Marble Hill, Manhattan

Marble Hill has been occupied since the Dutch colonial period. On August 18, 1646, Governor Willem Kieft, the Dutch Director of New Netherland, signed a land grant to Mattius Jansen van Keulan and Huyck Aertsen which included the whole of the present community. Johannes Verveelen petitioned the Harlem authorities to move his ferry from what is now the East River and 125th Street to Spuyten Duyvil Creek because the creek was shallow enough to wade across, thus providing a means of evading the toll. The ferry charter was granted in 1667. Many settlers circumvented the toll for the ferry by crossing the creek from northern Marble Hill to modern Kingsbridge, Bronx, a point where it was feasible to wade or swim through the waters.[7][8] In 1669 Verveelen transplanted his ferry to the northern tip of Marble Hill, at today's Broadway and West 231st Street.[8][9]

Two bridges connected Marble Hill with the mainland: the King's Bridge[10][11][12] and the Dyckman Free Bridge.[8][12] In 1693 Frederick Philipse, a Dutch nobleman who had sworn allegiance to the Crown upon the British takeover of Dutch New Netherlands, built the King's Bridge at Marble Hill near what is now West 230th Street in the Bronx.[10][11][13] Originally a merchant in New Amsterdam, Philipse had purchased vast landholdings in what was then Westchester County.[10] Granted the title Lord of Philipse Manor, he established a plantation and provisioning depot for his shipping business upriver on the Hudson in present-day Sleepy Hollow. His toll bridge provided access and opened his land to settlement. Later, it carried the Boston Post Road.[10][11]

Original course of Spuyten Duyvil Creek and location of King's Bridge and Marble Hill area

In 1758, the Free Bridge was erected by Jacob Dyckman and Benjamin Palmer.[8] It opened on January 1, 1759.[7][14] Its purpose was to serve the farmers who refused to pay the toll.[11] Stagecoach service was later established across the span.[10][13] The new bridge proceeded to take much of the traffic away from the King's Bridge.[7][14]

One of the local visiting spots during this period was a tavern operated by the Dyckman family. They had a tavern called the Black Horse Inn, located just south of McGowan's Pass in what is now East Drive of Central Park, near 102nd Street.[15] The Dyckmans sold the Black Horse to finance a new operation on the west side of Broadway and 226th Street that was to be managed by Benjamin Palmer, who owned property on City Island. It was situated to cater to the traffic from both bridges. In 1772 the Dyckmans sold the tavern to Caleb Hyatt and was known by the new owner's name as Hyatt's Tavern at the Free Bridge.[16]

When hostilities broke out at the start of the American Revolution, the Continental Army constructed a fort on Marble Hill as part of a series of forts to defend the area. By November 1776, the fort had been taken over by Hessian forces and renamed Fort Prince Charles in honor of Charles, Duke of Brunswick, brother-in-law to George III. Despite contrary beliefs, the King's Bridge and the Dyckman Free Bridge served as escape routes for the retreating American forces after the Battle of Fort Washington on November 16, 1776. The latter of these bridges was destroyed during the war.[8] In January 1777, an American attack was made in the Marble Hill area against the Hessian occupiers. This particular raid was under the command of General William Heath, which, when the cannons opened up, forced the Hessians to retreat from the tavern to the fort to return fire.

St Stephen's United Methodist Church

Hyatt's Tavern remained in the Hyatt family until 1807, when it was leased to James Devoe. The building was eventually razed, succeeded by the Kingsbridge Hotel on the east side of Broadway at 226th Street.[16] The hotel had a mansard roof and a central turret. It catered to the anglers and sportsman who came to the area either by the Hudson River Railroad Company or boat service up the Harlem River. One of the meals served at the hotel was turtle dinner, which became a favorite of the guests.[16] The hotel's business declined when Broadway was widened and interest was lost in the community. The hotel eventually fell into disrepair and was torn down in 1917.[16]

Philipse Manor was also forfeited to the state legislature after the war. Afterward, the King's Bridge was free.[7][10] In 1817, Curtis and John Bolton purchased land in the area, laying a road called Bolton Road.[17] Their home was on the south side of the community and included a marble mill.[18]

The name of Marble Hill was conceived when Darius C. Crosby came up with the name in 1891 from the 100-to-500-foot-deep (30 to 152 m)[19] deposits of dolomite marble underlying it, a relatively soft rock that crops out in Inwood and Marble Hill, known as Inwood marble. The marble was quarried for the federal buildings in lower Manhattan when New York was the capital of the United States in the 1780s.[20]

Saint Stephen's United Methodist Church, a community fixture since its 1898 construction, is located at 228th Street and Marble Hill Avenue.[21] It is the third structure of the same name, as well as one of the oldest remaining buildings in Marble Hill. The congregation was founded on Mosholu Parkway in 1826 and was incorporated a decade later, making it one of the earliest religious institutions in the area. It moved to another structure in Riverdale in 1876.[22] The church building was restored in the 1950s, and again in 2010.[21] One of its corners, the one closest to the intersection, has a tall bell tower. There are circular stained glass windows facing both streets. Inside is an Akron Plan-inspired setup with balconies and an auditorium that is laid out like an amphitheater.[21] One of the pastors of St. Stephen's was Reverend William Tieck, who served the church from 1946 to 1977. Tieck was the official Bronx County historian from 1989 to 1996, authoring several books about the Bronx.[11][23]

Detail from an 1896 map, showing Marble Hill (pink) as an island

After an increase in ship traffic in the 1890s, the United States Army Corps of Engineers determined that a wide canal was needed for a shipping route between the Hudson and Harlem rivers. Such a canal had been proposed since the early 19th century.[13][24] In the 1810s, a narrow canal had been dug through the south end of Marble Hill at approximately 222nd Street, known as "Boltons' Canal" or "Dyckman Canal".[25][26][27]

Construction of such a waterway, the Harlem River Ship Channel,[28] finally started in January 1888.[29][30] The canal was to be 400 feet (120 m) in width and had a depth of 15 feet (4.6 m) to 18 feet (5.5 m). It would be cut directly through the rock of Dyckman's Meadow, making a straight course to the Hudson River.[10][29]

The first section of the canal, the cut at Marble Hill, was completed in 1895 and opened on June 17 of that year.[8][31][32] Several festivities including parades were held to commemorate the occasion.[32][33] This rendered Marble Hill an island bounded by the canal to the south and the original course of the Harlem River to the north.[34] The Greater New York Charter of 1897 designated Marble Hill as part of the Borough of Manhattan.[35] A bridge opened over the former Marble Hill alignment of the creek in 1900, carrying Broadway. The bridge's superstructure was demolished shortly afterward, with the construction of the IRT subway above Broadway in 1904.[36]

Effective January 1, 1914, by an act of the New York State Legislature, Bronx County was created, but Marble Hill remained as part of New York County.[37][38] Later in 1914, the old river was filled in with 51 acres (21 ha) of landfill,[27] physically connecting Marble Hill to the Bronx and the rest of the North American mainland.[39][40] Both the King's and Dyckman Free Bridges were covered over with landfill.[12] The bridge carrying Broadway over the former alignment of the creek at 230th Street was destroyed in the late 1920s.[36] At 210 West 230th Street, at the southwest corner with Broadway, is a plaque designating the area as the site of the King's Bridge. The site of the Dyckman Free Bridge is located on the grounds of today's Marble Hill Houses.[11]

Six-story apartment houses were constructed in the 20th century, and in the early 1950s urban renewal came to the area. A complex was built bounded by Broadway, Exterior Street and 225th Street and was called the Marble Hill Houses. This property was acquired by New York City on August 26, 1948. The houses were completed in 1952.[41] Part of the acquisition became the Marble Hill Playground, which is located on Marble Hill Avenue between 228th and 230th Streets.[41] Despite the name, only seven of the 11 towers are actually in Marble Hill; the other four are in Kingsbridge.[27]

Out of Marble Hill's 4,000 households, only 135 lived in private houses as of 1995,[35] down from 138 such households in 1989.[42] The majority of Marble Hill's 9,481 residents (as of the 2010 United States Census)[2][3] live in the Marble Hill Houses.[27] There are also Art Deco apartment buildings lining some streets. These buildings even boast one pedestrian alley, Marble Hill Lane, in a manner similar to in Inwood and surrounding Bronx neighborhoods.[11]

Private residences in Marble Hill include detached single- and two-story houses.[27] It is not uncommon to see a detached house next to a multilevel apartment building in Marble Hill.[11] The neighborhood is described as cozy, with neighbors watching out for one another, and a sense of "community spirit."[27] The blocks of Marble Hill with these single-story houses were described as a "well-kept secret": relatively cheap, with ample space and a backyard. In 1995 one reporter wrote of these houses, "Where else in Manhattan can you find a six-bedroom, three-story house on a quiet, tree-lined street with an attic, a basement, an enclosed front porch and a pretty facade for sale for $174,000? Or a three-family house with six bedrooms on an architecturally magnificent street with an asking price of $295,000?"[35]

Many of the neighborhood's streets were named for Dutch settlers to Marble Hill. For instance, Teunissen Place, a dead-end alley off Terrace View Avenue to the neighborhood's west, is named after Tobias Teunissen, a wool washer from Leyden, Holland, who came to the area in 1636.[11] He applied for and received a land grant to live in Inwood near 213th Street. Occasionally he had worked on the De La Montagne farm, which was in what is now the Harlem section of Manhattan.[43]^: 98 Teunissen was killed in an Indian raid in 1655, and his wife and child were held hostage until they were ransomed by the Dutch authorities.[11] The Dyckmans and the Nagles, who owned land in Inwood, purchased the Teunissen property in 1677.[44]^: 356

Adrian Avenue is named after Adriaen van der Donck, an early lawyer in New Amsterdam. With permission, he bought a strip of land from local Native American tribes in 1646. This land stretched from Spuyten Duyvil to present-day Yonkers along the Hudson coastline.[11]

Van Corlear Place, which comprises half of a U-shaped street curving around Marble Hill, has detached one- and two-family homes in addition to a few brick townhouses. It was named after Anthony Van Corlaer, a messenger of New Amsterdam Governor-General Peter Stuyvesant who was sent to the mainland Bronx for backup soldiers following reports of attempts by British forces to seize New Amsterdam.[11] In Washington Irving's book A History of New York, van Corlaer is said to have drowned while crossing Spuyten Duyvil Creek.[45] The street's name is misspelled.[11]

Jacobus Place, the other half of the U-shape that includes Van Corlear Place, has both a large brick apartment building and freestanding private houses with diverse designs. It is named after Jacob (Jacobus) Dyckman,[11] the owner of the Dyckman Tavern and a sponsor of the Dyckman Free Bridge.[8]

Fort Charles Place remains as a token of the Hessian-named Fort Prince Charles.[46]

JFK High School campus

John F. Kennedy High School was built in the former riverbed on the western side of Marble Hill, and was opened in September 1972.[60] Beginning in fall 2002, smaller high schools were established within the campus.[61] Due to poor academic performance in the 2000s, as well as a series of violent crimes at the school (including the murder of a student),[62] the New York City Department of Education made a decision in fall 2010 to close the school, phasing out one grade per year until 2014.[63] It closed down in 2014,[64][65] and six smaller, specialty high schools now occupy its campus: four public, two charter.[66] Four of these schools were founded in 2002, while the other two were established in 2011 after the decision was made to close John F. Kennedy High School.[67] The nearest public elementary school is PS 7 Milton Fein School in Kingsbridge, serving grades K–5.[42][68]

Nearby private schools include Horace Mann School, Riverdale Country School, and Ethical Culture Fieldston School. Nearby parochial schools are Good Shepherd, in Inwood. The nearest parochial school, St. John's, in Kingsbridge was closed in 2020.[69] The Marble Hill Nursery School, in the Marble Hill Houses, is privately operated with some funding with the city.[27]

The New York Public Library (NYPL) operates the Kingsbridge branch at 291 West 231st Street, which replaced a building from 1959 located across West 231st Street.[70] [71]

Politically, Marble Hill is in New York's 13th congressional district.[79][80] It is in the New York State Senate's 31st district,[81][82] the New York State Assembly's 72nd district,[83][84] and the New York City Council's 10th district.[85] Bronx Community Board 8 is the local community board for Marble Hill.[1]

On March 11, 1939, as a publicity stunt, Bronx Borough President James J. Lyons planted the Bronx County flag on the rocky promontory at 225th Street and Jacobus Place. Lyons proclaimed Marble Hill as a part of the Bronx and demanded the subservience of its residents to that borough, saying it was "The Bronx Sudetenland," referring to Hitler's 1938 annexation of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. The incident was met with boos and nose-thumbing by 50 residents of Marble Hill, who referred to the effort as similar to an "Anschluss".[86][87] Since then, more lighthearted "annexations" have occurred.[88]

Residents of the neighborhood wished to remain residents of Manhattan, and petitions and signatures were gathered to be sent to Governor Herbert H. Lehman to ensure that Marble Hill remain part of Manhattan.[35] In 1984, in response to one Marble Hill resident's refusal to serve on jury duty for a murder case in Manhattan that year due to the resident claiming that she was not a resident of New York County and Manhattan,[78] the matter was settled when the New York Legislature passed legislation declaring the neighborhood part of New York County and Manhattan.[35][89] The confusion was so great that when New York City Councilman Guillermo Linares was elected as Marble Hill's representative in 1991, he originally thought the neighborhood was part of the Bronx.[35]

Marble Hill residents remain part of a political district that includes the northernmost areas of Manhattan (Washington Heights and Inwood), but city services – for example, the fire and police departments – come from and are in the Bronx for reasons of convenience and safety, since the only road connection to the rest of Manhattan is a lift bridge, the Broadway Bridge.[27][90] However, medical services are provided from Manhattan Island, and medical vehicles come from Columbia University's Allen Pavilion, also known as the Allen Hospital, a satellite facility of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.[27]

Marble Hill, along with Spuyten Duyvil and Kingsbridge in the Bronx, is located within ZIP Code 10463.[5] The "104" prefix is used for Bronx localities, while "100" through "102" are reserved for Manhattan addresses[90][lower-alpha 1] – although mail can be addressed to either "New York, New York" using the USPS designator for Manhattan, or to "Bronx, New York" as long as the ZIP Code is accurate. The United States Postal Service operates the Kingsbridge Station post office at 5517 Broadway.[91]

In 1984, area code 718 was created out of area code 212 for the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island;[87] the Bronx and Marble Hill were added to the 718 area code in 1992. Marble Hill residents unsuccessfully fought to retain the 212 area code, which was considered more prestigious than the 718 area code.[35] Since then, Marble Hill has been in area code 718 (now also served by three overlay codes: 347 and 929 for the outer boroughs, and 917 for the entire city), but residents are listed in both Bronx and Manhattan telephone books.[90]