky. The reading room held 12,000 of the library's books, and at maximum capacity, the library was to hold 1,900,000 volumes in total. Since 1934, the reading room has been repurposed for more ceremonious occasions such as exhibitions, convocations, and as a reception area. The iconic facade of the building is used as the backdrop for Columbia's graduation ceremonies. During the protests at Columbia in 1968, the library, which also housed the president's office, was occupied by a group of students. The students were protesting the university's involvement in the Vietnam War and, among other things, a segregated gymnasium proposed near campus. Of the drama that ensued, one account by a former student describes food being hurled at the building to feed the occupants. Peculiarly, the 1897 Real Estate Record and Guide wrote that the Library's design was a direct copy of a French Church designed by an architect called Rumpf. There is no record of such a building, though the Guide wrote of the building, "Successful architects have too much to do to be pre-eminently artists -- they much be first-rate men of business." The library is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

ST. JOSEPH’S CHURCH, MANHATTAN Address: 401-403 West 125th Street Architect: Constructed: 1860 Church of St. Joseph of the Holy Family is the oldest church in Harlem and the oldest church north of 44th Street, completed in 1860. The modest Romanesque structure was originally built for German immigrants, and was expanded in 1889 by the Herter Brothers.

Riverside Church Interior Collaborating with Harvard University physics professor Wallace Clement Sabine, Guastavino Jr. pioneered the use of acoustical tile in large public spaces. The neo-Gothic Riverside Church exemplifies the successful application of a proprietary Guastavino Company product called Akoustolith. Resembling blocks of heavy stone, the Akoustolith tiles form vaults that combine with a steel frame to create a hybrid load-bearing system with excellent acoustical properties.

Cart passing near arch at the opening of Grant's Tomb, ca. 1900.

Teachers College, ca. 1915. Teachers College is Columbia University's graduate school of education, health, and psychology. It was founded in 1887 and is the nation's oldest and largest graduate school of education. The early history of Teachers College begins with the establishment of the Kitchen Education Association (KEA). Founded by Grace Hoadley Dodge, daughter of wealthy businessman William Dodge, the association worked with impoverished kindergarten-aged girls to provide miniature kitchen utensils in place of other toys. In 1884, the KEA shifted its scope and became the Industrial Education Association, focusing more broadly on vocational type education for all children and their parents. Columbia University began its relationship with the IEA in 1887, when Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler (CU Ph.D., 1884) was encouraged by the university's president, Frederick A. Barnard, to become president of the IEA. To the IEA, Butler brought the "latest theories in pedagogical science…designed to equip students thoroughly for the profession of teaching." The association was renamed "The New York School for the Training of Teachers" and focused on preparing teachers for the education of those left in need by society or circumstance. In 1892, the school's name was changed to Teachers College. It became Columbia University's Graduate School of Education in 1898.

In the spring semester of 1968, over 1,000 protesters occupied five of the campuses' buildings, leading to one of the largest mass arrests in New York. The story of the Columbia Protests offers a glimpse of the country's political climate during that fateful year. A former protestor recalled that students felt "two strands of anger and disgust converge: what the university was doing to aid the war effort, and what the university was doing that was racist to our neighborhood."

My Archive Spring 2019 "My great uncle Louis Campbell was a professional photographer from western PA. At some point, he moved to NJ. This was a picture he took of Grant's Tomb, but not sure of the year. He was 20 years older than his wife, my Aunt Helen, who I only have vague (but cherished) memories of." —David Goldberg

“During the \[famous 1968] occupation, faculty presence at the occupied buildings was assured. How did it all work? Why did individual faculty congregate in Philosophy Hall, sign up for tours of duty in front of occupied buildings to prevent a police cleanup of the occupied buildings, and regularly show up? The faculty understood its students because it identified with them and their humanistic and political values, as the students identified with the populations they undertook to serve and — to the extent possible — represented, as well as the unknown victims of their government’s Vietnam aggression. That potential for identification, which is prior to ideology, has disintegrated....“ Excerpted from a series presented by The Gotham Center for New York City History on the fiftieth anniversary of the protests in 1968.

Dedication of Grant's Tomb, 1897. President Grant and his wife Julia are buried in this memorial and mausoleum. (It is the largest mausoleum in the United States.) The structure was in part funded by donations from more than 90,000 people worldwide. They raised more than $600,000. Designed by John Duncan, who was awarded the commission after a series of design competitions, the massive granite and marble structure was completed in 1897 after more than six years of slow construction. The dedication ceremony, which accounts say included a million attendees, was held on April 27, 1897, on what would have been Grant's 75th birthday.

Riverside Drive, north from West 119th Street, showing bicyclers near General U.S. Grants Tomb, ca. 1900. This photograph, as per its descriptive notes, was published in a Parks Department pamphlet celebrating the opening of a section of the West Side Improvement Project, a Robert Moses project that expanded Riverside Park, created the Henry Hudson Park, and improved railroad infrastructure along the West Side. The original photograph was likely taken around 1900 and shows cyclists on the path near Grant's Tomb. The 1890s are often referred to as a "bicycle craze" period, when the cost of bicycles was dropping and it was becoming a major form of recreation.

Riverside Church, date unknown. The church building is the tallest church building in the United States and was designed by the firm of Allen, Pelton and Collens. The architects were commissioned by the church's funder John D. Rockefeller Jr. to travel in Europe for design inspiration and it is said that the large single bell tower (392 feet tall) is inspired by the towers of a cathedral in Laon, France. The tower and its basement floors not only housed the church's bells, but also provided space for offices, social rooms, classrooms, a bowling alley, and a theatre.

On September 29th, 1899, a two-day land and sea parade welcomed Rear Admiral George Dewey (1837-1917) home. Dewey had become the nation’s great naval hero, the first and only admiral to be titled “Admiral of the Navy”, after his 1898 victory at the Battle of Manila Bay, in the Philippines, during the Spanish–American War. Take a virtual walk into the Manhattan of 1899, and see the celebrations with the photographs of amateur photographer Thomas W. Kennedy (active ca. 1890-1915.) The Spanish–American War ended with the 1898 Treaty of Paris, and the US took possession of several former Spanish colonies including Puerto Rico, the island of Guam, and the Philippine Islands. The US occupation of the Philippines would lead to the brutal Phillipine-American War.

Riverside Church, detail, date unknown. The buttresses on this church (the architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall) are not structural as is most common. They are purely decorative, being too shallow to provide support and unneeded as the church is entirely supported by an underlying steel frame.

527 Riverside Drive, ca. 1915. This lavish apartment house called The Ardelle no longer stands. Built in 1909 or 1910 by architects Radcliffe and Kelly, the advertisement for the building notes its proximity to the subway, surface transportation, and nearby educational institutions. It also notes the presence of "plenty of closets" suggesting that concerns about closet space are not only a contemporary problem for New Yorkers.

St. Paul's Chapel, Columbia University Interior ca. 1917 This chapel on the campus of Columbia University illustrates the full potential of Guastavino vaulting as both a structural and a decorative system. The chapel is capped by a double dome, consisting of two thin tile layers separated by an air space. The most dramatic architectural elements of the building, however, are the spiral staircases whose three-dimensional curvatures convey the remarkable flexibility of the Guastavino system.

Low Memorial Library, Columbia University, ca. 1975. Seth Low, the president of Columbia College, which in the 1890s was located at Madison Avenue at 50th Street, established a great urban university that would eventually be called Columbia University in the City of New York. He built a new campus for this university in the open spaces of 114th to 120th Streets between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. The first building erected on this new campus was the library and President Low was its benefactor. The University moved to its new campus in 1897

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.

Manhattan School of Music, 120 Claremont Avenue, ca. 1993. The Manhattan School of Music was founded in 1918 by Janet Daniels Schenck, a young musician and graduate of the New York School of Social Work. Schenck got her start teaching music at the Union Settlement on East 104th Street. Due to financial hardships caused by the events of World War I, music classes were cut from the school budget in 1917. That same year, Schecnk established an independent board to keep her music school going. In 1920, Schenck's school received its first charter and was incorporated as the Neighborhood Music School in the State of New York. The school settled into its first real home at 238 East 105th Street in 1921, when its Board of Trustees purchased the Jewish Guild for the Blind building. The Neighborhood Music School was renamed Manhattan School of Music in 1938 and has since relocated to its current site on Claremont Avenue in Morningside Heights. The building had previously been occupied by the Institute of Musical Art, which later became the Juilliard. The property was originally owned by Bloomingdale Insane Asylum, a private hospital for the city's mentally ill.

The Jewish Theological Seminary building is made up of three interconnected wings in the Colonial Revival style. The building’s most pronounced feature is its tall entry tower, which features a Lee Lawrie–sculpted representation of the burning bush above its grand arched entryway.

"At Riverside Church in Harlem on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a blistering and sophisticated critique of U. S. intervention in Vietnam. His 'Beyond Vietnam' speech was prescient in ways that continue to haunt our society into the present day... King left the pulpit at Riverside to a standing ovation, but the reaction outside those church walls the next day was swift and scathing. Nearly 170 white and black newspapers across the country denounced him and the speech." For more on King's in/famous speech, check out this article by Kristopher Burrell in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.

West End Theatre, ca. 1915. Designed by the firm of Neville & Bragge in a Spanish Baroque style, the West End Theatre opened in 1902. The following year it was sold to a duo of comedians and theatre producers named Webber and Fields. Between 1975 and 2016 the building was occupied by the La Gree Baptist Church. After being sold in 2016, plan have been announced to convert the building into a mixed use, residential and commercial building.