By Richard Tomzack On Tuesday, May 21, 1765, an enslaved African American named Will escaped the estate of Jacob Dyckman in Kingsbridge, New York. Taking nothing but his clothes, described by Dyckman as a “blue Broad Cloth Coat,” and “Homespun Trowsers, a Beaver Hat, halfworn, with a hole through the rim,” Will made his escape under the cover of darkness. Like many of the 10,000 enslaved individuals living in the province of New York, Will had been bought and sold multiple times, passing from the ownership of both the Alsop and Keteltas families in New York City, before Jacob Dyckman purchased him and relocated him to his property in Kingsbridge.

Dyckman Farmhouse, 1931. The Dyckman Farmhouse (now a house museum) was once the residence of the estate that was more than 250 acres. It is the oldest remaining farmhouse in Manhattan, having been constructed circa 1785. The Dutch Colonial style house was built after the previous Dyckman homestead on the Harlem River near 210th Street was destroyed during the Revolutionary War. The house was sold away from the Dyckman family in the 1860s but after decades of occupation by rental tenants, the house was in disrepair. Two Dyckman sisters purchased the house back in 1915 and began an extensive restoration. The house was then donated to the city for use as a museum of colonial life and was furnished with original Dyckman family furnishings.

While one New York tree gets all the glory, we thought we put together a collection of some other archival Christmas Trees.

Firemen spraying an apartment building under construction on Seaman Avenue, Inwood; July 1929.

Dyckman House Although the Dutch founded New York (New Amsterdam), there are few houses left to remind us of their presence. The last of the step-gabled town houses disappeared with our grandfathers, and all that remain today are a few Dutch Colonial farmhouses in Brooklyn and Queens and this reconstructed farmhouse in Manhattan.

The Church of the Good Shepherd was originally established on land purchased from the Isham estate in 1911. When it was founded, the first church to be built was a white A-framed church to temporarily serve as a place of worship until a more permanent church could be built. In the 1930s the current day Romanesque Church was designed by architect Paul Monaghan, capable of seating 1,000 people. The Missionary Society of Saint Paul the Apostle, known as the Paulist Fathers, was a Roman Catholic society formed in New York City in 1858.

In an article from “The New York Dramatic Mirror,” new photoplay theaters were highlighted including the Dyckman Theater, which was stated as opening December 1, 1913, with new motion pictures and vaudeville. In this 1926 image “Lost at Sea” starring Lowell Sherman and “Romance of a Million Dollars” are listed on the marquee. Funnily enough, “Lost at Sea” is a “lost” silent film and is registered among 7200 lost U.S. silent feature films by the Library of Congress.

This building is reflective of the once extensive Jewish population in Inwood. Both the Jewish and Irish populations of the neighborhood began to dwindle in the 1960s, as the neighborhood became increasingly Hispanic. Today the Seventh-Day Adventist church, the Iglesia Adventista del Septimo Dia de Dyckman, occupies the building.

The Cooper Street Rock Snake, 1908. The serpentine figure of a snake drew New Yorkers from all over to come see what had miraculously wedged itself inside a rock some 2,000 years ago. The New York Herald reported in 1913 that it would be preserved by the Museum of Natural History. The Evening Post called it a "Queer Rock Formation" in 1923. Many believed that a 25-foot long snake had wedged itself between rocks during an earthquake some thousand years prior. However, a literary magazine for children, the St. Nicolas, finally "unearthed" the mystery of Inwood's oldest inhabitant: "The rock formation, the whole mass, is limestone...the serpent-like markings are only the twisted, and squeezed, and somewhat broken, and thoroughly metamorphosed remnants of a thin layer or bed of impure limestone lying within a larger...more uniform mass...They are not fossils, but they are to a geologist fully as interesting as a fossil and maybe more so." The magazine had brought in Charles P. Berkey, a Geology Professor at Columbia. He endearingly referred to the mark as "nature's handwriting that tells to a nicety just what has happened in the very long ago."

"West 214th street, east from Seaman Avenue to Park Terrace West, showing this street being opened. Steps will be installed for pedestrian use only. Under construction at the left us the Isham Gardens Apartment House. Isham Park is on the right and the manor is atop the hill, 1924."

At the intersection of 207th Street and Broadway stood the Arras Inn. Originally considered a fine dining establishment it eventually became well known as a speakeasy during prohibition. An article in “The Evening World” from April 17, 1922, stated that 20 agents on Easter Sunday raided and gave summonses to establishments including the Arras Inn for violations. Eventually, a portion of the building would also share its storefront with a B.F. Curry Chevrolet dealership.

"Schlep In The City: Walking Broadway": June 21, 2018 By Katie Uva Broadway. For most people, the name conjures the theater industry that occupies its center, full of bright lights, marquees, and creative ambition. This is a core component of Broadway, yet this street has so much more to it — it’s the longest street in Manhattan and stretches the entire length, cutting assertively across the grid with the force of a long history behind it and leaving a trail of small parks and squares in its wake. On a beautiful spring day, some friends and we set out to walk the length of Broadway in Manhattan from top to bottom, a journey totaling 13.5 miles. In addition to 27 Starbucks and 18 McDonalds, here are some other highlights of what we saw: Read the Gotham Center blog post that inspired the walk here.

Church of the Good Shepherd 608 Isham Street between Broadway and Seaman Avenue Completed in 1950 The complex of this church was constructed on land that was purchased from the Isham family in 1912. The stone sanctuary designed by Paul Monaghan, which seats a thousand congregants, was completed on the corner of Broadway and Isham Streets in 1935, replacing a temporary wood-frame structure on Cooper Street. Romanesque in style, the church is constructed of granite with limestone trim and has a terra-cotta tile roof. The 1914 rectory designed by Maynicke and Franke behind the sanctuary on Cooper at Isham is Gothic in style; it is constructed of Fordham gneiss, a local stone. A parochial school designed by Auguste L. Nöel in 1924 was later built west of Cooper Street at the corner of Isham Street and a masonry convent with stained glass windows designed by Paul C. Rilley was added at the corner of Isham Street and Seaman Avenue in 1950. The complex continues to serve the neighborhood‘s Catholic community today and is celebrating its 100th anniversary during 2011 and 2012.

Seaman-Drake Arch on Broadway between 216th and 218th Streets, 1927. In 1855 John Ferris and Valentine Seaman, the sons of Dr. Valentine Seaman, bought the land for and had built a large marble mansion at the top of a hill in Inwood. The large home and surrounding land, which stretched all the way to Spuyten Duyvil Creek, was meant as a country house for the family, who lived full time elsewhere in the city. The marble archway was the street-level entrance to the road which led to the mansion. Both the mansion and the house were constructed from stone mined from a quarry at the foot of the hill along Broadway. The 40-foot wide, 35-foot-high, 20-foot-deep arch has still half-dozen window openings, which suggests that a gatekeeper might have occupied the structure while it was active as an entryway. The mansion transferred from the Seaman to the Drake family in the late 19th century. By 1905 it was sold again to a contractor who lived in the house and used the arch for his business. It was during his ownership in the 1910s that low brick buildings began to surround the arch. The estate was sold off and the home demolished for residential development in the 1930s. Only the arch remained and it has seen a succession of automobile related businesses from dealerships to auto body shops.

Seaman House, 1923. In 1851, two brothers (sons of early 19th-century medical innovator Dr. Valentine Seaman) purchased a hillside property near the top of Manhattan and began to erect a substantial summer home constructed with locally-quarried white marble. The resulting house was a grand 30-room Italianate villa with a gatehouse at the bottom of the hill. The gatehouse was, in fact, a massive marble arch that served as the entranceway for the steep driveway that led up to the home. John F. Seaman also constructed greenhouses and sprawling gardens, as he was fond of that pass time. The house was willed to a relative, Lawrence Drake, following the death of John's widow in 1878. While the widow spread her wealth out between 36 heirs, most of the other heirs believed that Lawrence had "unduly influenced" a senile old woman. The heirs sued the man but lost the suit. Less than 20 years later Lawrence sold the property to the Suburban Riding and Driving Club. The membership of the club was the crème de la crème of New York society, and the mansion served as its opulent clubhouse. In 1905 the estate was sold to a construction developer who lived in the home and used the gateway arch as his office. The land was sold once again in 1938, and the large mansion and outbuildings were razed for a new apartment complex. The arch still stands at 5065 Broadway, having been boxed in by an auto body shop decades ago. It lost its roof to a fire in the 1970s and has seen many better days but is hidden right there in plain sight.

William D. Hassler was a photographer working in New York in the early 1900s. He shot all around the city, but let's take a look at his images of his own life in the upper Manhattan neighborhood of Inwood.

William Bradley Isham, a prominent leather merchant who later worked in the banking industry, rented the land that is now Isham Park from the estate of Dr. Floyd T. Ferris in 1862 as a summer residence. Around 1864 Isham bought the property which had beautiful views of the Hudson River and the Harlem River as it was situated on a hilltop. Upon his death in 1909, parcels of the estate went to members of the Isham family. Starting in 1911 and roughly through 1922 various members gifted lots to the city to create and expand the park. The city also purchased lots throughout the area originally intended to be added to Isham park, but eventually, it was decided to add the extra lands to the newly created Inwood Hill Park and maintain the boundaries of the original Isham estates. Current day Isham Park is a 20-acre park bordered by Seaman Avenue, Isham Street, Broadway, and 214th and 215th Street. Originally the park extended out to the Harlem River but with the creation of Inwood Hill Park in 1926, the lands were reallocated. It is said that Peter Minuit purchased the island of Manhattan from the Lenape Native Americans in Inwood Hill Park. The site is currently marked by a boulder known as Shorakkopoch Rock. The area originally intended to be added to Isham park, but eventually, it was decided to add the extra lands to the newly created Inwood Hill Park and maintain the boundaries of the original Isham estates.

Isham Park Dedicated September 28, 1912 Isham Memorial, ca. late 1930s In 1911, land for the purpose of a public park was offered as a gift to the city by Julia Isham Taylor. Newspaper accounts reveal that Mrs. Taylor’s gift was intended to preserve green space and views from her father‘s land—a central, natural high point in the area. A bit later, Julia’s aunt Flora bought and added land to the gift “just to preserve the view” to the Hudson River. The gifts of land from the Isham family are detailed on a bronze plaque in the stone wall surrounding a circular paved terrace situated above Broadway between 214th and Isham Streets. Samuel Isham, Julia’s brother, is quoted in the New York Times on March 24, 1912: “My father . . . re-graded the whole hill from top to bottom, planted nearly all of the trees that now remain . . . .” So the enormous gingko tree still seen at the Broadway entrance just above Isham Street, the former entrance to the estate, may have been planted by William Isham in the late 1860s.

In 1851, two brothers (sons of early 19th-century medical innovator Dr. Valentine Seaman) purchased a hillside property near the top of Manhattan and began to erect a substantial summer home constructed with locally-quarried white marble.

Cold Spring, Inwood, 1897. This is what photographer James Reuel Smith wrote about this water source: "The “Cold Spring” is some eight hundred feet south of the most northern point of Inwood, and on the east side of it. It is about one hundred feet from the shore of Spuyten Duyvil Creek, or as it has come to be known as in it’s enlarged and modernized condition, the Harlem Ship Canal. It is some six feet long east and west, and three feet wide north and south. Its water comes out from under a piece of rock, and a spring house is built over it of just the dimensions of the spring and some six feet high. This is the largest spring within the corporate limits of the City of New York. With the exception of the cottage of an old boatman, Abraham Seeley by name, there is not a house within a mile of this spring, but it pours forth as copious a stream as though its duties were to supply a city’s needs."

Seaman-Drake Mansion, 1933. The Seaman-Drake Mansion can be seen in the distance up the hill, while the upper corner of the entranceway arch can be seen at left. The mansion would be torn down five years after this photo was taken.