Morningside Heights, New York

Morningside Heights is a neighborhood on the West Side of Upper Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by Morningside Drive to the east, 125th Street to the north, 110th Street to the south, and Riverside Drive to the west. Morningside Heights borders Central Harlem and Morningside Park to the east, Manhattanville to the north, the Manhattan Valley section of the Upper West Side to the south, and Riverside Park to the west. Broadway is the neighborhood's main thoroughfare, running north–south.

Morningside Heights, located on a high plateau between Morningside and Riverside Parks, was hard to access until the late 19th century and was sparsely developed except for the Bloomingdale and Leake and Watts asylums. Morningside Heights and the Upper West Side were considered part of the Bloomingdale District until Morningside Park was finished in the late 19th century. Large-scale development started in the 1890s with academic and cultural institutions. By the 1900s, public transportation construction and the neighborhood's first subway line led to Morningside Heights being developed into a residential neighborhood. Morningside Heights was mostly developed by the 1930s. During the mid-20th century, as the institutions within Morningside Heights expanded, cultural tensions grew between residents who were affiliated with institutions and those who were not. After a period of decline, the neighborhood started to gentrify in the 1980s and 1990s.

A large portion of Morningside Heights is part of the campus of Columbia University, a private Ivy League university. Morningside Heights contains numerous other educational institutions such as Teachers College, Barnard College, the Manhattan School of Music, Bank Street College of Education, Union Theological Seminary, and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Additionally, Morningside Heights includes several religious institutions, including the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Riverside Church, the Church of Notre Dame, Corpus Christi Church, and Interchurch Center. The neighborhood also contains other architectural landmarks, such as St. Luke's Hospital (now Mount Sinai Morningside) and Grant's Tomb.

Morningside Heights is part of Manhattan Community District 9. It is patrolled by the 26th Precinct of the New York City Police Department. Fire services are provided by the New York City Fire Department's Engine Company 47 and Engine Company 37/Ladder Company 40. Politically it is represented by the New York City Council's 7th District.

History

Precolonial and colonial period

Initially, Manhattan was settled by the Lenape Native Americans, who referred to the area nearby as "Muscota" or "Muscoota", meaning "place of rushes". The nearest Native American settlements were Rechewanis and Konaande Kongh in present-day Central Park, to the southeast of modern Morningside Heights. Additionally, a Native American path in the area was adapted into part of modern-day Riverside Drive. However, the region remained relatively hard to access because of the steep topography. Prior to the beginning of the 18th century, most travel within modern New York City was made via water, since there were few roads in the region.

Dutch settlers occupied Manhattan in the early 17th century and called the nearby area "Vredendal", meaning "peaceful dale". The western boundary of New Harlem was drawn through the present-day Morningside Park in 1666, running from 74th Street at the East River to 124th Street at the North River (now Hudson River) on the neighborhood's western edge. The area to the west of the boundary, present-day Morningside Heights, was originally the common lands of British-occupied New York. In 1686, New York colonial governor Thomas Dongan granted the city of New York the patent to a triangular area between West 107th to 124th Streets, extending west to the Hudson River. The city sold the land to Jacob De Key in 1701. An easy connection to the rest of the modern-day city was made two years later, when Bloomingdale Road (modern-day Broadway) was extended north from Lower Manhattan to 117th Street. Harman Vandewater acquired part of the De Key farm by 1735, and it was called Vandewater Heights by 1738.

On September 16, 1776, the Battle of Harlem Heights was fought in the area, with the most intense fighting occurring in a sloping wheat field that is now the location of Barnard College. A plaque by the Columbia University gate on 117th Street and Broadway commemorates this battle. Vandewater Heights was sold by 1785 to James W. De Peyster. His brother, Nicholas De Peyster, bought the land directly to the west, along the shoreline.

19th-century development

Though a grid for Manhattan Island would be laid out in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, the present-day Morningside Heights would remain sparsely developed for the next half-century, with the exception of the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum and the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum. The Society for New York Hospital had started buying lots between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenues north of 113th Street in 1816, and opened the Bloomingdale Asylum in 1821. Leake and Watts Services purchased the Society's land east of Amsterdam Avenue between 110th and 113th Streets in 1834, and Ithiel Town's design for the Leake and Watts Asylum was completed in 1843. In addition, the Croton Aqueduct ran above ground through the modern neighborhood, opening in 1842.

Through the late 19th century, Bloomingdale Road was the only connection to the rest of Manhattan. A stagecoach line along Bloomingdale Road, founded in 1819, was expanded to modern Morningside Heights and Manhattanville four years later. Mansions were developed on the shore, and William Dixon erected small wood-frame houses on 110th Street, which would be referred to as "Dixonville". In 1846, the Hudson River Railroad (later the West Side Line and Hudson Line) was built along the Hudson River waterfront, connecting New York City to Albany.

By an act of the New York State Legislature passed in 1865, the commissioners of Central Park had the responsibility of executing the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 within Upper Manhattan. The same year, Central Park commissioner William R. Martin put forth the first proposal for a park and scenic road along the Hudson River, which later became Riverside Park and Riverside Drive. On the opposite side of the modern-day neighborhood, to the east, Central Park commissioner Andrew Haswell Green proposed Morningside Park in 1867 to avoid the expense of expanding the Manhattan street grid across extremely steep terrain. Landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted was hired for both projects: he designed Riverside Drive and Park in 1873–1875, and he co-designed Morningside Park with Calvert Vaux in 1873, with further revisions to the latter in 1887. The section of Riverside Drive and Park in the Bloomingdale District, of which modern-day Morningside Heights was considered to be part, was completed by 1880. Morningside Park was completed in 1895.

Though several other infrastructure improvements were made, development in the region above 110th Street was slow until the 1890s. Broadway, a wide avenue with medians, opened in 1868 as the "Boulevard" and replaced the former Bloomingdale Road. New pipes for the Croton Aqueduct were laid in 1865, and a still-extant gatehouse at 113th Street was erected later. Plans to relocate the Bloomingdale Asylum were considered as early as 1870, but the Panic of 1873 stalled any additional planning for the rest of the decade. The Ninth Avenue elevated was extended north from the Bloomingdale District to Harlem in 1879, but its route largely skipped the highlands north of 110th Street, as its route shifted eastward at 110th Street. An elevated station at 110th Street and Manhattan Avenue was not opened until 1903, and even then, it was hard to access due to the steep topography. Thus, while the Upper West Side to the south and Hamilton Heights to the north were developed with row houses by the 1880s, the intervening area had almost no new development. ''The Real Estate Record and Guide'' stated that it was "difficult to explore the region without a guide" because of the lack of development there.

1890s through 1930s

In 1886, real estate figures and politicians started advocating for the relocation of both asylums in the neighborhood. The asylums were seen as holding up development in the area. The Bloomingdale Asylum had twice rejected offers to purchase its land: first in 1880, when Ulysses S. Grant advocated for a world's fair to be held there three years later, and then in 1888, when the area was being considered as the site of the World's Columbian Exposition to be held during 1892.

The Bloomingdale Asylum moved to a site in suburban Westchester County in 1888, followed by the Leake and Watts Asylum three years later. Their respective campuses were purchased by Columbia University, which could not expand their existing campus at the present site of Rockefeller Center in Midtown Manhattan; and the Episcopal Diocese of New York, which had been looking for sites to build their main cathedral, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Several other educational institutions were soon constructed in the area, including Barnard College, Teachers College, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and Union Theological Seminary. Medical institutions moved there as well, such as St. Luke's Hospital and the Woman's Hospital.

New name and first residential buildings

In the 1890s, following Morningside Park's completion, several figures began advocating for the use of the name "Morningside Heights" for the region between 110th and 125th Streets. The name "Bloomingdale" was also used for the area around the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum. However, other names such as "Morningside Hill" and "Riverside Heights" were used for the area. When construction started on Columbia University, Teachers College, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and St. Luke's Hospital in the mid-1890s, no single name was commonly used for the neighborhood. Two names eventually gained the most use; "Morningside Heights" was preferred by the two colleges, while "Cathedral Heights" was preferred by St. John's and St. Luke's. After about 1898, "Morningside Heights" became the most generally accepted, although the diocese at St. John's continued to call the neighborhood "Cathedral Heights" well into the 20th century.

Additionally, Manhattan's population was growing rapidly, exceeding one million in 1890. Speculative developers, hoping to cater to Morningside Heights' institutions and Manhattan's increasing population, started erecting the first row houses in the area in 1892–1893. These early buildings were designed in the Colonial, Georgian, or Renaissance Revival styles, in contrast to the architecture of the older row houses in nearby neighborhoods. These developers saw mixed success: while some houses sold quickly, others languished for a decade or were foreclosed. The Morningside Protective Association, established in 1896, unsuccessfully attempted to limit the proliferation of low-rise development. The first tenements in Morningside Heights were built toward the end of the 1890s and were among the only Old Law Tenements built in the neighborhood.

Academic Acropolis development

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, on Amsterdam Avenue between 110th and 113th Streets, had been the first institution to commit to building in Morningside Heights. However, construction proceeded very slowly: the first portion of the cathedral did not open until 1911, and the cathedral remained incomplete a century later. Nonetheless, its presence led other institutions to move to the neighborhood. The first of these was St. Luke's Hospital, which in 1892 purchased the site directly north of the cathedral as a direct result of influence from cathedral secretary George Macculloch Miller. Built to designs by Ernest Flagg, the first five pavilions in the hospital opened in 1896, with three additional pavilions being added later. Next was Cady, Berg & See's Home for Old Men and Aged Couples, built at Amsterdam Avenue and 112th Street and opened in 1896. Third to come was the Woman's Hospital at Amsterdam Avenue and 110th Street, which was designed by Frederick R. Allen of Allen & Collens and completed in 1906. While these projects led to Morningside Heights being known as an "Academic Acropolis", they did not significantly alter the character of the neighborhood.
By the late 1890s and early 1900s, Morningside Heights' academic institutions were growing rapidly. The most prominent of these was Columbia University, whose president Seth Low had commissioned Charles Follen McKim of the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White to design the new Morningside Heights campus in 1893. The plan consisted of 15 buildings and a South Court on the east side of Broadway between 116th and 120th Streets, centered around the university's major library, Low Memorial Library. The Low Library was constructed between 1895 and 1897, along with most of the other original structures, and the first classes at the new campus were held in October 1897. Several campus expansions occurred shortly afterward, including Earl Hall in 1902; the first dormitories, Hartley Hall and Livingston Hall, in 1905; South Field, purchased in 1903; St. Paul's Chapel, completed in 1907; and numerous classrooms and other buildings. Columbia's presence in Morningside Heights led to a significant change in the neighborhood's character, and was dubbed by the ''Real Estate Record and Guide'' as "the largest single factor ..in promoting private real estate and building activity on the plateau".

Just across Broadway to the west was the campus of Barnard College, a women's college. In 1895, philanthropist Elizabeth Milbank Anderson donated funds on the condition that Charles A. Rich was hired to design the campus. Before funds ran out, Rich ultimately designed the Milbank, Brinckerhoff, and Fiske Halls, which held their first classes in October 1897. Immediately north was Teachers College, which became affiliated with Columbia University in 1893 and merged with the latter in 1897. The buildings for this campus were designed by William Appleton Potter. The first structure in the complex, Main Hall, was completed in late 1894; the last, Milbank Memorial Hall, was finished three years later. Both Barnard and Teachers Colleges saw rapid growth in the early 20th century. Only three structures were built for Barnard, resulting in overcrowding; by contrast, numerous large facilities were erected for Teachers College, including a gymnasium, manual arts building, household arts building, and dormitories.

Other institutions of higher education on Morningside Heights were developed in the early 20th century, the first of which was the new campus of the Union Theological Seminary between Broadway and Claremont Avenue from 120th to 122nd Streets. The campus was composed of several Gothic Revival structures, designed by architects Allen & Collens and arranged around a quadrangle. The structures were completed by 1910, and expanded soon after with the construction of the Stone Gym in 1912 (now part of Riverside Church), and a dormitory on Claremont Avenue erected in 1931–1932. Two musical institutions, the Institute of Musical Art and the Juilliard School (which later merged), settled immediately north of the Union Theological Seminary. The Institute of Musical Art constructed its building within 21 weeks in 1910 and had its first classes that same year. The Juilliard building was completed in 1931. The final structure to be built was the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, across Broadway to the east of Juilliard, whose buildings were completed in 1930. Riverside Church, to the west of the Union Theological Seminary, was completed the same year.

Apartment developments and subway construction

There was still little residential development in the first decade of the 20th century. A small concentration of beer gardens began to develop around the "Dixonville" on 110th Street. The New York State Tenement House Act of 1901 drastically changed the regulations to which tenement buildings had to conform. To fit these new regulations, the architects of the different developments drew up several general plans to maximize the amount of floor space in each building, while also ensuring every residential unit had windows that faced either a courtyard or the street. The more common plans included "L", "I", "O", or "U"-shaped designs. Several buildings were erected close to Broadway in anticipation of the construction of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company's first subway line (now part of the New York City Subway's Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line, serving the ). These buildings contained features that were considered innovative at the time, such as electric lighting, soundproofed and parquet floors, tiled bathrooms with porcelain fixtures, and long-distance telephone lines. Since the character of the neighborhood had not yet been developed, early-1900s apartment buildings tended to be erected "modestly", with little ornamentation.

The subway opened in October 1904 with stations at 110th, 116th, and 125th Streets, providing a direct connection to Lower Manhattan, the city's economic center at the time. In subsequent years, developers erected larger buildings for the middle class, which had been made feasible by the area's proximity to the subway. Between 1903 and 1911, at least 75 apartment buildings were built in the neighborhood. By 1906, there were 27 such developments underway, including structures on which work had started before the 1901 law had been passed. A ''Real Estate Record and Guide'' article published in August 1906 described Morningside Heights as New York City's "most distinctive high-class apartment house quarter". Units on Riverside Drive, despite being further from the subway, were generally more expensive because of their riverfront views.

Jewish and Italian developers had a large influence in early-20th century development in Morningside Heights. For instance, the Italian-American Paterno brothers, along with their brothers-in-law, built The Paterno, The Colosseum, and several other large apartment buildings in the area. Two members of the family, Michael Paterno and Victor Cerabone, also started their own firms and built structures in Morningside Heights. The majority of Morningside Heights developers were Jewish, although most of these Jewish developers created only a few buildings. More prolific Jewish developers in Morningside Heights created companies that either carried their family names or had more generic names that hid their family's background. Such developers included Carlyle Realty, B. Crystal & Son, and Carnegie Construction. According to Andrew Dolkart, architectural historian at Columbia University, more than half of the early apartment housing in Morningside Heights was developed by one of three firms: George Pelham, Neville & Bagge, or Schwartz & Gross

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