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Audubon Park
the neighborhood Manhattan forgot...
AP
Audubon Park: A Brief History
For nearly sixty years, from about 1850 to 1910,
a tract of land in upper Manhattan was known as Audubon Park.
George Bird Grinnell
Audubon Park
The History of the Site of the Hispanic Society of America and Neighbouring Institutions
Eloquent in its simplicity, George Bird Grinnell’s opening sentence to the little booklet entitled “Audubon Park” succinctly introduces a neighborhood that was unlike any other in Manhattan. Unencumbered by the tyranny of the grid, these twenty acres in the southwest corner of Washington Heights sheltered a dozen homes – large, elegant houses surrounded by manicured gardens and accessed by curving drives. Natural boundaries marked two of its borders: Trinity Cemetery and 155th Street (the official border of Washington Heights) on the south and the Hudson River on the west; and manmade boundaries, Broadway on the east and 158th Street on the north, eventually marked the other two. Along the river were the three Audubon houses, with John James Audubon’s home, the first built in the area, lying furthest south. On the periphery were houses that changed hands infrequently, and whose owners bore surnames such as Harris, Knapp, Shepherd, Smythe, and Clapp. In the center, figuratively as well as geographically, was The Hemlocks, home of the Grinnell family, whose fortunes and property holdings ultimately determined Audubon Park’s future.
Minnie’s Land
Ironically, the man who lent both his name and his legend to Audubon Park – John James Audubon – never knew it by that name. To him, it was Minnie's Land, a rural home that later Audubon generations called an estate but which was, in fact, a working farm, with second son John Woodhouse as the chief farmer. Though the Birds of America was not a huge money-maker for the Audubons, its smaller version, the Octavo, was and publication of that work afforded Audubon the opportunity to provide a permanent home for his family, one that could provide shelter as well as self-sufficiency: Minnie’s Land offered ample resources to support gardens, orchards, and livestock that provided eggs, milk, and meat. At their front door was the Hudson (or North) River, a source of fish and seafood during three seasons of the year and nearby were dense woods that provided game. Audubon’s distaste for cities is well-documented, but practically, as long as he was engaged in marketing subscriptions for his works, he could not be far from adequate transportation, from engravers and binders, or from the wealthy individuals who formed his subscriber base. Minnie’s Land provided an ideal solution: well outside the city’s boundaries, but close enough for frequent —daily, when necessary — visits to the city.
Audubon and his sons called Lucy Audubon “Minnie” a Scottish endearment for mother. So, when Audubon bought the property in October 1841 and deeded it to Lucy, it became literally, as well as figuratively, Minnie’s Land. With the help of his two sons, Audubon built a home and outbuildings and began clearing part of the heavily wooded hillside that rose above the Hudson for orchards, a garden, paddocks, and several outbuildings. Friday, April 1, 1842, the Audubons left the house they had been leasing at 86 White Street in lower Manhattan and moved to Minnie’s Land where members of the family would remain for the next four decades.
Early Inhabitants on the Heights
Prior to the Audubons, no one had found this tract of land suitable for permanent habitation. At one of the highest altitudes on the island, the hillside was too steep and rocky, and the lower land near the water too exposed to the harsh winter winds coming off the Hudson, for the American Indian tribe that lived in northern Manhattan to establish permanent settlements there. The heights did, however, provide them hunting grounds, which they called Penadnic, and, as excavations for apartment buildings in the early 20th Century revealed, they established a summer fishing camp on the banks of the Hudson near the foot of present-day 158th Street. When Dutch colonists moved north to the plains of Harlem, they stopped short of the heights, venturing there mainly to cut timber that they needed to construct the palisades that surrounded their homes, keeping cattle in and Indians out. Opposing uses of relatively scarce resources on the heights quickly led to strife between the Dutch and the Indians ― eventually to bloodshed.
By 1691, the Dutch settlers, whose determination to establish a permanent settlement had outlived that of the Indians’ prior claims to the land, decided to divide the Common Land on Jochem Pieter’s Hills, as they called Washington Heights, drawing lots for the parcels. The allotment that included the future Audubon Park fell to Jan Dyckeman, whose family held it for several generations, but neither cleared it nor established dwellings there. In 1767, part of that parcel passed from the Dyckemans to John Watkins, who owned it at the time of the American Revolution, when it was the scene of major fighting in the Battle of Washington Heights. According to contemporary accounts, when Washington crossed the Hudson from New Jersey, where he had been observing the battle, he disembarked at the foot of 158th Street and then climbed the hill, following a stream that flowed from the crest of the hill (under the present-day Grinnell Apartments) down to the river.
Audubon Moves to Minnie’s Land
After the Revolution, the Watkins land changed hands several times but, still no one established a permanent residence there. So, when Audubon bought Minnie’s Land from the New York Fire Insurance Company, who held it as the result of a chancery suit, and moved to the house he built there, he became the first owner in residence, beginning a sequence of events that would eventually culminate in the cityscape that occupies this area today. Audubon’s original purchase was a large right triangle that began at a point in the center of the intersection of present-day Amsterdam Avenue and 155th Street. From there, it ran down the center of (present-day) 155th Street to the high water mark in the Hudson where it turned and ran straight up the river to another point that would be approximately the center of present-day 158th Street. Then the hypotenuse of the triangle ran back ran along the old farm boundary the Dutch had established almost 200 year earlier back to its starting point in the center of 155th Street. Within two years, Audubon’s son, Victor and his wife, Georgianna, added three parcels that “squared off” the original triangle, so Minnie’s Land became three interlocked rectangles comprising approximately 24 acres. Along the Hudson, a long rectangle stretched from 155th Street to 158th Street, with an eastern boundary along a surveyed, but never constructed 12th Avenue. East of that, a large rectangle stretched from 155th Street to 157th Street between 11th Avenue (present-day Broadway) and the imaginary 12th Avenue and east of that, a long rectangle occupied what is today the city block bounded by 155th Street, 156th Street, Amsterdam, and Broadway.
Transition: Minnie’s Land to Audubon Park
Audubon lived less than a decade after purchasing Minnie’s Land, but during that time his rural refuge edged further towards becoming the urban landscape it is today. In May, 1843, just over a year after the Audubons arrived in Northern Manhattan, the first burial occurred in Trinity Cemetery. Soon, steamboat and coach service brought mourners to the cemetery, as well as an increasing number of Manhattanites taking leisurely trips to the countryside north of the city. Over the next few decades, the cemetery grew, as did the number of visitors, each having an opportunity to experience Washington Heights firsthand. In December, 1847, the Audubons, like other residents on Manhattan’s western shore, deeded their riverfront to the Hudson River Railroad Company and by October 1849, trains were running daily between Peekskill and lower Manhattan. With each improvement in transportation, the city grew closer to Minnie’s Land. From the railroad station at the foot of 153rd Street, the trip from Wall Street to Minnie’s Land was now reduced to less than an hour.
As the 1840s wore on, Audubon’s health declined and he sank deeper and deeper into dementia, probably age-related. His sons Victor and John carried on his work, but numerous factors were against them, not least of which was the absence of Audubon’s charismatic salesmanship. In a reshuffling of duties, Victor painted less and became the family business manager; John farmed less and painted more, running the office when Victor was traveling. Of all the Audubons, Victor seems to have had the clearest understanding that a subscription-based business was subject to economic downturn and that alternate sources of income were necessary. So the brothers turned to other money-making schemes, including speculation in Brooklyn real estate and part ownership in a fancy metal works foundry. Both ventures failed. John Woodhouse made a bid for fortune in the California Gold Rush, but returned to Minnie’s Land without the hoped for fortune, leaving the family further in debt.
Victor — perhaps influenced by John’s brother-in-law James Hall, a successful merchant and close friend of the Audubon brothers — convinced his mother and brother that since their land was not contributing to the family’s financial well-being, as it had been when John was farming almost full-time in the early 1840s, they should convert it to cash. His plan had three prongs: sell land that was least useful, build houses on other parts of the property, but maintain control by renting them, and consolidate the family’s holdings along the river. Neither Lucy nor John was a willing convert to this plan. John desperately wanted to farm and Lucy wanted to hold onto Minnie’s — that is her — land. Without Audubon to unify his family with a focused, all-consuming vision like the Birds, the individual members began to succumb to family dysfunction. Nevertheless, as the family’s fortunes sank, Victor began to implement his plans (though neither Lucy nor John ever fully relinquished their individual goals). With relatively fast connections to lower Manhattan by train, and a station at the foot of 152nd Street, land in the vicinity of Audubon Park had become much more attractive, especially to those who preferred the comforts of fresh air and country living. A generally accepted belief at the time was that higher elevations were conducive to good health (though the Audubons obviously thought otherwise, having built on the lowest part of their property).
Soon after Audubon's death in 1851, each of the brothers built a house on the river. The three Audubon houses stood in a row, with Audubon’s house furthest south, followed by Victor’s house, and then John’s. While the timing seems poor, Lucy was to rent her own home, the original Audubon house, and live alternating six months with each of her sons and their growing families. At the same time, the Audubon brothers built and rented other houses on the property. One of the first renters was James Hall, who lived in a house just north of John. Simultaneously, in March 1851, two months after Audubon’s death, Lucy sold the eastern-most rectangle of Minnie’s Land to Dennis Harris. The following November, she sold more land to Dennis Harris, as well as plots to William Harris. Over the course of the next year, Lucy and her sons transferred land to Edward Talman (whose wife, Delia, was sister to Victor’s wife, Georgianna), Henry Smythe, and Louis Nagel.
Then, in September 1852, John Woodhouse and his wife Caroline sold Wellington Clapp a large piece of property recorded as Block 2134, Lots 19, 22, and 30 – the present-day site of 780 and 788 Riverside Drive, as well as the western end of Audubon Terrace. This sale would prove pivotal in the history of Audubon Park. Within a couple of years, Clapp had rented his house to a business associate, George Blake Grinnell (hereafter “Blake”), who brought his family to live in what was then, by common consent of both the Audubons and the newcomers, called Audubon Park.
Improvements in Transportation: The Grinnells Arrive
The Grinnells arrived in Audubon Park on the 1st of January 1857, according to the eldest son, George Bird Grinnell (hereafter George), and rented Clapp’s house for three years. Lucy Audubon, who ran a small school for her grandchildren, had begun admitting other children in the vicinity for added income. The seven-year-old George joined her classroom, which was in her bedroom on the second floor of Victor’s house, and from Madame Audubon had lessons in letters and numbers, as well as his first lessons in ornithology and natural history. Around 1860 Blake Grinnell moved his family to an adjacent house, The Hemlocks, which remained in the family until 1910 and provided a backdrop for the events that eventually erased Audubon Park from the city’s collective memory. Well before that, however, developments in city streets and transportation (public and private) hastened the city’s spread northward.
During the Civil War, the state legislature, which had control of New York City planning throughout the middle and latter parts of the 19th Century, allocated funds for the development of a Boulevard on the western side of Manhattan above 59th Street, as well as for the development of streets above 155th. Plans proceeded, though slowly, in no small part because of the ponderous Tweed Ring, the political machine that ran New York City in the middle of the 19th Century, and whose name was synonymous with graft, kickbacks, and corruption. Some advocated a drive along the river, presaging Riverside Drive; others, particularly those who had property along the route, proposed following the Bloomingdale Road. The latter won, which was hardly surprising since Tweed owned a large piece of property bordering the start of the new Boulevard at 59th Street (which is now Columbus Circle). The Rev. J. F. Richmond, in New York and its Institutions, 1609 – 1872, describing the new Boulevard, offers a more altruistic reason for its construction.
We live in a fast age, and New Yorkers are a fast people; hence, it seemed intolerable to some that the law regulating driving at the Park should restrict every man to six miles an hour, and arrest summarily every blood who dared to disregard the rule. Nor was the private trotting course between the Park and High Bridge adequate to the demand. A great public drive, broad and long, where hundred of fleet horses could be exercised in a single hour, was the demand that came welling up from the hearts of thousands. One was accordingly laid out on the line of the old Bloomingdale Road, beginning at Fifty-ninth street with an immense circle for turning vehicles.
After a description of the grading and amount of earth removed and refilled, he ends with a prophetic sentence: “this street is expected to be one of the later wonders of Manhattan, and land is held at fabulous prices along its entire length.” Eventually, yes, but not immediately; as Robert A.M. Stern, Thomas Mellins, and David Fishman describe in New York 1880 (1999),
Though opened more or less on schedule, the Boulevard failed to become a prestigious address. Part of the problem lay...in the city's decision to pave it in gravel, a situation exacerbated by shoddy construction, which resulted in numerous craterlike ditches that frequently filled with water.
Although its initial success in may have been muted, the Boulevard stretched all the way to 155th Street, cutting Trinity Cemetery in two and necessitating the construction of a Gothic bridge so that pedestrian traffic could cross safely from one side of the cemetery to the other. And, it brought traffic – and curious New Yorkers – to Audubon Park’s southern border. Within a couple of years, the city extended the Boulevard and began developing cross streets above 155th Street, though several more decades would pass before 156th Street or 157th Street extended west past the Boulevard (Broadway) or intruded into Audubon Park’s sedate existence.
In 1867, the state legislature had awarded a charter for elevated railroads to the Metropolitan Transit Company, but the first, cable-driven trains were unsuccessful. However, by the early 1870s, the use of steam engines increased the viability of Elevated Trains. Within a decade, the Ninth Avenue “El” was serving lower Washington Heights and the residents of Audubon Park. Although they have to walk ten minutes or so to the eastern side of the island, and while many complained about the steep steps to the El, this improvement suggested yet again that improved transportation was the key to real estate development in the northern part of Manhattan. Already, the blocks facing Audubon Park from the eastern side of Broadway, were divided into lots and row houses were appearing on the side streets, though certainly not as densely as they were east and south on Amsterdam Avenue. A growing socio-economic divide, begun earlier with the establishment of working-class Carmansville along present-day Amsterdam Avenue and the construction of a boarding house on the eastern side of Minnie’s Land, separated the two sides of Broadway.
The Grinnells of Audubon Park
The rise of the Grinnells in Audubon Park mirrored the decline of the Audubons. When the Grinnells arrived in 1857, Victor was already bedridden, the result of an accident that caused severe injury to his back, the year before. From then until his death in 1860, shortly after the US Census listed him as suffering from “intemperance and insane” (possibly as a result of medicinal use of alcohol or laudanum to relieve his back pain), he was an invalid in the care of his mother. With the full responsibility now on his shoulders, John Woodhouse attempted to keep his family afloat finically, but within two year, in 1862, he was also dead. Lucy remained in Audubon Park several years, living with her daughter-in-law, Georgianna, but eventually moved to 152nd Street, where she and her granddaughter, Harriet, boarded before moving to Louisville, Kentucky to live with Lucy’s brother. John Woodhouse’s widow, Caroline remained in her house a few years and then sold her house to Eugene Jerome, whose niece Jennie would become Lady Jennie Churchill. Victor’s widow, Georgianna took in boarders for additional income, but in 1878, sold her house to Grinnell and left Audubon Park.
Though Blake Grinnell suffered setbacks during the Panic of 1857, between the Civil War and 1875, he and his wife, Helen Lansing Grinnell, added to their holdings in Audubon Park, eventually taking control of all of it, except the plot on the river, where the original Audubon house stood. After the war, in 1867, Grinnell, the failed merchant, turned to brokerage, holding a seat on the exchange; he and Wellington Clapp established a brokerage firm, with Horace F. Clark a his silent partner. Clark was son-in-law to Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt and the Grinnell brokerage transacted most of his business — especially that involving his railroad securities. By 1872, Grinnell had paid all the debts from his previous bankruptcy and the 1st of September 1873, he retired from Wall Street, turning the business over to his eldest son George (but remaining a special partner). Sixteen days later, the stock market crashed and two days after that, the new firm of George Bird Grinnell went under in the wake of the Panic of 1873.
Just a few days later, the Church of the Intercession, which the Audubons had founded in 1847 along with several other families in the vicinity of Minnie’s Land, consecrated a new church building, which stood at Broadway and 158th Streets, just at the northeast edge of Audubon Park. The church soon faltered, however. The influx of new residents to Washington Heights, anticipated after the improved streets and the extension of the Boulevard northward into Washington Heights, did not arrive. Then came the crash. Added to these two external factors was internal weakness in the church. As often happens when an organization makes a change, discord arose; in this case, the source was the location of the new building. A New York Times account of the ceremonies at the laying of the cornerstone a year earlier (13 June 1872) may suggest the cause. Prior to the ceremonies, “many of the residents of Washington Heights assembled on the lawn of “The Hemlocks,” the residence of George B. Grinnell, and a procession was organized.” Superintending the arrangements were James Monteith, the church’s senior warden, and William B. Harrison, who was a member of the Vestry. “After the proceedings a number of gentlemen were entertained at “The Hemlocks” by Mr. Grinnell. Mr. Wm. B. Harrison also had a select party at his residence.” Perhaps the two separate celebrations were merely convenience, but just as likely is that the two men headed opposing factions in the church. In either case, members left the church and withdrew their financial support, which combined with poor economic times to bring about bankruptcy. That year, the sheriff took possession of the new church building and only allowed the congregation to use it with permission of the court.
The Panic of 1873 had yet another, far less obvious impact on Audubon Park: it caused a delay in construction of the first leg of Riverside Drive, which began at 72nd Street. That delay, in turn delayed construction of the extension of Riverside Drive to 158th Street where it connected with the Boulevard Lafayette just north of Audubon Park. The ultimate outcome – the disappearance of Audubon Park – may well have been the same, but because of the consecutive delays, construction of the Riverside Drive Extension coincided with construction of the subway and the rise of the apartment building as an acceptable form of residence. Improved modes of transportation had increased the population of Washington Heights, but had not threatened the existence of Audubon Park, but combined with the rise of the apartment house, it led directly to Audubon Park’s transformation from a bucolic, suburban landscape to the cityscape it is today.
