2553 Sage Place ca. 1936 This Spuyten Duyvil store was approximately 100 years old, and from the 1850s to the early 1930s housed a barber shop. One of the daughters of barber Peter Tarantino turned the shop into a luncheonette called “Ye Olde Country Store,” but the store failed, a victim of the Depression. The store was closed when Abbott visited, but she was able to photograph the store’s exterior and interior. The exterior view, which Abbott discarded, shows the rural character of the neighborhood, which lacked paved roads and sidewalks. The interior view shows the store’s original beaded wooden sealing board and hand-planed oak floors. The potbelly stove, wall clock, and wire-back chairs date from the turn of the century. The light streaming in from the windows casts a warm glow, lending the illusion of stability and order to the scene. Sage Place no longer exists. In the 1960s, the area was cleared for apartment buildings and a high school.

"West 230th Street, adjoining the N. W. corner of Broadway, showing the Macomb Mansion. In 1693 the house was known as "the public house at the north end of the bridge", and in 1776 as Cox's Tavern. Alexander Macomb bought the house in 1779. In the foreground is Spuyten Duyvil Creek. Also shown (right) is the elevated structure of the I.R.T. Van Cortlandt Park subway line, on Broadway." The Macomb Mansion was a sprawling house that included a section originally built in 1693. A residence, a watering hole, and once witness to nearby Revolutionary War action, the structure survived into the 20th century. When the nearby elevated trains of the I.R.T were constructed in 1907 the right of way very nearly touched the home. The house was demolished in 1919.

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.

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.

Kingsbridge Branch, data unknown. Designed by McKim, Mead & White and completed in 1905, the small neo-Federal Kingsbridge Branch was one of the smallest Carnegie's constructed in the city. It is only 3,700 square feet. The building, which it set far back from the sidewalk, is surrounded by a generous lawn. The library was decommissioned in 1958 when a new larger branch was built on West 231st Street. Today the structure functions as a pre-school.

"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.

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.

In the foreground of this 1906 photograph is Spuyten Duyvil Creek. The creek originally flowed around and to the north of the neighborhood known as Marble Hill. A narrow, somewhat meandering, but fast-flowing waterway, it was traversed by a few small bridges (such as the one seen here). The differences between high and low tide on this creek were so drastic that when low, one could wade through the creek, but when the water was at high tide a small ferry was needed to cross. Because the strait was so shallow it was not an appropriate shipping lane. The Harlem Shipping Canal was dug from a section of the creek in 1895 and as such Marble Hill was a temporary island sitting between the shipping canal to the south and the remaining section of the creek to the north. In 1914 the remaining creek was filled in, using rocks from the excavation of Grand Central Terminal. Since 1914 Marble Hill has been geographically attached to the Bronx while politically it remains part of Manhattan.

This plaque commemorates King's Bridge, one of the oldest bridges in New York City. The bridge connected Manhattan Island to the mainland over the narrowest point of Spuyten Duyvil Creek, which was a mere 4-feet in width. The first version of the bridge was built in 1693 by Frederick Philipse at what was known as "Wading Place" by Native Americans who lived in the area. The government sought to straighten the unruly Spuyten Duyvil in the 19th century and the four-foot span of the creek would be covered and rerouted to a wider area that could accommodate larger boats. The creek here was filled in 1913, according to photographs from the Municipal Archives collection. This plaque is located on a now-nonexistent crossing of Broadway between Manhattan and the Bronx.

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

Elevated trestle construction for the IRT Broadway—Seventh Avenue Line, at West 230th Street and Broadway, May 28, 1907. The near end of the elevated structure bears an advertisement for Terry & Tench Co., Steel Contractors; the Manhattan-based firm provided steel for a number of major infrastructure projects, including the IRT line and the Manhattan Bridge. The southward view includes the massive brick structure of the Third Avenue Railway Company's Kingsbridge Power House, located off of Ninth Avenue in Inwood.

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

On the neighborhood’s western edge, the eight-story John F. Kennedy High School building—now home to several smaller schools—similarly straddles the invisible Manhattan–Bronx dividing line.