St. Stephen’s United Methodist Church, built in 1897, is at the base of Marble Hill.

St. Stephen's United Methodist Church, 1932. A Methodist congregation, known as Mosholu Methodists was established in the Bronx in 1825. In 1835 the congregation was incorporated as The Methodist Episcopal Church Bethel and their first church building was located at 251st Street and Old Albany Post Road. After a name change (to St. Stephen's) and a move, the parish would build its current home in 1897. The Victorian church building might be one of the most quaint church buildings in the city with its oak-frame structure, weathered shingles, fieldstone base, and small tower. Despite the many drastic changes to the neighborhood-- not least of which is the fact that Marble Hill, once geographically attached to Manhattan, is now firmly on the mainland of the Bronx-- St. Stephen's remains. After a thorough restoration, the church was rededicated in 2010.

Kingsbridge Power House, ca. 1905. Built by the Third Avenue Railway Company, the Kingsbridge Power House provided electricity for the large network of trolleys that traveled through Manhattan. Called the "largest in the world" when it opened in the first years of the 20th century, the power generating station allowed for the replacement of cable-driven trolleys with electric powered street cars. The imposing Romanesque brick building was designed by engineer Isaac A. Hopper and measured 320 long by 250 feet wide. The building served the trolley system through the mid 1920s before its machines were turned off and the building abandoned. The structure was demolished sometime after trolley service was discontinued in 1948.

At the southeastern edge of the neighborhood are the Marble Hill Houses, a public housing complex built in 1952, and now home to the majority of the area’s residents. Four of the complex’s eleven towers fall in the Bronx.

"Looking north from the Harlem River Ship Canal at 225th Street, 1920." The Bridge seen here is the Broadway Bridge, a span originally constructed when the Spuyten Duyvil Creek was widened and deepened. The first modern bridge here was completed in 1895, opening when the new Shipping Canal opened. The bridge, designed by Alfred Boller, a civil engineer, was a single-deck steel swing bridge. Due to the development of the subway, and the bridge needing to accommodate subway traffic, it was replaced within the first decade of the 20th century. This photograph depicts the second modern bridge, a double-deck swing span. The earlier bridge was actually floated down the river in an extremely complex process and was installed and renovated as the University Heights Bridge at West 207th Street. The second bridge survived until 1962 when it was replaced by the double-deck lift span, which can be seen today.

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.

The vernacular brick housing stock seen in this photograph is common of residential neighborhoods in the outer boroughs, largely developed in the pre-war period. The infrastructure work being done on the street here is being performed by workers of the Works Progress Administration. During the New Deal programs of the Great Depression, workers repaired street paving, and curbs and constructed parks, bridges, airports, and roads.

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.

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.

Marble Hill is Manhattan’s northernmost neighborhood—so far north, in fact, that it’s no longer physically connected to the rest of the borough. Though politically tied to Manhattan, Marble Hill is geographically part of the Bronx. But it wasn’t always so. Until the late 19th century, Marble Hill sat at the northern tip of Manhattan Island, separated from the mainland by the swirling waters of Spuyten Duyvil Creek. A modest 88-foot span, known as the King’s Bridge, linked it to the mainland in what is today considered the Bronx—a crossing the New York Times once called “the first impulse of the early city toward expansion.” In the late 1800s, efforts to create a more navigable connection between the Hudson and Harlem Rivers led to the construction of the Harlem River Ship Canal. The project effectively severed Marble Hill from the rest of Manhattan. Then, in 1913, the remainder of Spuyten Duyvil Creek was filled in, permanently fusing the former chunk of Manhattan to the Bronx. This geographic sleight of hand has sparked more than a century of confusion, marked by hostile incursions, attempted takeovers, and lingering debates over Marble Hill’s true identity. https://theneighborhoods.substack.com/p/marble-hill-manhattan

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.

Construction on the southern end of the Broadway Bridge spanning the Harlem River Ship Canal, March 21, 1906.