Jumel Building, 1925. In 1899, Frank Winfield Woolworth commissioned architect C.P.H Gilbert to design him a mansion at Fifth Avenue and 80th Street. Seven years later Woolworth hired him again, this time to build a two-story commercial building in Washington Heights for his retail store. Attractive but unremarkable for such as illustrious architect, the building is pictured here in 1925 during survey work for the IND Eighth Avenue Line. It still stands today, though most of the facade is obscured by oversized signage.

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.”

Congregation Ahavath Israel, October 12, 1934. Built in 1922, the synagogue operated on 157th Street until the late 1980s.

The Hispanic Society of America ca. 1919 Founded in 1904 by Archer Huntington, the son of a wealthy railroad tycoon, the Hispanic Society of America stands as a testament to Washington Heights' opulent past at the turn of the twentieth century. Huntington developed Audubon Terrace, the block between 155th and 156th Streets west of Broadway, on land that was originally part of the farm of painter and naturalist John James Audubon. Huntington invited other cultural institutions to locate there, and today Audubon Terrace also houses the American Numismatic Society, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Boricua College. The Hispanic Society building is a sprawling, Beaux Arts style structure that contains one of the largest collections of Spanish art in the United States, including works by El Greco, Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida. The sculptures on the plaza in front of the building were created by Huntington’s wife, the prominent sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington. Huntington created the society as an elite academic institution with limited access. In recent years the Society has loosened its stringent regulations and has reached out to both scholars and members of the Washington Heights community, in an attempt to increase its visibility.

Manhattanites out on horseback, ca. 1910. At left is the North Presbyterian Church, designed by the firm Bannister and Schell and built between 1903-05. At far right, a man drives a Pierce-Arrow automobile.

The Cortez 625 West 156th Street Designed by Neville & Bagge 1909 Audubon Park Historic District Named after the eponymous Spanish conquistador, the Cortez sits across the street from the Church of Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza and the Hispanic Society of America. Its Beaux-Arts façade has a tripartite composition, with a two-story limestone base, six-story red brick shaft and a free-standing brick parapet with an overhanging modillioned metal cornice. The limestone base is enhanced by a double-height entrance portico, while terra-cotta balconettes, lintels and string courses decorate the rest of the brick façade. At the time of construction, each floor of the Cortez featured two apartments with nine rooms and three baths per unit. One of its notable tenants was Agil Hanau, a founder and the first secretary of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association of New York.

Rhinecliff 788 Riverside Drive Schwartz & Gross Designed by 1910-11 Audubon Park Historic District The 11-story Rhinecliff continues the cornice line of its southern neighbor, the Vauxhall, complementing it with a Beaux-Arts façade carried out in granite, light brick and terra cotta. The elaborate roofline is decorated with oversized brackets, cartouches and a cornice with arched pediments. One of the more expensive buildings constructed in the neighborhood, the Rhinecliff featured suites of four to six rooms, as well as duplexes of eight to nine rooms equipped with separate entrances for servants. The Rhinecliff shares its name with a town in the Hudson Valley, a popular summer destination in the 19th century. More recently, the Rhinecliff was featured in the 1989 filming of the teleplay, The Hollow Boy.

The Audubon Terrace complex, as viewed from the Audubon Park Apartments at 3750 Broadway, 1919. At right is the American Geographical Society, completed in 1911 (now Boricua College). At left is the Museum of the American Indian, which would be completed in 1922.

The Audubon Park Apartments, across from the Audubon Terrace complex, then under construction, 1908. Its listing in Apartment Houses of the Metropolis advertises “an unobstructed view of the Hudson River and surrounding country” and “suites of five, six and seven rooms and extra servants’ rooms” for rents between $720 and $1,200 a year.

Grinnell 800 Riverside Drive Designed by Schwartz & Gross 1910-11 Audubon Park Historic District Occupying the entire triangular lot formed by the intersection of the diagonals of the old Boulevard Lafayette and Riverside Drive, the Renaissance Revival style Grinnell has a dominating presence in the neighborhood. While only nine stories tall, its size is amplified by freestanding cupolas topped by bell-shaped pediments that tower over each corner. Two-story granite arches flanked by duplex apartment units on either side serve as entrances to the building’s large interior courtyard. Upon completion at the original terminus of the Riverside Drive extension, the Grinnell claimed to be the only building in Manhattan with both a Riverside Drive address and a subway station at one entrance. Early residents recalled how dances with a full orchestra used to be held on the roof every spring and gloved staff delivered mail to each apartment twice a day.

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.

857 Riverside Drive, November 16, 1937. This charming 19th century, wood-frame home with a widow's walk on the roof remains standing though with some serious alterations. The widow's walk and porch have been removed and the clapboard replaced with faux brick siding. The current cornice and chimney seem to match with the details of this 1937 photograph.

Willam A. Wheelock Mansion ca. 1937 This Second Empire-style mansion, located at 661 West 158th Street with grounds spreading from West 158th to 160th Streets, was built about 1860 for businessman William Almy Wheelock. The Wheelock House withstood the incursion of the 1904 Riverside Drive extension, which was curved inward toward the east to avoid the charming villas of Audubon Park. Laid out around an oval park with a white marble fountain group, the Drive tended to isolate the houses, which were gradually replaced by apartment houses. Almost the last of the old places to survive was 661 West 158th Street. It was finally demolished in 1938, just a year after photographer Berenice Abbott documented it, for Riverside Houses, a low-income housing project.

South side of West 161st Street, ca. 1905.

(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.

Chapel, Church of the Intercession, ca. 1910. The second home of this Episcopal congregation, the chapel at 158th Street and Grand Boulevard (now Broadway) was built in 1872. By 1906, the parish was suffering from both overcrowding and financial difficulties. To solve both issues, parish officials struck a deal with the Trinity Church, whereby the new Church of the Intercession was built on the grounds of the Trinity Cemetery, at Broadway and 155th Street.

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.

The first Washington Heights Library opened in 1868. The library moved twice before a generous gift from J. Hood Wright, a New York philanthropist, made its collection available free of charge to all residents of Washington Heights. In 1914, the library moved to its present building, designed by Carrère & Hastings, the architects of the New York Public Library’s Main Fifth Avenue Branch.

160th Street, east from Broadway, ca. 1905. Pope & Co. druggists at 3834 Broadway advertises stationary, drugs, and prescriptions at “downtown prices.”

"St. Nicholas Avenue, east side, from 162nd Streets, seen from Amsterdam Avenue at 162nd Street." The streetcar tracks in the foreground are on Amsterdam Avenue. Between 161st and 160th Streets (at the center of the photograph) is the western end of Sylvan Terrace (formerly Sylvan Place), with its two-story wooden houses, a real estate development of the early 1860's when this part of town was practically suburban. St. Nicholas Avenue in its present form had been laid out up to this point since around 1870. North from here it was still Kingsbridge Road.

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.

Built in 1765 by British military officer Roger Morris, the Morris-Jumel Mansion is the oldest house in Manhattan. During the Revolutionary War, the house was used as a headquarters by officers from both sides. The mansion was confiscated from Morris, a Loyalist, at the end of the Revolution and later converted to a tavern, the Calumet House. In 1810, the French merchant Stephen Jumel purchased the home, adding a Federal style entrance. Following Jumel’s death, his wife Eliza remarried to Vice President Aaron Burr, in a ceremony held in the front parlor. The City of New York purchased the house in 1903, converting it to a house museum.

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.

Although European settlers had begun farming the area now known as West Harlem in 1625, the community was not formally incorporated as the village of New Harlem (or “Nieuw Haarlem” in Dutch) until 1658. The development of New York City and the introduction of rail and transport allowed Harlem to become a thriving neighborhood over the 19th and 20th centuries. Today, local organizations continue to fight to preserve West Harlem and promote its unique identity as increased development threatens this dynamic community and its architectural beauty.

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.

Audubon Park Apartments 3750 Broadway Designed by Schwartz & Gross 1905 Completed in 1905, the Audubon Park Apartments was one of the first apartment buildings constructed in the neighborhood. A 1906 advertisement for the building described the unspoiled nature of the area, promoting its location “on Washington Heights, Manhattan’s only section of natural beauty - adds the charm of country to the city house.” Offering unobstructed views of the Hudson River and surrounding countryside, the building’s “extra large” apartments boasted a “long distance telephone in each apartment.” Notice the building’s initials “APA” inscribed in the cartouche above the entrance. Many apartment buildings built during the subway boom of the 1900s were given names to lend them an air of prestige and distinguish themselves from their neighbors.

514 West 160th Street, ca. 1932.

517 West 161st Street, north side, between Amsterdam Ave., and Broadway. Building is a frame house. November of 1927.

An eclectic three-story semi-detached frame house owned by the Church of Our Lady of Esperanza, a part of the Audubon Terrace complex, with an entrance across Broadway on 156th Street, 1932.

The earliest development of Madam Stephen Jumel’s property (at present-day St. Nicholas Avenue and 160th Street) was undertaken in 1882 by members of her family who were anxious to derive some income from her land-rich estate. By 1880 the old carriage drive from Kingsbridge Highway had been graded, widened, paved and renamed St. Nicholas Avenue in honor of the patron saint of the Netherlands. In 1882 architect Gilbert Robinson Jr. designed a row of wooden houses meant to be rented to working-class Irish immigrants. These structures, which seem so charming to us today, were quite commonplace in the poor sections of northern Manhattan at the end of the nineteenth century. Considered to be just a step above tenement houses, such small frame dwellings were discouraged in lower Manhattan by both the higher valuation of property and a more stringent enforcement of fire codes. Over the years, the owners of these houses fell victim to promises of maintenance-free living offered by high-pressure brick-face and stucco, asphalt, and aluminum-siding contractors. In 1979, through an almost unprecedented program, the Landmarks Preservation Commission used federal funds to restore the houses to their original appearance. This ambitious project was carried out by Polonia Restoration.

Located on a portion of John James Audubon’s former estate, Audubon Terrace is one of the country’s first planned cultural centers outside a university context. Archer M. Huntington, stepson of railroad magnate Collis P. Huntington, was fascinated by Hispanic culture, and founded the Hispanic Society of America in 1904. To design its headquarters, Huntington hired his cousin, Charles Huntington. Hoping that geographic closeness would encourage cooperation, Archer Huntington donated land to encourage the Church of Our Lady of Esperanza, the American Numismatic Society, the American Geographic Society and the Museum of the American Indian to locate here. Although the center’s construction spanned two decades and four architectural firms, the structures were all designed in the neo-Italian Renaissance style to create a unified setting. In keeping with the Beaux-Arts tradition, the buildings were all arranged around a central courtyard paved in red brick, enclosed by stone balustrades and filled with sculptures designed by Anna Hyatt Huntington, Archer’s wife, and others. Audubon Terrace has sustained some change, with additions and newer buildings necessitating the reorientation of the entrance from West 156th Street to Broadway. Today, the complex is occupied by the Hispanic Society of America, the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a campus of Boricua College.

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.

“West 158th Street, west from Riverside Drive to the North (Hudson River). Shown in the center is the elevated West Side Vehicular Highway against the Palisades of New Jersey. November 18, 1936.” The elevated roadway at center is the viaduct carrying Riverside Drive West, with the West Side Highway visible through its arch. The ornate columned entryway to no. 613 (right) has been stripped of its details, though the structure remains.

1932 storefronts on Amsterdam Avenue include the Akaleus Bakery lunch counter, a butcher and dairy shop, carpenter, and Bond Bread, whose awning advertises “hot roast chickens.” Though the facades have been altered, each building remains standing.

"Swing," was a reinforced concrete sculpture by Clement Meadmore. Its size of twelve feet in height, eighteen feet in width, and twelve feet in width is meant to negotiate between its urban setting and the human scale. This sculpture was commissioned by the Public Arts Council's Neighborhood Environmental Sculpture Program (NESP) in 1972. The program sought to bring works of public art to the Inwood and Washington Heights as selected by the residents of each neighborhood. Meadmore's "Swing," is one of the five pieces chosen by a panel of art professionals and city-wide ballot, supplemented by a mobile exhibition and art-education workshops. The program had initially planned for ten permanent structures to be installed, however, various constraints cut the final roster in half, and determined the installations temporary. NESP aimed to encourage local determination from Inwood and Washington Heights, but the selection and feedback process ultimately constrained the very voices they wanted to empower. Meadmore's "Swing" was the first of the five public sculptures to be installed. An observation came later, stating that if the sculpture had been meant as a play-piece, a mat should be installed underneath it to prevent climbing children from hurting themselves. This comment foreshadowed the sculpture's ultimate removal.

Church of the Intercession 550 West 155th Street Design by: chapel: Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, 1912-15 vicarage: Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson, 1911-14 NYC Individual Landmark, National Register of Historic Places This Gothic Revival style church was completed in 1915, but its Episcopal congregation was founded in 1846. Before its construction, the congregation occupied two other buildings: the first at West 154th Street and Tenth Avenue (later Amsterdam Avenue) and the second at West 158th Street and Broadway. In 1906, in need of a larger space but facing financial constraints, the parish entered into an agreement with Trinity Church, which owned the surrounding cemetery, to become a chapel of Trinity, which had been planning to construct a chapel in the cemetery anyway. The parish and structure would be known as the Chapel of the Intercession until 1976, when the parish became independent once more. Its architect, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, was a partner in the firm of Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson, which was renowned for its ecclesiastical architecture, and this building is considered one of Goodhue’s masterpieces. Goodhue clearly favored the building, as he is buried in a tomb in the church’s north transept. The Tudor Revival style vicarage is connected to the church by a cloister surrounding a small courtyard.

Row houses at 508-510 West 159th Street, “both are frame houses with part stucco and brick fronts,” 1932. This block of 159th Street once included an eclectic mix of row houses, large wood-frame homes, garages and, by the 1930s, apartment buildings.

447 West 163rd Street, ca. 1932.

Food merchants along Amsterdam Avenue, including dairy, fruit, meat, and seafood vendors, 1932.

(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.

Morris-Jumel Mansion, entrance detail, ca. 1970.

The Chapel of the Intercession, ca. 1915. Designed by architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, the Gothic Revival church was completed in 1915 on the grounds of the Trinity Church Cemetery (itself on former estate of John James Audubon, a founder of the congregation).

The Riviera 790 Riverside Drive Designed by Rouse & Goldstone 1909 Audubon Park Historic District Built at a projected cost of $1.7 million, this 13-story building is both the tallest and most expensive structure in the historic district. The building sits on the former site of the Hemlocks, the home of the Grinnell family from the 1860s to 1910. The Riviera’s Renaissance Revival style façade consists of a three-story limestone base and a brick façade with terra-cotta details and large Venetian windows at the top floor. Punctuated by courtyards that divided the façade into five wings, the Riviera could boast that every room was an “outside room.” Bennett Cerf, the founder of Random House, moved into the newly built Riviera in 1911 at the age of 13.

The Audubon house, photographed in 1916. After Audubon’s death in 1851, his wife Lucy Audubon sold the residence to Jesse Benedict, a lawyer. Benedict updated the house with Victorian details including a mansard roof.

Top view faces south on Broadway, from between 159th and 160th Streets. Bottom view is the reverse, north on Broadway, with the Loew’s Rio Theatre at center, ca. 1914. Cab drivers are using the Broadway median to park, while they await fares from theatergoers. Due to competition from larger theaters in the area, the Rio closed in 1957.

“Residence of J. J. Audubon Esq,” watercolor, 1857. The naturalist, ornithologist, and namesake of the Audubon Society, John James Audubon purchased a 20-acre estate on the Hudson River in 1841, in what was then a wooded area. By 1911, the house had fallen into disrepair. After multiple unsuccessful attempts to move the structure to city parkland, it was demolished in 1931.

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.

American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1930. Completed in 1930, the annex building for the Academy was designed by member Cass Gilbert. The building included a 730-seat auditorium and sky-lit exhibition gallery. Both this structure and the original Academy building next door were designed in an Italian Renaissance style with imposing double bronze doors.

504 West 160th Street, ca. 1932

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.

“519-521 West 158th Street, north side, west of Amsterdam Avenue. Both are three-story frame houses. 1932.” The sign advertises a tailor at no. 521. The clapboard and shingle facades have been replaced, and the wooden porches dismantled, but the bones of this row of frame houses remain.

“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.”

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.

This Presidents Day, we wanted to take a look back at some of the most iconic places that the nation's executives have occupied in New York over the years. Here is a list of a few of our favorites!

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."

William A. Wheelock Mansion, photographed by Berenice Abbott in November 1937. In 1862, Wheelock, a dry goods wholesaler, purchased a riverside parcel of the Audubon estate that stretched from 157th to 159th Street. There, he build a Victorian mansion, complete with a bell-shaped mansard roof, Gothic details, and extensive gardens. The city purchased the by-then overgrown Wheelock property in 1941, tearing the buildings down to make room for a housing development.

Manhattan's oldest surviving house, the 1765 Morris-Jumel Mansion, is today located at West 160th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue. Perched upon Mount Morris, Harlem Heights' highest elevation, the house is now set within a ten-acre city park and is flanked by Victorian row houses and apartment buildings of a later date. Originally, it dominated the open countryside, occupying some 130 acres between the Harlem and Hudson Rivers. Mary Phillipse Morris and Colonel Roger Morris moved into the mansion the year after it was completed in 1765. Public agitation against the English Crown soon forced Loyalist Morris, a member of the King's Council that governed New York, to flee to England with his family. In 1776, General George Washington established his headquarters there; after American forces evacuated Manhattan, Hessian soldiers fighting for England made it their camp. In 1779, the property was confiscated by the State of New York. It served for some years as an inn. The most imposing of houses built by English colonists in Harlem, the Morris Mansion also is among the earliest examples in the United States of a temple-fronted house with a giant order of columns. During the nineteenth century, the mansion was wrongly regarded as a rare example of southern architecture in the North. In fact, both the antebellum plantation house and the Morris Mansion were inspired by work of sixteenth-century Venetian architect Andrea Palladio, popularized and modified by British architects. In April 1810, French-born wine merchant Stephen Jumel and his wife, Eliza Bowen Jumel, purchased the mansion and the surrounding thirty-six acres. Along with many of his compatriots, Jumel had fled the Haitian revolution and settled in New York City. The Jumels renovated the mansion, generally preserving its interior. New additions included the front door, with a fanlight and leaded-glass sidelights inset with stained glass, a pioneering innovation. Madam Jumel died in 1865, leaving Harlem's finest house as a monument not only to its previous inhabitants but also to the entire eventful past and transforming fortunes of the area. Her heirs soon began a protracted fight over her estate that ended with a marathon auction. The house came into the possession of her great-nephew. In 1903, the City of New York purchased the property. The following year, it opened as a house museum, now administered by Morris-Jumel Mansion, Inc

Our Lady of Esperanza Church, 1924. Designed by Charles P. Huntington, the original structure was completed in 1912 with a staircase entrance to 156th Street. In 1924, a new facade by Lawrence G. White — son of Stanford White — extended the facade to street level and moved the entrance staircase to the building’s interior.

Hispanic Society of America, 1922. The Hispanic Society of America was founded by philanthropist Archer Milton Huntington in 1904. The building is both a museum and reference library for the arts and culture of primarily Spain and Portugal, as well as some of the former colonies in Latin America, the Philippines, and Portuguese India. Huntington, possessed with a passion for scholarship, amassed a great portion of the museum's collection of over 18,000 works using his family's resources. In addition to funding the curation of artifacts, Huntington's family also participated in the design of the museum. Archer Milton Huntington's cousin, Charles P. Huntington, designed three buildings of the Audobon Terrace complex. The philanthropist's wife, sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington, is credited for many of the statues around the terrace, including the equestrian statue "El Cid" that serves as the unofficial mascot of the museum. The museum's collection features paintings from renowned artists such as Velazquez, Goya, El Greco, Zurbaran, and Ribera. Among other objects, Huntington's holdings also include a variety of ceramics, 15th-century door knockers, a cartography collection, and an extensive library of literary works relevant to Hispanic culture, all published prior to the 19th century, including a copy of the first issue of popular Spanish novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Huntington's interest in specifically Spanish culture was prompted by English author George Borrow's "The Zincali; or, An Account of the Gypsies in Spain," published in 1841. Enamored by Borrow's account on life in Spain, Huntington began taking Spanish language lessons and studying the country's culture from afar. A young Archer Huntington's interests in art and culture were not unusual for his family. His father Collis Potter Huntington was one of the Big Four of the Western Railroad. His financial holdings allowed Archer's mother, Arabella, to amass her own collection of Dutch Old Master paintings, 18th century English portraiture, 18th-century French decorative arts. At the age of 12, a young Archer wrote of his experience at a museum: "Read the catalog until I could not see anymore and went to bed. I think a museum is the grandest thing in the world. I should like to live in one." As a teenager, he began amassing the collection that would later form the foundation of his own museum. After Huntington accompanied his parents on a trip to Mexico, he came to the conclusion that he would devote his time and resources to opening a "Spanish Museum." He purchased the site to build his grand museum in 1904. Huntington was deliberate in both the acquisition of his collection and the display of his works. After frequent trips to Spain and Latin America, he claimed his earlier studies of the regions produced a sterile and academic understanding of Hispanic culture. His museum would display the soul of the culture, supposedly discovered by Huntington in his travels. The collections were almost exclusively acquired from collectors and dealers outside of Spain: Huntington was cautious not to dispossess Spain of its cultural heritage. The "Spanish Museum," now named, "The Hispanic Society," opened in 1908, for the "advancement of the study of the Spanish and Portuguese languages, literature, and history." In 1910, Huntington planned to expand the museum with a series of works three meters tall and seventy meters wide by the painter Joaquin Sorolla depicting daily life in contemporary Spain and Portugal. Regarding the arrangement of works in the museum and the lack of windows, Huntington said, "the windows of art museums should be pictures." The collection of archaeological artifacts on display are in part from Huntington's own excavation in a site French archaeologist Arthur Engel abandoned in Itálica. In 1920, Huntington took a pause on populating his collection and instead focused on the scholarly research that could take place in the museum. He sought to encourage young scholars to utilize the vast resources he gathered. He said of his staff, "I hope to get each one interested in a single subject, so that they may become expert." The Society's librarians, a group of young women who had recently graduated from library school, were asked to become chief curators of the museum's holdings. The women selected fields such as Paintings and Drawings, Sculpture, Ceramics, Font, and Textiles, which they researched and cataloged for up to 50 years. Huntington's museum prompted a great advancement in the discipline of Hispanic studies. Huntington's greatest desire, as described in a 1920 letter to his mother, was to "prepare the way for others."

Riverside Drive, west side, south from but not including 155th Street, showing the Audubon Cottage a 3-story frame house at the northern extremity of the viaduct, ca. 1925. The fountain pictured here at Riverside Drive is referred to as "Music of the Water" in a 1913 newspaper interview with artist model Audrey Munson, who was supposedly the muse for the mermaid figure. The problem? Other than this one photo (circa 1925) which includes the statue and fountain, no other image of this location depicts the statue. While the statue is included in a circa 1910 rendering for the large apartment building at 788 Riverside Drive (likely the vantage point of this image), it is missing from photographs that date to 1913 and 1924. While possible that the statue was installed and then removed, it has been suggested that perhaps it was never installed at all, and this 1925 photograph was created with some early 20th century Photoshopping.

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

516-518 West 160th Street, ca. 1932.

The Day Star Baptist Church at 512 West 157th Street, 1932. Despite numerous renovations, the shared covered porch between nos. 516-520 is still visible today. The advertisement on the side of no. 522 is for Chas. Berlin property management.

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.

This endangered two-story wood-frame house at Riverside and West 159th Street, is believed to have a connection to the Underground Railroad and upper Manhattan’s little-known Abolitionist history.