![Ginkgo biloba tree, Isham Park](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Ginkgo_biloba_tree%2C_Isham_Park.jpg)
Isham Park is a historic park located in
Inwood,
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
,
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
. The park was created in large part through gifts to the city from the Isham family of land from the
William Bradley Isham estate. It sits roughly between
Broadway
Broadway may refer to:
Theatre
* Broadway Theatre (disambiguation)
* Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
** Broadway (Manhattan), the street
**Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...
, Isham Street, Seaman Avenue, and West 214th and 215th Streets.
["Isham Park"](_blank)
New York City Geographic Information System map
The park once extended to the
Harlem River
The Harlem River is an tidal strait in New York, United States, flowing between the Hudson River and the East River and separating the island of Manhattan from the Bronx on the New York mainland.
The northern stretch, also called the Spuyt ...
, but after the creation of
Inwood Hill Park
Inwood Hill Park is a public park in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. On a high schist ridge that rises above the Hudson River from Dyckman Street to the n ...
and the reconfiguration of area streets, the boundary became, for the most part, Seaman Avenue, although the baseball fields across the street are considered to be part of Isham Park and not Inwood Hill Park.
The extent of the current park now equals that of the original Isham estate. The Isham mansion, which originally came with the park gift, was torn down in the 1940s due to its deteriorating condition.
Isham Park is noted at its southern end for some exposed marble outcroppings which date from the Cambrian period. This is a popular location for college geology classes to visit. There is a public garden in the northeastern corner. Much of the rest of the park has trees and brush growing in a rather wild manner, although the center of the park at the top of the hill is a grass lawn.
History
William Bradley Isham (pronounced ), was a leather merchant whose factories and warehouses were located at 91 and 93 Gold Street and 61 Cliff Street, and who also became the vice-president and later a director of the
Bank of the Metropolis
The Bank of the Metropolis was a bank in New York City that operated between 1871 and 1918. The bank was originally located at several addresses around Union Square in Manhattan before finally moving to 31 Union Square West, a 16-story Renaissa ...
, and the president of the Bond and Mortgage Guarantee Company. Isham was a successful man. He was a patron of the
American Museum of Natural History, a member of the prestigious
Down Town Association
The Down Town Association in the City of New York, usually referred to as the Down Town Association, is a private club in the Financial District of Manhattan, New York City. Located at 60 Pine Street, between William and Pearl Streets, it is ...
, the
New-York Historical Society
The New-York Historical Society is an American history museum and library in New York City, along Central Park West between 76th and 77th Streets, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The society was founded in 1804 as New York's first museum ...
and the
Chicago Historical Society
Chicago History Museum is the museum of the Chicago Historical Society (CHS). The CHS was founded in 1856 to study and interpret Chicago's history. The museum has been located in Lincoln Park since the 1930s at 1601 North Clark Street at the int ...
, the
Metropolitan Club
The Metropolitan Club of New York is a private social club on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded as a gentlemen's club in 1891 for men only, but it was one of the first major clubs in New York to admit women, t ...
and the Riding Club, the
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the f ...
, the New England Club, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
and the
New York Botanical Garden
The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) is a botanical garden at Bronx Park in the Bronx, New York City. Established in 1891, it is located on a site that contains a landscape with over one million living plants; the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, ...
. He lived at 5
East 61st Street near
Fifth Avenue.
In 1862, Isham rented as a summer residence a house and property in uptown Manhattan, in the neighborhood now known as
Inwood, from the estate of Dr. Floyd T. Ferris, a well-known physician who had died seven years earlier. The two-story house had been built in the 1850s and was later described as "...an interesting brick and frame building of peculiar shape, having a spacious central hall with a winding staircase and gallery from which the rooms extend in three wings...". With four wings laid out as a cross, with the entrance to the house in the central area, improved the light and ventilation available for each of the wings, and the house's placement on a hilltop in the middle of Manhattan Island, with views of both the Hudson River to the west and the Harlem River to the east insured that the estate would always be subject to cool breezes.
["History of Inwood's Ishham Park"](_blank)
''My Inwood''
Two years after first renting it, Isham bought the property as his summer estate. It included of land, the two-story house, a greenhouse, a gardener's cottage, a stable, and a cold spring, one of the few natural sources of fresh water in the area.
James Reuel Smith said about the spring in 1898 that
it is at the foot of one of four little fruit trees, which, with two others a short distance away, are all that is left of what was perhaps long ago a flourishing orchard. The tree behind the spring looks like a peach tree. Buttercups grow around it. Wild birds sing in the four fruit trees and drink at the spring. Their piping song mingles with the whistling tugs on the Canal.The spring rises at the base of a small rock. It is eighteen inches deep and about twenty inches across. Natural rock forms the back of its basin, and in the front a piece of white Kingsbridge marble, which has become slimy and yellowish-brown.Bubbles rise from the bottom, which is somewhat sandy and over which a conical fungus grows. The water is not cold but cool. Although exposed to the direct rays of the sun. I drank from it, and found it a trifle salty.
Later, William's son Samuel described the condition of the estate when his father bought it:
It was then very rough, much of it a tangled thicket of red cedars, but the lawns about the house had been carefully kept up. He cleared it, moved the stable from the top of the hill... regraded the whole hill from top to bottom, planted nearly all of the trees that now remain, and in fact remade the place ... At that time the surroundings were only beginning to be suburban. The Kingsbridge Road ow Broadwaywas a good dirt country road – long regretted by us after it had been graded and widened, for the new street remained for years unpaved – a waste of dust in dry weather and a slough of mud in wet.Our house ... has remained almost unchanged. In fact, its peculiar plan rendered extension practically impossible. ... From our gate up to the north end of the island extends almost the only marble formation in Manhattan. (I have the impression that there is one other.) Down by the creek there were kilns built to burn the marble into lime.The old stone building, hich became a barn was used to store the lime, which was shipped in sloops from a dock in the creek. This end of the place was probably its main center of activity a century ago. There was a small house there in 1862 used by the gardener, and though that was comparatively recent, there were other signs like apple orchards and the like which indicated that a farmhouse had stood there. A stronger argument is a spring of pure, cold water on the bank at the edge of the swamp. Near this spring asa cherry tree which must now be well over 100 years old and which shows its age. It used to yield an abundance of dark sweet cherries, and I suppose it may be the sole surviving specimen of the ‘Dyckman Cherry’ a species famous in its day, but now supposed to be extinct.[Isham, Samuel quoted i]
"History of Inwood's Ishham Park"
''My Inwood''
When Isham was having a wall built or reconstructed along the Broadway edge of the estate, a workman found an old milestone that reads "12 Miles from New York", which had once stood on the Kingsbridge Road (which became Broadway). When Isham found out about it, he had the milestone built into the wall, just north of the entrance to the estate, where it still exists.
Unfortunately because the milestone was made of soft brownstone, all the original lettering has worn away.
Isham operated the property as a farm, but, according to his son, for pleasure and not for profit.
He is said to have harvested the last wheat grown on Manhattan Island, some of which was sent to the
1893 Chicago World's Fair
The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, hel ...
.
From estate to park
William Isham died in 1909 in his house on 61st Street, and in June 1911, his daughter, Julia Isham Taylor presented almost of the estate to New York City on the condition that it be made into a park named after her father.
Her aunt, Flora E. Isham followed suit in March of the following year. In September 1912, more than 5,000 people celebrated the gift of the new park, with a march to the park, speeches by dignitaries, and folk dances performed by children.
In March 1915, Samuel, who died of an aneurysm June 1914, bequeaths to the city another 24 lots of land, which the city receives in April 1915.
In October 1917, Taylor bought the land at the corner of Isham Street and Seaman Avenue, well known for its outcrop of marble, and gave it to the city to add to the park. She also presents another 22 lots of land in December 1917.
Then, in 1922, the Ishams sell off the last remaining portion of their estate to a developer. This will result in the line of buildings on Isham Street just south of the entrance to Isham Park.
At around this time, the city itself expands the park by purchasing land in 1925 and 1927.
The idea of creating
Inwood Hill Park
Inwood Hill Park is a public park in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. On a high schist ridge that rises above the Hudson River from Dyckman Street to the n ...
has been revived, and the city purchases or condemns many acres of land in the area. At first, these were all added to Isham Park, but eventually, Isham Park was restored to approximately the boundaries of the Isham estates, and the remaining land aggregated into Inwood Hill Park.
The Isham house was part of the gift to the city, and for many years it was used for various civic-related activities, including a museum and a place for the
Daughters of the American Revolution to meet. Due to the poor condition of the house, however, it and the greenhouse were demolished in the 1940s by Commissioner of Parks
Robert Moses, although a large garden remained until at least 1912.
At some point in the 1930s a cement platform was placed in the park at the corner of Isham Street and Park Terrace. A
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
cannon was placed there, but in 1943 was removed to be melted down and reused in
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
. Children who played there were told it would be replaced after that war, but this has never been done and the platform has deteriorated and collapsed.
A plaque in the park provides some details on the way the park was assembled. It reads:
The park celebrated its centennial on September 29, 2012.
Annual events
Although the park lacks any fixed programming, as a neighborhood gathering place Isham Park hosts two family-friendly annual events organized by local residents - the Isham Park Egg Hunt" held each spring around Easter, and the "Inwood Pumpkin Pageant"
"Isham Park Pumpkin Pageant"
/ref> displaying the community's Halloween jack-o-lanterns every November 1. Both events attract hundreds of local participants.
Many other seasonal events are held, including concerts, food co-ops, gardening events and regular events in nearby Bruce's Garden.
Boundaries
The southeastern boundary of the park is Broadway – originally Kingsbridge Road – between one city-lot northeast of Isham Street and a complex of apartment buildings between where West 213th and 214th Streets would be.
The southwest boundary is the rear property line of the buildings on Isham Street between Broadway and Park Terrace West, and then Isham Street itself to Seaman Avenue.
The northwest boundary is nominally Seaman Avenue between Isham Street and West 214th Street, except that the baseball diamonds on the other side of Seaman are considered part of Isham Park and not Inwood Hill Park.
The northeast boundary is complex. It begins at West 214th Street between Seaman and Park Terrace West, except that 214th Street there is a set of stairs and not a street. In the next section, between Park Terrace West and Park Terrace west, the park's boundary is the rear property line of the buildings on the southwest side of West 215th Street. Finally, as stated above, between Park Terrace East and Broadway, the boundary is the property line of the apartment complex between where West 213th and 214th Streets would be.
Gallery
File:Isham Park bench 1.jpg, This bench is inscribed:
"In Memory Of A Home
Of Integrity and Affection"
File:Isham Park plaque.jpg, The plaque mentioned above is situated opposite from the two marble benches.
File:Isham Park bench 2.jpg, This bench is inscribed:
"In That Mansion Used To Be
Free Hearted Hospitality"
See also
*
* New York City Parks Department
The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, also called the Parks Department or NYC Parks, is the department of the government of New York City responsible for maintaining the city's parks system, preserving and maintaining the ecolog ...
References
External links
*
{{Protected areas of New York City
Parks in Manhattan
Urban public parks
Inwood, Manhattan