Entrance to apartment complex at 45 Wadsworth Terrace, ca. 1980. 45 Wadsworth Terrace is an Art Deco apartment house built in 1929. Prominent is the decorative brickwork of the facade. Designed by prolific (he is said to have designed more than 4000 buildings) but largely unknown architect, H. I. Feldman, the lobby of the building entered through this main doorway retains many of its original murals.

Wadsworth Avenue, south from 193rd St. and St. Nicholas Avenue, 1927. Wadsworth Avenue is the only street in New York City named after a Civil War General: James S. Wadsworth. (A number of other generals—Sherman and Sheridan—got squares named after them.) Born in upstate New York, Wadsworth was killed in the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864. Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island is also named for the General.

George Washington High School, detail, main portico entrance, 1925. The building at 549 Audubon Avenue was originally constructed as an annex to Morris High School in the Bronx in 1919. George Washington High School, which had been established in 1919 as well, in a different location, moved into this building in 1925. During the Great Depression a WPA mural called 'The Evolution of Music' was painted by Lucienne Bloch, an apprentice of Diego Rivera. In 1999 George Washington High School was closed and divided into four smaller schools. Famous alumni of the school include Henry Kissinger, Harry Belafonte, and Alan Greenspan.

Fort George Amusement Park Over a century ago on the northernmost tip of Manhattan in Fort George, on the same spot where General Washington fought the British, there stood a fantastic amusement park complete with roller coasters, Ferris wheels, a skating rink, as well as fortune tellers, music halls, casinos, and hotels. The Fort George Amusement Park was located in what is now Highbridge Park, on Amsterdam Avenue between 190th and 192nd Streets. In 1895, the park was built at the end of the Third Avenue Trolley line in order to draw Manhattan residents up to the breezy riverside neighborhood for summer recreation. Around this time, it was popular for trolley companies to develop “trolley parks,” a precursor to amusement parks, at the end of their lines in order to give people a reason to use their services on weekends. Other examples of this include Luna Park and Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, Brooklyn. In 1905, Joseph Schenck and his brother Nicholas, who immigrated from Russia and settled in New York in 1893, visited the then small park and realized the amazing opportunity for development. They opened a saloon called “The Old Barrel” and partnered with Marcus Loew, a successful businessman who owned arcades and theaters. Loew later went on to form Loew's Theatres and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio. In 1906, the Schenck brothers built a new addition to the Fort George Amusement Park known as Paradise Park, which had an entrance fee of 10 cents at that time. While the park prospered and was a popular destination for years, by 1910 local residents began to petition for it to close. The initial benefits to the local economy began to fade and the neighborhood became plagued by public drunkenness, noise, crime, and racial tensions. Local residents began to unify and pressure the authorities to condemn the park and surrounding saloons for fire code violations and safety hazards. In December of 1911, an arsonist set fire to Paradise Park, but damages were repaired and it opened again in 1912. However, on June 9, 1913, another suspicious fire raged through the park causing over $100,000 worth of damages. The fire was so huge that some reports claimed that the flames could be seen as far south as 42nd Street. After the devastating fire, community groups such as the Public Recreation Commission and the Parks and Playground Association moved to reclaim the area and bring the land under the jurisdiction of the city. Activist Lillian Wald led the charge as the acting president for the Parks and Playground Association. The property where the Fort George Amusement Park once stood was eventually condemned and the Parks Department officially acquired it and incorporated it in to Highbridge Park.

George Washington High School, Manhattan Founded in 1917, George Washington High School moved to its current location in the Fort George section of Washington Heights in 1925. The Neo-Classical brick and limestone building features classical architectural elements including Palladian windows, Ionic columns, a roof balustrade and a central tower. Notable alumni include former Secretary of State and Nobel Peace Prize recipient (1973) Henry Kissinger and former Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan.

Isabella Home for Aged Women, 1927. In 1873, Isabella Url, the daughter and step-daughter of the German-language newspaper publishers Anna and Oswald Ottendorfer, died at age 27. Having a charitable spirit, Isabella, on her death bed, requested that her mother establish an organization that helped poor older women who were alone in life. Two years later the Ottendorfers opened in the Isabella Heimath, or the Isabella Home for Aged Women in Astoria. Free of charge and generally serving the aging German women, the facility quickly outgrew its Queens home. A new complex was funded by Oswald and completed in 1889, a grand building at Amsterdam Avenue and 190th Street. This larger facility provided a nursing home not just for older women, but for anyone (regardless of sex or ethnic background) in need, as well as offering hospital and recovery spaces for the same population. In 1965, an additional 17-story building was constructed to expand services. In the early 1970s the 80-year-old building was razed for the construction of a modern 14-story building. Both of these 20th century buildings continue to serve the elderly community as the Isabella Geriatric Center.

Fort George Amusement Park , ca. 1907. Fort George Amusement Park was located in what is now the northernmost end of Highbridge Park between 190th and 192nd Streets and Amsterdam Avenue, at the spot that was historically notable for being the location George Washington defended a British assault after the Battle of Brooklyn. The amusement park, called Harlem's Coney Island, offered two Ferris wheels, three roller coasters, nine saloons, a pony track, hotels, a casino, shooting galleries, a tunnel boat ride, and two music halls. Easily accessible at the end of the Third Avenue Trolley line, the park opened in 1895. Much like its south Brooklyn counterpart, the amusements quickly garnered a reputation as a loud place filled with drunken visitors and unchecked crime. The park suffered two, likely purpose-set, fires in 1911 and 1913 and closed for good after the second one.

New York City covers a region of hills, rivers, and valleys making planning of subway routes complicated depending on location as routes had to rise and ascend gradually. In Northern Manhattan the topographical elevations were much higher than low lying neighborhood counterparts. The construction and design of the Dyckman Street Station as an embankment elevated station was for this sole reason. During the time of this construction image of the incomplete station the area was still underdeveloped in many parts. With the opening of new subway stations and greater transit options, the neighborhood grew vastly. The Dyckman Street Station opened March 12, 1906. In the background of the image you can make out the Kingsbridge Power Plant which provided the electricity to run the trolleys of the Third Avenue Railway Company

George Washington Educational Complex ca. 1925 George Washington High School, home to such alumni as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, actor and singer Harry Belafonte, and baseball star Manny Ramirez, came into existence on February 2, 1917. The high school’s current structure was completed in 1925. Within five years the student body of GWHS had grown to six thousand students, and it was one of the top schools in the city. The demographics of the school began to shift dramatically during the 1960s, along with those of the neighborhood. Over the course of the decade the graduating classes of the high school went from 18% to 70% minority students. In 1964 black and Puerto Rican students boycotted schools that they felt did not employ enough black and Latino faculty members nor place enough emphasis on black and Latino history. In 1983, according to The New York Times, GWHS’ students were 70 percent Spanish speaking, with 90 percent of the Spanish speaking population of Dominican origin. By the late 1980s the school was overcrowded and had fallen into disrepair, with dropout rates well above city averages. At the end of the 1990s, the school was divided into four smaller high schools and renamed George Washington Educational Campus, with the hope of paving a road back to the schools’ former prestige

George Washington High School, 1926.