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.

512 West 167th Street, ca. 1932.

Large wooden houses at the corner of Edgecombe Avenue and Jumel Place, 1932. Today, the site is the NYPD’s 33rd precinct, designed by Dattner Architects and built between 1997-2002.

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.

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.

563 West 169th Street, ca. 1932.

Storefronts selling “fancy groceries,” tobacco products, stationery, and “premium hams & bacon” along Amsterdam Avenue, 1914. Note the cobblestoned roadway.

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.

563-565 West 170th Street, 1932. The building at left (no.565) remains, though you might not realize it. Looking at the current structure directly from the sidewalk in front, it looks to be a late 20th century structure: simple, red brick, no style. But, if one walks just slightly down the block to the east and looks back, the wood-frame house, complete with peaked roof, is visible.

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.

22nd Regiment Armory, date unknown. The massive brick Classical Revival structure with Romanesque Revival elements served as the headquarters for the 22nd Regimental Armory. Completed in 1911 to the designs of the firm of Richard Walker and Charles Morris. The 22nd Regiment was downsized, merged, and moved around in the mid 20th century. The drill hall became for a time a track-and-field venue for the city's schools (having hosted athletic events even while occupied by the national guard). In the 1980s, the huge building served as a city homeless shelter. In the 1990s Dr. Norbert Sanders (the only New Yorker to ever win the city's marathon) raised $25 million to refurbish the building. Today it houses the National Track & Field Hall of Fame, a large after-school program, and the Millrose Games, the country’s best-known indoor track-and-field event.

J. Hood Wright Park, May 18, 1924. Haven Avenue, south from West 176th Street, showing several new apartments under construction. The far two, including the frame residence were removed subsequently and their sites are now a part of J. Hood Wright Park. At the right is W. 177th Street, continuing its winding way downhill to Riverside Drive.

Highbridge Park Center, June 20, 1940. The land next to the 1848 High Bridge is an appropriate location for a municipal swimming pool, being the original location of the old High Bridge Reservoir. The pool and play center opened July 14, 1936. The play center was designed in the same simplified Art Moderne style of the other 1936 pool houses. The building is particularly notable for its ashlar construction. Ashlar construction means the stones used to create the walls were finely and uniformly cut into their shape and as such create very thin joints between blocks. This type of masonry is visible in the long retaining wall that runs along Amsterdam Avenue. Another unique feature of the building was the lobby murals by artist Charles Clarke. The pool facilities have been renovated a number of times since the 1960s.The earliest work either covered up or destroyed the lobby murals. Along with a number of the other WPA pools, High Bridge underwent a renovation project in the early 1980s that updated the heating, ventilation, electrical, and filtration systems and made the facilities handicap accessible. More recent work on the pool occurred in the late 1990s and in 2015 the actual High Bridge itself was reopened to the public after being closed for more than 40 years.

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/

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.

High Bridge Water Tower, ca. 1912. This 200-feet-tall stone tower was designed in the Romanesque Revival and neo-Grecian styles by John B. Jervis, who designed the Erie Canal and supervised the construction of the High Bridge Aqueduct. Though this tower resembles the watchtower of a medieval fortification, it once served a unique purpose in New York City's first reliable and uninterrupted water system. The High Bridge Water Tower was built between 1866 and 1872 to provide water and pressure to New York's ever-growing population. The height of the tower helped generate enough pressure to power the flushable toilets which were entering use for the first time. The tower's tank held 47,000 gallons of water, which were lifted from the reservoir that was already one-hundred feet above the ground. The interior of the structure included an elegantly designed iron spiral stair, with paired windows overlooking various vistas. After the building of the New Croton Aqueduct, the use of the High Bridge Tower diminished. Fears of threats to the city's water system during World War I ultimately closed the structure. In 1934, it was acquired by the Parks Department. The Parks Department largely left the tower alone, though the reservoir that once fed it was turned into a swimming pool. An arson set the timber framing of the roof on fire in 1984. This was replaced from 1989 to 1990, at the time New York Times columnist Christopher Gray wrote of it: "Its rock-faced granite gives the tower a chunky, fortified appearance as if it were a lookout for a much larger cast complex that was never built... The granite is competently handled, but the details are not very inspired or elegant. The tower is more picturesque than beautiful." The High Bridge Water Tower was designated a New York City Landmark in 1967.

Sobol Gas Station and Fort Washington Presbyterian Church, 1927. Ira and Ida Sobol were Jewish immigrants who arrived in New York in the early 20th century. Working in the new and booming car industry, the family was able to purchase a gas station. The business was a success, and Sobel Brothers became a chain of service stations in the five boroughs, though perhaps most concentrated in Flushing, Corona, and northern Queens. Today this small plot, a triangle between Broadway, Wadsworth Avenue and 174th Street remains a gas station. The steeple seen behind the gas station is the Fort Washington Presbyterian Church. Founded in 1913 through the merger of the West Presbyterian and Park Presbyterian Churches, the new congregation built a fine neo-Georgian edifice on Wadsworth Avenue. The church with the tall bell tower was designed by Thomas Hastings of the venerable firm of Carrère & Hastings. The congregation here has changed with the demographics of the local community. Since 1948 Spanish-language services have been held here and today the church membership is largely Dominicans and Puerto Rican.

This is the northwest corner of West 173rd Street and Broadway. The billboard advertises (and requests funds) for a new church called the Broadway Temple. This massive planned structure was the brainchild of Reverend Christian Reisner, the leader of a Washington Heights Methodist congregation. Upon learning in 1923 that their current place of worship was to be demolished for the planned George Washington Bridge, Rev. Reisner decided their next home would be a ”magnificent advertisement for God’s business.” This proposed church by architect Donn Barber was to include two 12-story apartment buildings flanking a soaring central tower, complete with a 75-foot-high rotating cross at the top. The church was to seat more than 2,000 and have a basement space with a gym, bowling alley, and pool. Needing $4 million for his church, the reverend sought funds from New York's wealthiest (John D. Rockefeller, for one) and its regular folks (the billboard urges passers-by to help out with 5% bonds). By the start of the Depression, the two Deco apartment houses had been completed, but the church itself was far from its planned 725 feet. Stalled until the 1940s because of debt, construction on the much more restrained edifice (only three stories as compared to 40) was begun again in 1947 and the temple was completed in 1952 (with no rotating cross). The final design was completed by Shreve, Harmon and Lamb, the firm that designed the Empire State Building.