498 West 130th Street, ca. 1932.

125th Street and Twelfth Avenue, under the Riverside Drive Viaduct, November 10, 1937.

407 West 130th Street, unknown date.

Freshwater spring at the Tiemann & Company Paint & Dye Works, 1897. In the early decades of the 19th century Manhattanville, in West Harlem, was a sleepy area of farms and a few out-of-the-city mansions. In 1832 a freshwater spring was discovered near Broadway and 125th Street (then called Manhattan Street). With plentiful water for production operations businessman, Anthony Tiemann, moved his Tiemann & Company Paint & Dye Works uptown, settling on a large plot at 560 Riverside Drive. The company, founded in 1804, was one of the earliest color works in America. This move began the slow but steady industrialization of Manhattanville. Tiemann retired a few years after the move uptown and his son Daniel F. (who was later Mayor of New York 1858-1860) took over control of the business. About 50 German men and their families had moved to Manhattanville to work in the factory when it was established here. Within the first decade, the factory grew to cover 40 lots with more than 120 workers. These Germans helped to create a prominent German community uptown. Following a number of fires in the 19th century (dye making materials + a spark= bad news), the factory was sold in 1902. The young boy in the photo is playfully shooting water out of Tiemann's spring situated on the factory property.

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.

The Riverside Drive Viaduct was built in 1901. The 50-foot tall elevated roadway is an extension of Riverside Drive. The Drive splits into two paths at the terminus of Riverside Park which converge at the entrance to the Viaduct. Aside from a masonry approach on both the north and south entrance, the structure is entirely steel. At the time of its construction, the girders over 125th street were the largest ever built. F. Stuart Williamson was the chief engineer of the project, which was regarded as a civic monument. The Scientific American referred to Riverside Drive as "a continuous drive of ten miles along the picturesque banks of the Hudson and Harlem Rivers."

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.

Construction on the Manhattan Valley Viaduct of the IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue Line, at the future site of the line's 125th Street station; July 10, 1903. Today, 125th Street is the southernmost of four above-ground stations in Manhattan. The viaduct was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

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.

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.

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.

656 West 125th Street, c. 1941 This white-bricked triangular building opened as a Shell Gas Station in 1920. By 1978, the building was repurposed as a reincarnation of Harlem's Cotton Club which operated from 1923 to 1940. The original Cotton Club, located on Lenox Avenue and 142nd Street, was a segregated establishment where an all-white audience watched black dancers, comedians, and musicians. Acts reproduced entertainment that cast performers as exotic, savage, or "darkies" from the plantation south. Artists such as Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington enjoyed increased popularity after performing at the Cotton Club, though Langston Hughes criticized it as "authentic black entertainment to a wealthy, whites-only audience." The club closed in 1940. When the new club opened at this location, Billboard magazine wrote: "if after an evening at the Cotton Club anyone fed up with the elegance can walk to the subway and pass one of Manhattan's most blighted and desolate areas."

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.

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.

Jacob Schieffelin gave the land for St. Mary's Episcopal Church. The parish was formed to minister to the poor in 1823 by fashionable St. Michael's Church in Bloomingdale at the north end of the present-day Upper West Side, where Schieffelin served as a vestryman. By the 1830s, St. Mary's had the distinction of being the first "free" Episcopal church in the nation, charging no annual fee for pew rental. The rectory of St. Mary's Church at present-day 521 West 126th Street was built about 1840 by architect Robert Oughton. It survived a turn-of-the-century fire that destroyed the church. The church was quickly replaced-and enlarged-by the Schieffelin family (newly enriched through an alliance with the Vanderbilts). With a long history of serving the poor and the working class, it would survive in a changing Harlem where other churches failed.

St. Mary's Episcopal Church, 1931. The parish of St. Mary's dates to the early 19th century when Manhattanville was its own town. Organized in 1823, the first church building, a simple wood-frame chapel with a short steeple, was constructed in 1824-1826. It was once described, "St. Mary's was white and severely plain on the outside and square and bare within." In 1831 this parish became New York's first Episcopal church to abolish pew rentals, a practice of raising funds that often created a hierarchy among the community. The first structure survived until the turn of the century, but then succumbed to the oft destroyer of wood-frame buildings: fire. A new neo-Gothic church was constructed in 1908-1909 by Theodore E. Blake, in association with Carrère & Hastings. The simple church with herringbone brickwork trimmed with concrete, was a sort of departure for all architects involved. Blake worked more commonly on homes, especially later as a individual architect, while Carrère & Hastings (Blake was long Hastings' assistant) were usually involved in much more ornate structures.

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.

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.

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.