The Park Avenue Baptist church relocated to Riverside Drive and Claremont Avenue between west 120th and 122nd streets, one of the highest points in New York, overlooking the Hudson River, became the Riverside Church. This, "the City's greatest skyscraper church" was funded by John D. Rockefeller Jr. and designed by Henry C. Pelton in 1929. The church consists of a 60x 100 ft low vaulted auditorium designed for the best acoustics and visibility for 2,400 worshippers, with a bowling alley, basketball court, theatre, assembly rooms and a kitchen beneath it, and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial tower based on the façade of Chartes Cathedral. An astonishing 375-ft, it has 21 floors of offices and the largest carillon in the world. Its skyscraper form derived from the competition with commercial and residential towers in the urban fabric due to the rising cost of land as well as the expanded programmatic needs of the church with meeting rooms, classrooms, and social welfare facilities. "the ecclesiastical monument that best symbolizes an era in which modern commercial and social values continue to find their expression in largely traditional forms."

Morningside Heights is graced with the highest concentration of institutional complexes built in a relatively short period at the turn of the 20th century, both in the city and anywhere in the United States. It is home to monumental places of worship, higher learning and healing, which accentuate its backdrop of rowhouses and apartment buildings, culminating in streetscapes that are both elegant and eye-filling. Topographically, it is situated on a plateau historically known as Harlem Heights, while geographically it is bounded by West 110th Street to the south, West 125th Street to the north, and two Frederick Law Olmsted–designed parks to the east (Morningside Park) and to the west (Riverside Park). The first institution to move into the area was New York Hospital, which began purchasing land in 1816 to establish the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum (on the present-day campus of Columbia University) and the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum (on the present-day campus of St. John the Divine) in 1821 and 1834, respectively. The stigma of an insane asylum, compounded by inadequate transit access to the area, hindered other development until the late 19th century, when the hospital auctioned off its real estate holdings and relocated to White Plains in favor of more space and fresher air. The asylum’s relocation prompted a flurry of development by other institutions intent on expansion, starting with the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 1887 and followed by St. Luke’s Hospital, Columbia College and Teacher’s College in 1892. The introduction of the subway into Morningside Heights in 1904, coupled with the neighborhood’s magnificent parks and prestigious institutions, led to a frenzy of speculative apartment house construction, attracting middle-class residents who could now commute directly downtown to work. Even before the advent of zoning regulations for land use, developers erected rowhouses and modest apartment buildings on the side streets and grand apartment houses on the avenues, with particularly monumental examples on Riverside Drive, Claremont Avenue and Cathedral Parkway, and mixed-use commercial buildings along Broadway, giving the neighborhood a heterogeneous yet cohesive character. Morningside Heights’ unorthodox yet distinctive sense of place comes from the coexistence of residential and institutional clusters, as exemplified by elegant rowhouses and apartment buildings just steps away from renowned academic institutions and houses of worship. Today the neighborhood still enjoys this singular sense of place. Its institutions are impressive examples of Beaux-Arts planning and design, including the graceful approach to Grant’s Tomb, the entrance façades of St. John the Divine and Riverside Church aligned with the axes of 112th Street and 122nd Street, and especially Charles McKim’s plan for Columbia University, whose symmetry and axial layout emphasize the monumentality and unity of the surrounding architecture. The residential architecture, though sometimes grand, offers a human scale and balance to the whole neighborhood.

In the closing decades of the 19th century, New York underwent a profound physical and cultural transformation. Fueled by the wealth of the exploding financial and manufacturing sectors, the city rapidly evolved into a world-class metropolis. The bold ambitions of civic and business leaders, architects, and engineers of the era manifested in landmarks such as the vast Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the stately U.S. Custom House, the towering Municipal Building, and the original terminus of New York City’s first official subway line—the ornate City Hall stop. The sweeping interior spaces common to all of these structures, and hundreds of others, depended upon a venerable Mediterranean building technology adapted to contemporary American construction: arched tile ceilings—or vaults—that were not only self-supporting but could also bear the weight of floors or roofs above them. These vaults were designed and built by a single New York firm, founded by Spanish immigrant Rafael Guastavino (1842-1908) and later headed by his son Rafael Jr. (1872-1950). The Guastavinos’ patented system for building domes and vaults involved multiple layers of thin ceramic tiles bonded with quick-drying mortar. The resulting structures were not only exceptionally strong, but also lightweight, easy to build, and inherently beautiful, thanks to intricate patterns of exposed tile that formed finished, decorative surfaces. Guastavino vaults figured prominently in more than 1,000 projects across the nation, including 200 in Manhattan alone. During its 73-year history, the Guastavino Company helped build some of the most impressive interior spaces in America—veritable palaces for the people. This list based on MCNY's exhibition Palaces for the People, contains many of Guastavino's masterpieces in the five boroughs, both those that remain and those that have been lost to the wrecking ball.

Morningside Heights holds a very different ground than the Upper West Side - probably because it is home to Columbia University, Barnard College, the Manhattan School of Music, and other smaller schools. 🏫📚✍️ Explore the area between the Hudson and the Manhattan Schist…

The Vietnam War was a bloody conflict which lasted nearly 20 years. The United States entered the conflict because of the policy of Containment. Americans believed they needed to contain the spread of Communism in order to prevent the Domino Theory from playing out. This theory held that if one nation fell to Communism then surrounding nations would follow, much like if a person was to knock one domino tile down the others would fall in a chain reaction. As a result, the policy of Containment pursued a goal of containing or limiting Communism's spread by becoming involved in the affairs of nations at risk of turning "Red." With this in mind, US troops first arrived in Vietnam in 1955, and did not leave until 1973. Throughout those 18 years, American soldiers fought and died in the jungles of Vietnam. As time went on, many Americans grew frustrated with their nation's involvement in the conflict and began protesting to demand peace. This protest movement grew quickly and, at times, was marred by violence. However, the pressure put on the US government eventually helped to bring the troops home. Unfortunately, the 18 years, thousands of lives lost, and the millions of dollars spent ultimately proved ineffective at stopping Ho Chi Minh's communist regime from taking over Vietnam in 1975. To this day, the Vietnam War is considered one of America's darkest chapters. Its legacy continues to effect our nation and its veterans of the conflict in particular. As you read, consider how the Vietnam War shaped domestic feelings and movements and how people have come to remember the conflict today. NYS Social Studies Scope and Sequence Standards: 8.7, 8.9 & 11.9 For Teachers: Vietnam War @ Home Lesson Plan

2020 marks HDC's 50th anniversary! To celebrate 50 years of preserving history, we've picked out 10 sites (two from each borough) to highlight. The sites selected highlight the diverse and varied types of buildings and structures that HDC works to honor and promote.

"Riverside Drive, east side, south from and including West 122nd Street, showing the Riverside Church (Baptist). This view was taken from the esplanade of the Tomb of General U.S. Grant, 1936." Riverside Church is a huge Neo-Gothic structure that was opened in 1930. The church was the idea of industrialist and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. and pastor Harry Emerson Fosdick. They envisioned a interdenominational church, that would be open to all Christians in an historic part of the city. The church has a rich history of activism, advocacy and social service ministries. It has also hosted many prominent speakers including Martin Luther King Jr. and many other religious and political leaders.

New York, the city of great heights. Let's admire some buildings that were at one time the tallest!

Riverside Church Interior Collaborating with Harvard University physics professor Wallace Clement Sabine, Guastavino Jr. pioneered the use of acoustical tile in large public spaces. The neo-Gothic Riverside Church exemplifies the successful application of a proprietary Guastavino Company product called Akoustolith. Resembling blocks of heavy stone, the Akoustolith tiles form vaults that combine with a steel frame to create a hybrid load-bearing system with excellent acoustical properties.

January 31, 2019, would have been Jackie Robinson’s 100th birthday. In honor of this occasion, here are some locations in New York City where you can walk in the footsteps of an American hero.

A collection of churches across New York City from the New York Public Library.

Riverside Church, date unknown. The church building is the tallest church building in the United States and was designed by the firm of Allen, Pelton and Collens. The architects were commissioned by the church's funder John D. Rockefeller Jr. to travel in Europe for design inspiration and it is said that the large single bell tower (392 feet tall) is inspired by the towers of a cathedral in Laon, France. The tower and its basement floors not only housed the church's bells, but also provided space for offices, social rooms, classrooms, a bowling alley, and a theatre.

Riverside Church, detail, date unknown. The buttresses on this church (the architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall) are not structural as is most common. They are purely decorative, being too shallow to provide support and unneeded as the church is entirely supported by an underlying steel frame.

"At Riverside Church in Harlem on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a blistering and sophisticated critique of U. S. intervention in Vietnam. His 'Beyond Vietnam' speech was prescient in ways that continue to haunt our society into the present day... King left the pulpit at Riverside to a standing ovation, but the reaction outside those church walls the next day was swift and scathing. Nearly 170 white and black newspapers across the country denounced him and the speech." For more on King's in/famous speech, check out this article by Kristopher Burrell in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.