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.

The vacant Singer’s Auto Service Station on West 166th Street, about 1926. The sign at left indicates that Singer's has moved to a new location on 167th Street. The large sign advertises Singer's as an authorized mechanic for Willys-Overland automobiles. Best known for the production of World War II-era Jeeps, Willys-Overland had earlier produced passenger cars. The sign in the photograph advertises the Whippet, a smaller model introduced in 1926.

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.

Washington Heights, the narrow strip of high ground between the Harlem and Hudson Rivers, is named for the Revolutionary War Fort Washington. Fortifications aside, the area was rural, rocky, and sparsely populated until latter half of the 19th century; the extension of rapid transit to Upper Manhattan century helped spur development. Today, Washington Heights is a diverse, densely populated enclave including the massive Columbia University medical campus, historic sites like the Morris-Jumel mansion, and panoramic views of the Bronx, Lower Manhattan, and the New Jersey Palisades.

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.

Riverside Drive, north from 165th Street, ca. 1915. Washington Heights’ wooded, bucolic character would soon be disrupted by development. In 1921, the Harkness family donated a 22-acre plot between 165th and 168th Streets for what would become the campus of the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. Today, the Milstein Hospital Building, built in 1988, occupies 165th Street between Riverside Drive and Fort Washington Avenue.

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.

“West 165th Street, north side, west from Fort Washington Ave., across Riverside Drive to the North (Hudson) River and showing across the latter the Jersey highlands and the George Washington Bridge. The property on the right is a part of the Columbia University-Presbyterian Medical Center and partially shown thereon is the Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing. June 15, 1937.”

Wooden frame houses at 2123 and 2121 Amsterdam Avenue, 1932. The former is set back from the street, behind a picket fence that had likely seen better days. The storefront at no. 2121 is vacant and available for rent.

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.

American League Base Ball Park, ca. 1910. Hilltop Park was the home of the New York Highlanders, as today’s Yankees were then known, between 1903 and 1912. The team moved to the Giants’ Polo Grounds on the Harlem River for the 1913 season and Hilltop Park was demolished in 1914. In 1925, Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital broke ground at this site.

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.

Though actually triangular, Mitchel Square is a small urban park that features the war memorial seen here. The plot was initially dedicated as a public space in 1911 and named Audubon Square. On February 8, 1919, the square was renamed in honor of John Purroy Mitchel. Mitchel was elected the youngest mayor of New York City (a record which still stands) in 1913. The "Boy Mayor" was known for his idealism and (perhaps uncommon in politics) honesty. Following his mayoral term (he lost a bid for reelection in the primaries), he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. In 1918 while on a training flight in Lousiana, Mitchel fell from his plane and died. The city (and state) mourned and eulogized the former mayor, naming this park after him, erecting a memorial at Fifth Avenue and East 91st Street, and naming a Long Island airfield for him. Theodore Roosevelt wrote of the man, “No stauncher American, no abler and more disinterested public servant, and no finer natural soldier than Purroy Mitchel was to be found in all our country.” Four years after the park's renaming, this World War I memorial sculpture was installed. Dedicated on May 30, 1923, and designed by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, this public arts still stands on the north side of the park, while the south side remains benches and rock outcroppings.

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

The Roman Catholic Church and Rectory of St. Rose of Lima, viewed from across McKenna Square, 1934. The triangular park site was created in 1917, when the city cleared the ad-hoc cottages of Irish immigrant workers there as part of the widening of 165th Street. The roadway in the foreground had previously been known as Croton Street. In 1924, the square was named after Private William McKenna, a soldier killed in World War I. St. Rose of Lima, in the background was designed by architect Joseph H. McGuire and completed in 1905.

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.

“Fort Washington Avenue, north from West 163rd Street, and showing upon the west side of same, the New York Institution for the Deaf extending to 165th Street. Note the tower of the George Washington Bridge through the trees. June 15, 1937.” The New York Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb was founded in 1818 and moved to its third location, in Washington Heights, in 1856. The school moved to its current campus in White Plains, New York in 1938, shortly after this photo was taken. When the George Washington Bridge (at left) opened in 1931, it was the longest single bridge span in the world. 19 days before this photo was taken, it lost that title to San Francisco’s brand-new Golden Gate Bridge."

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.

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.

White Tower Hamburger, 1933. White Tower Hamburger was a chain of fast food restaurants created as a copycat or imitator (if we are being generous) of White Castle. Founded in Milwaukee in 1926, they hired away White Castle employees, barely tweaked the chain's slogan, and mimicked the crenellated building design. By the 1950s White Tower had more than 250 locations all across the country., largely in urban areas. Despite the inevitable copyright lawsuit, the last batch of original White Towers remained in business through the 1980s. (A single location is still open in Toledo, Ohio, though it is long divorced from the original owners). New York City was home to at least a half a dozen White Tower Hamburger locations. This castle-like building at Broadway and West 167th Street is no longer extant, but at least one original White Tower building remains in Woodside, Queens.

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.

455 West 164th Street, ca. 1932.

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.

The most resplendent of all the theaters designed by Thomas W. Lamb, the Audubon Theatre and Ballroom on the east side of Broadway between West 165th and West 168th Streets was graced with segmented arches made of polychrome glazed terra-cotta. If the entrance's relief of a Viking ship guided through rough seas by a Titan goddess is inexplicable, droll fox-head trophies positioned at the springing of each arch are not. They allude to the builder of the Audubon, William "20th Century" Fox. A venue for Fanny Brice as well as for the Marx Brothers, who lived nearby, the Audubon is now best remembered as the place where Malcolm X was slain in 1965. After becoming the property of New York City, the Audubon deteriorated. Most of the building was demolished to make way for a new building constructed by Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. The base of the new research center incorporates portions of the Audubon's original facade. Painstakingly restored, the elaborate terra cotta facade serves as a vivid reminder of an important neighborhood landmark, over half of which was destroyed to provide a parking lot.

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.

“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.

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.

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

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.

A restaurant at the corner of West 163rd Street and Amsterdam Avenue advertises chop suey, 1934.

The New York Preservation Archive Project is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to documenting, preserving, and celebrating the history of historic preservation in New York City. The Archive Project is devoted to celebrating neglected narratives of New York historic preservation using the archives that hold these stories. This collection includes a selection of historic sites that became flashpoints of the city's preservation movement(s). For more information, visit: www.nypap.org/phd-category/places/

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.

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

Riverside Drive West and the Hudson River, ca. 1941. The original route of Riverside Drive made a sharp turn to the right at 155th Street, bisecting Audubon Park, and isolating “Minnie's Land,” John James and Lucy Audobon’s former home, well below street level to the west of the new road. Upon the opening of the new curved roadway in 1911, motorists complained about the succession of sharp turns. As a solution, the city built a new viaduct between 155th and 161st Streets. Opened in 1928, the viaduct today carries Riverside Drive West.

“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.

Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, Washington Heights; November 16, 1937.

Audubon Theatre, 1915. Built in 1912 by William Fox, the founder of the Fox Film Corporation, the Audubon was a film and vaudeville theatre with a second floor ballroom, and basement-level meeting rooms often used by political activists, trade unions, and religious groups. In 1950, Congregation Emes Wozedek purchased the building. After Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam in 1964, he founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), whose weekly meetings were held at the Audubon Ballroom. It was at one of those meetings, on February 21, 1965, that Malcolm X was assassinated as he was giving a speech. Thereafter, the building fell into disrepair. In 1992, the building was slated for demolition and redevelopment by Columbia University. Preservation groups resisted the development, eventually reaching a compromise: Columbia could build at the northern end of the block, but the building and facade closest to Broadway and 165th Street would be preserved.

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!

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.

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.

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.