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."

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

A fundamental role of the cemetery is to ensure a peaceful, final resting place for loved ones. They are also extraordinary living records of our society. Historic cemeteries tell us about design, ideas about mortality and death, and the historical social and political hierarchies of a locality. Especially important is the rural cemetery. Distinct from church graveyards, this is a 19th-century culmination of a movement that began in 18th-century Europe. The rural cemetery drew heavily on early garden aesthetics, embracing classical ideals of a pastoral utopia as embodied in the Greek region of Arcadia. In fact, nascent cemeteries evolved from garden memorials and burials, leading to a revolution in the way Western culture tended to its dead, and forever impacting its landscapes.

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.