Apartment Houses of the Metropolis, a 1908 survey of New York’s residential buildings, describes “The Grand View” at St. Nicholas Avenue and 155th Street: “There are three apartments on a floor of eight rooms and two baths each. The parlors and libraries are finished in white enamel, dining rooms in oak, paneled and beamed ceilings. The latter two rooms have parquet floors, while all other rooms have hardwood polished flooring.” Other amenities include long-distance telephone, electric lighting and plumbing and other material of “the highest character.”

The west side of Eighth Avenue, as it was known until 1977, underneath the Ninth Avenue El (which ran above Eighth Avenue from 110-155th Streets), 1932. The El was discontinued in 1940, having been made redundant by new subway services in the Bronx and along the IND Eighth Avenue Line.

The plain style of the Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. School defies the dynamic community activism that facilitated its completion in an era of disinvestment in the city’s black and Latino neighborhoods. However, the school’s almost Brutalist style façades are typical of schools built during the postwar era, with its solid mass of red brick punctuated by narrow bands of windows on the upper stories. In the late 1960s, the city commissioned P.S. 153 to replace the aging and overcrowded P.S. 186, acquiring and clearing a tract of residential buildings. After the school was not included in the Board of Education’s austere annual budget in 1971, the locally-led National Economic Growth and Reconstruction Organization (NEGRO) staged a boycott, with staff and students relocating to temporary classrooms throughout the neighborhood until construction began on P.S. 153. Finally completed in 1975, the school was named after Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who, in 1941, was the first African-American elected to New York City Council before representing Harlem in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1945 to 1971. In 1994-95, the school constructed an addition on the site of its playground (which was relocated to the roof) to house kindergarten and first grade students.

In the 1920s, New York teams signed players who would appeal to a growing Jewish fan base, including second baseman Andy Cohen, signed by the Giants in 1926, and catcher Moe Berg, who played for the Brooklyn Robins (later Dodgers). Cohen achieved legendary status and had a Polo Grounds treat named for him: ice cream Cohens. Berg, known as “the brainiest guy in baseball,” later served as a spy for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II

Designed by architects Bannister & Shell and built in 1906, this church at 459 West 149th Street burned in 1963. Only a small portion of the parish house and an adjoining rectory survive.

As summer falls upon the city, New Yorkers have long-filled the public parks, pools, bike paths, tracks and stadiums to enjoy some friendly competition under the sun. These photos take you through some of the city's iconic outdoor sporting locales, from the public gymnastic rings that once drew crowds on the Hudson River, to the well-loved public pools that still scatter the city today.

West Harlem is graced with several rows of wood-frame houses, a rare sight in Manhattan, where fire codes in the 19th century halted their construction. Nos. 454-460 West 150th Street form a row of four attached wood-frame dwellings, with an asymmetrical roofline of peaked dormers and a central gable over 458-460. Now faced in green and white permastone, historic photographs indicate that these houses once boasted Queen Anne detailing and shingle façades. The group on West 150th Street originally extended to the corner of Convent Avenue and encompassed nos. 450-460, but the end structure was demolished in the early 2000s. They were designed by John Hemenway Duncan, whose notable work includes Grant’s Tomb in Manhattan and the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza.

Dunbar Apartments, March 6, 1928. The Dunbar Apartments — named for the African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar — are a six-building housing development built by John D. Rockefeller between 1926-1928, in response to a housing shortage in Harlem. The buildings, designed by architect Andrew J. Thomas, were the first large-scale garden apartment complex in Manhattan, and, according to the New York Times, “the first large cooperative project in the country built for occupancy by blacks.” However, the Great Depression caused many middle class residents to default on mortgages, leading Rockefeller to foreclose on the properties in 1936. The buildings were subsequently converted to rental units. In 1970, the Dunbar Apartments were designated a New York City Landmark.

Polo Grounds ca. 1896 Known as the "Gothams" until 1885, the team that became the New York Giants, played their first game on May 1, 1883, at the Polo Grounds at 110th Between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in Manhattan. They would close out the 1880s with pennant wins in 1888 and 1889. In the early 1890s, the team moved further uptown to the new Polo Grounds at 157th Street on the Harlem River, depicted here. The Polo Grounds was also home to the New York Cuban Giants, which became the first salaried professional black baseball team in 1885.

View of the Church of the Intercession from West 155th Street, near the burial site of John James Audubon. Audubon was originally interred close to the southwestern corner of the Trinity Cemetery. In 1892, his remains were exhumed and reburied, due to construction related to the extension of Riverside Drive. Audubon’s second resting place is marked by a Celtic Cross, made from Saugerties bluestone, near 155th Street, behind the Church of the Intercession.

(Hugo Kakfa, 1885-86) In 1885 Joseph Loth & Company, a silk ribbon manufacturer, commissioned this industrial building, designed in a reversed K plan to ensure well-lit working spaces and constructed of materials that adhered to the city’s strict building codes for mills. While certain components of its design, like the narrow window bays flanked by pilasters, were typical of American mill buildings of the time, the sandstone and red brick façades also had unique ornamentation and panels to identify the firm. The building’s chimney, rising above its three stories, serves as a reminder of the coal-fired boilers that powered the factory’s looms and provided electricity. One of the few industrial enterprises in West Harlem, the mill was built at a time when the neighborhood was characterized by small farms and wood-frame houses. After the company vacated the factory in 1902, the founder’s son Bernard Loth purchased the building and converted it to partial commercial use, constructing a larger entrance on Amsterdam Avenue with cast-iron storefronts. Over the years it also housed offices for a storage company, a movie theater, a dry goods store, a firm producing theater scenery, a recording studio and a basement bowling alley. Today it is home to the New Heights Academy Charter School.

Dunbar Apartments ARCHITECT: Andrew J. Thomas DATE: 1926-28 STYLE: Apartment The Dunbar Apartments, named after the famous Black poet of the turn of the century, Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872-1906), occupies the entire block bounded by 149th and 150th Streets and Seventh and Eighth Avenues. It was the first large cooperative built for Blacks and was Manhattan’s earliest large garden apartment complex. Financed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and designed by the architect Andrew J. Thomas, the building was completed in 1928 and was destined, from the planning and sociological points of view, to occupy a pivotal place in the history of the Harlem community. The complex consists of six independent U-shaped buildings, containing 511 apartments, and is clustered around a large interior garden court. Eight arched entrance ways lead into the court and to public staircases. With its lawns, shrubs and trees, the garden court provides a quiet, green oasis removed from the traffic and noise of the surrounding streets. Architecturally, the dominant note is one of simplicity. The architect successfully avoided the cold monotony of many later housing projects by breaking up the massive walI surfaces. He varied the heights of the buildings from five to six stories, alternately projected and recessed adjoining units and introduced a variety of window alignments and sizes. The warm tones and varicolored brick are set off by decorative accents of limestone. Handsome wrought iron balconies and window guards and architectural terra-cotta at the roof level complete the decorative scheme.

822-888 St. Nicholas Avenue, east side, between West 153rd and 155th Streets, 1935. These four stately homes are inexplicably behind a large fence in this 1935 photograph. Upon closer inspection, the broken and open windows and the advertising on the homes themselves, indicate they are empty and deteriorating. The buildings date to at least 1899, when a real estate brochure listed them as in foreclosure. They are listed as the address of a number of residents in the first decade of the 20th century, including an officer in the Daughters of the American Revolution. It is unclear when the buildings were abandoned or demolished.

1909 Amsterdam Avenue, 1941. The debris seen here was the result of a fire on April 23,1941. The fire began in an abandoned lumberyard on the corner and given the large amounts of wood, spread quickly. A nearby wood-frame building, also empty was also destroyed. The four-alarm fire injured a number of firefighters. At some point in next two decades the buildings to the north (seen at left) which survived the fire, were knocked down for the development of the NYCHA Audubon Houses. Constructed between 1959 and 1962, the complex is referred to as a "vest pocket" public housing because it takes up less than one full city block. Designed by Greenberg and Ames, who built large apartment houses all over the city, the building is 20-stories tall and has 168 apartments.

Olympic Pool in Colonial Park (now Jackie Robinson Park), Harlem, 1939. The Colonial Park pool was one of eleven public swimming pools opened during the summer of 1936, at the direction of Robert Moses and funded by the WPA. Its opening ceremony drew 25,000 spectators.

Attached clapboard and brick buildings on West 155th Street, sharing a covered wooden porch. At left is the William McKinley Temple, a Masonic lodge built in 1925. The houses have long since been demolished. Today, the lodge is the Prince Hall Masonic Temple, named after the 18th century founder of African American Freemasonry.

Audubon monument in Trinity Church Cemetery, near West 155th Street. Inscriptions read: O ALL YE FOWLS OF THE AIR, BLESS YE THE LORD, PRAISE HIM, AND MAGNIFY HIM FOR EVER. / O ALL YE BEASTS AND CATTLE, BLESS YE THE LORD, PRAISE HIM, AND MAGNIFY HIM FOR EVER.

The beginnings of the community now known as Audubon Park date back to 1841, when John James Audubon purchased fourteen acres and built a large mansion along the Hudson River shortly after publishing his famous work, Birds of America. Audubon named his farm, a pastoral landscape of woods, wildlife and rocky outcroppings, “Minnie’s Land” in honor of his wife. After bringing back plant and animal specimens from his 1843 expedition to the American West, Audubon lived on this secluded estate until his death in 1851. Facing financial hardship, Audubon’s family sold the land in small portions through the 1850s and 1860s. As early as 1854, the name Audubon Park was used for an enclave of ten large homes located on the former estate. Into the 1890s, Audubon Park retained a distinct identity from that of the rest of Washington Heights, remaining relatively secluded even as improvements in the street system and the introduction of cable cars and the Ninth Avenue elevated railroad brought residential development to its borders. In 1892, the city extended its fire limits up to West 165th Street, prohibiting new wood frame construction. The first masonry structures to appear within Audubon Park were a row of 12 three-story rowhouses constructed in 1896-98 on West 158th Street. When the Interborough Rapid Transit subway line along Broadway arrived at West 157th Street in 1904, Audubon Park was ripe for explosive growth. In 1905, the first apartment buildings in the area were built just outside Audubon Park’s boundaries at 609 West 158th Street and 3750 Broadway. However, most development occurred after the Grinnell family, which had controlled most of the former Audubon estate since the 1880s, sold its holdings to a syndicate of developers in 1908. Within a year, nine apartment buildings replaced most of the area’s winding roads and wood frame villas. From 1905 to 1932, 19 apartment houses were constructed in what is now the Audubon Park Historic District. Elegantly designed in a variety of styles and equipped with modern amenities, these buildings were marketed for upper middle-class tenants. Anchoring this neighborhood was Audubon Terrace, a unique complex of educational and cultural institutions whose construction began in 1904 and included the Church of Our Lady of Esperanza and the Hispanic Society of America. The influence of Audubon Terrace on the surrounding neighborhood is reflected in the names of some of its apartment buildings, including the Cortez, Goya, Hispania and Velazquez. Audubon Park has served as the site of significant preservation battles throughout its history. Efforts to create a park out of the remaining undeveloped portions of the Audubon estate and to save the John James Audubon house as a museum were scuttled by the construction of a viaduct carrying Riverside Drive from 151st Street to 161st Street in 1928. With the imminent development of new apartment buildings, a local community group successfully moved the house, but it was eventually demolished despite these efforts. Fortunately, success stories can be found in the designation of the Audubon Terrace and Audubon Park Historic Districts in 1979 and 2009, respectively. Today, a group of residents working with the Riverside Oval Association is advocating for the protection of the aforementioned 12 rowhouses on West 158th Street, constructed in 1896-98.

North side of West 154th Street from St, Nicholas to Amsterdam Avenues, 1924. This row of seven houses (of an original 11) were constructed in 1883-1884 and designed by architect James Stroud. The Queen Anne style rowhouses have alternating models in a symmetrical order with no. 417 being the center of the grouping. No. 417 is seen at the center of this photography with the projecting gambrel gable and half timbered central pedimented dormer. These features were unique colonial style elements added to the Queen Anne buildings. George H. Putnam, head of the G. P. Putnam book publishing company, lived at no. 417 for some time around the turn of the 20th century. All of the homes are set back from the front lot line, have a stepped garden, and all are entered by a long double flight set of stairs. Today they are in various conditions, though most have not been drastically altered.

791-793 St. Nicholas Avenue, two 2 1/2-story frame houses adjoining the south west corner of 150th Street, 1932.

The Polo Grounds from atop Coogan’s Bluff, ca. 1910. Home to the New York Giants baseball team, the stadium pictured is the third to use the name Polo Grounds: the first was located at the northeast corner of Central Park, and the second at an adjacent site in Coogan’s Hollow. A 1911 fire caused extensive damage, leading to the reconstruction of a concrete-and-steel stadium, the “fourth” Polo Grounds. In the background, the Macombs Dam Bridge (right), Putnam Bridge (left), Harlem River and the western edge of the Bronx are visible.

(Nathaniel D. Bush, 1871-72) Completed in 1872 as part of a larger effort to improve the city’s police facilities, the 32nd Police Precinct House served as the police department’s outpost in Carmansville, serving a large but sparsely populated area centered around the churches, hotel and residences adjacent to Trinity Cemetery. Officers on patrol could send telegraph messages from signal boxes to the station house, where sleeping quarters provided living space for the captain, sergeants and other officers. Nathaniel Bush, who designed numerous station houses throughout the city during his tenure as the Police Department’s architect, designed the 32nd Police Precinct House in the French Second Empire style. This symmetrical, three-story building is set under a slate mansard roof with a central tower. A two-story jail annex was constructed on West 152nd Street. Situated near the cluster of churches that once formed the core of Carmansville, the Precinct House was purchased by the nearby St. Luke African Methodist Episcopal Church (site 5) for use as its administration building.

"The New York Elevated Railroad Company built a line on Third Avenue to 129th Street at the Harlem River in 1878; a year later the company upgraded the Ninth Avenue line and extended it to 155th Street in northern Manhattan. The Gilbert (after 1878, Metropolitan) Elevated Company built and opened a line on Sixth Avenue to 58th Street in 1878, built a connection to the Ninth Avenue line on 53rd Street, and by 1880 completed a line on Second Avenue. In 1879 the companies merged to form the Manhattan Railway Company. By 1880 all four elevated lines had reached the Harlem River. Early in 1954 the New York City Transit Authority, NYCTA, which succeeded the Board of Transportation, concluded that the Third Avenue line was no longer needed south of 149th Street. Supposedly, the Lexington Avenue subway and East Side buses had adequate capacity to carry former Third Avenue riders in Manhattan. In the best interests of the city, the El would be closed and demolished. With one exception, the Third Avenue El fleet was destroyed..." For more on the Third Avenue El, check out this article by Lawrence Stelter in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.

418-422 West 150th Street, south side, east of Convent Avenue, ca. 1913.

The 1930s were an important moment in history of recreation in New York City. In the early 1930s the Department of Parks came under the control of Robert Moses, who had very specific goals regarding citywide access to recreation facilities year-round. Moses employed the at-the-ready manpower of the New Deal's Works Progress Administration to create a spate of new, modern, and large-scale recreational facilities. This included the construction of 11 neighborhood Olympic sized pools. The pools all opened over a few weeks during the summer of 1936. The pools and accompanying play centers were constructed of inexpensive materials but featured advanced design and technology in filtration, chlorination, and heating systems and underwater lighting. Most were rendered in sleek Art Moderne styles. Each had a wading pool, lap pool, and diving pool and could accommodate thousands of swimmers at a time. In the non-summer months both the pools and the play centers were converted for paddle tennis, shuffleboard, volleyball, basketball, handball, roller skating rinks, and dance classes. These facilities in total had a capacity for nearly 50,000 people at the same time. They changed the way New York kids spent their summers. In a 1934 press release announcing the pools Moses said, “It is no exaggeration to say that the health, happiness, efficiency and orderliness of a large number of the city's residents, especially in the summer months, are tremendously affected by the presence or absence of adequate swimming and bathing facilities.”

William McKinley Temple, data unknown. Built in 1925 for the William McKinley Lodge No. 840, today the building maintains this Masonic purpose. The Classical Revival style lodge was lost to foreclosure in 1936, though it seems that the groups continued to meet in the space for some time. From 1938 until the late 1980s, the building was occupied by the Savage School for Physical Education, a training school for physical education teachers. Today the building is the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge, a African American masonic community that was actively involved in the Civil Rights movement and continues to work on social service projects in the communities surrounding their lodges.

Washington Heights Free Library, undated postcard. The Washington Heights Free Library was originally established in 1868 as a fee-based membership institution called the Washington Heights Library. In the 1870s, J. Hood Wright, a Wall Street banker and member of the local community, became involved with the library. He began making donations with the agreement that the services be rendered free. The renamed Washington Heights Free Library constructed a neo-Classical building on St. Nicholas in 1900 after occupying a series of rented spaces. The cost of the building was underwritten by subscriptions from friends of the library, and a late donation from Andrew Carnegie helped the institution reach the required amount. In 1901, the Washington Heights Free Library was absorbed into the New York Public Library system. The small library building seen in this postcard was replaced with a larger more modern library facility a few block to the north at 1000 St. Nicholas Avenue in 1914. (This one was funded by entirely by Carnegie.) Today the Free Library building still stands, and is the long-time home to the Bethel Holy Church, who has occupied the building since 1949.

10 Nicholas Place at the corner of West 150th Street, as seen from St, Nicholas Avenue, 1935. Designed by Samuel Burrage Reed for famed circus producer James Bailey, the Romanesque Revival style mansion was completed in 1888. The stately home, despite being surrounded by apartment houses today and for much of the 20th century, was constructed in a still rural area. Impressive from both facades visible on the large corner plot, the house features a three-story corner tower at St. Nicolas Place and 150th Street and three smaller turrets at the other corners of the home. Supposedly the home was filled with trophies, animal skins, and other curios and artifacts from Bailey's circus travels. It also featured a number of pictorial stained glass mosaic windows. The house was so admired that Chester Wickwire got permission to build a mirror image replica in Courtland, New York . In the 1940s the home was owned by Dr. Franz Koempel, a doctor and pioneering X-ray specialist. When his widow put the house up for sale in the early 1950s, it was purchased by a local African American woman who had always admired it. The asking price: $86,000 (only $6k more than it had cost to build in 1888). She ran a funeral home on the first floor during the second half of the 20th century. In recent years it has seen a large-scale renovation. Along with its neighbors (no. 14-16 is pair of attached houses designed to look like one massive mansion), no. 10 stands newly restored, with a gleaming light colored stone facade, at a high point of the surrounding Sugar Hill neighborhood.

The naturalist John James Audubon is best known for "The Birds of America," the comprehensive, hand-painted ornithological survey published between 1827-1839, but it was his 1841 purchase of a riverfront estate that came to influence the development of Washington Heights, Riverside Drive, and Upper Manhattan beyond the Commissioner’s Plan grid.

“St. Nicholas Avenue (Old Kingsbridge Road) at N.E. corner of 155th Street, showing houses numbered 906 to 918, adjoining the vacant corner. One of these, no. 906, antedates 1885; the others were built shortly after. Early in the 1920s 906 and 908, the two nearest to the camera, will be taken down and the block rebuild to the corner. About 1912.”

Washington Theatre ca. 1910 Thomas W. Lamb's (1871-1942) Washington Theatre, at 1801-1807 Amsterdam Avenue and 149th Street, was more modestly made of tapestry brick and used comic and tragic masks as keystones. Here, the proscenium painting was an eighteenth-century pastoral scene; the fireproof asbestos stage curtain displayed Washington crossing the Delaware. Today, the building serves as the Childs Memorial Temple Church of God in Christ and was the setting of Malcolm X in 1965.

Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum, ca. 1910. Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum has the distinction of being the only truly active cemetery in Manhattan (Ed Koch was buried there in 2013). Established by Trinity Church, the graveyard began interments in 1842 when a ban on burials in lower Manhattan was enacted. The cemetery grounds were laid out by architect James Renwick, Jr. (the land had earlier been the site of the Battle of Fort Washington). Famous and infamous permanent residences include John James Audubon, John Jacob Astor, Clement Clarke Moore (among the three named persons) as well as writer Ralph Ellison, Aaron Burr's ex wife, Eliza Jumel, and well-loved actor Jerry Orbach.

Independent Subway System Station (155 Street and St. Nicholas Avenue). Phone booth, 1932. This photograph depicts the booths at 155th Street Station of the IND Eighth Avenue Line (now a local station on the C train). This station opened on September 10, 1932. Because of the tiled walls, callers had issues with echoing and reverberations from the noise outside the booth. In the IND stations opened in 1940 on the Sixth Avenue Line, similar phone booths were constructed but with sound absorbing material on the upper halves of the niche. Signage near these later booths announced, "New Sound Absorbing Booths- You Hear Clearly."

Children in Colonial Park Swimming Pool.; Harlem

79-81 St. Nicholas Place, west side, between West 153rd and 155th Streets, showing a 6-story apartment house (no. 79), 1924.

From its beginning, the Forward covered sports – the sports of chess and fishing, that is. In fact, its early highbrow sports coverage was a bit of a joke around town. But by the 1920s, the Forward’s sports pages began to give its readers the baseball news they wanted.

The otherwise unassuming Russian Holy Fathers Church is smaller than other churches on the block, but makes its mark with a blue onion dome topped by a golden cross. The rise of the Soviet Union and its hostility towards the Russian Orthodox Church prompted North American religious leaders to split from Russian leadership and establish an autonomous jurisdiction. In response, religious leaders loyal to the Patriarchate of Russia founded the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia and established new parishes, of which Holy Fathers Church was the first. Founded in 1928 and originally located on Fifth Avenue between 128th and 129th Streets, the Russian Holy Fathers Church moved to a converted space on West 153rd Street in the late 1930s. By 1966, under the leadership of Protopriest Alexander Krasnoumov, the congregation had raised funds to construct its own building, remaining on West 153rd Street a block from its original location.