Hudson Heights is a residential neighborhood within Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan, New York City. Most residences are apartment buildings, many of which are cooperatives, and most were constructed in the 1920s through 1940s. The Art Deco style is prominent, along with Tudor Revival. Notable complexes include Hudson View Gardens and Castle Village, which were both developed by Dr. Charles V. Paterno, and were designed by George F. Pelham and his son, George F. Pelham, Jr., respectively.

The neighborhood is located on a plateauOrenstein, Sidney (February 27, 2017) "The Geology of Northern Manhattan" (lecture) on top of a bluff overlooking both the Hudson River on the west and the Broadway valley of Washington Heights on the east. Hudson Heights includes the highest natural point in Manhattan, located in Bennett Park. At above sea level, it is a few dozen feet lower than the torch on the Statue of Liberty."Bennett Park" New York City Parks and Recreation Department website. Retrieved June 22, 2010.

At the northern end of the neighborhood, where Cabrini Boulevard meets Fort Washington Avenue at Margaret Corbin Circle, is Fort Tryon Park, conceived by John D. Rockefeller Jr., designed by the Olmsted Brothers, and given to the city by Rockefeller in 1931.Kuhn, Jonathan. "Fort Tryon Park" in The park contains within it The Cloisters – also conceived of by Rockefeller – which houses the Medieval art collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Boundaries and geography Similar to many other neighborhoods that are undergoing gentrification in New York City, this Washington Heights area was renamed by real estate brokers in the 1990s to appeal to a different type of community than was attracted to other parts of Washington Heights.

Like many New York City neighborhoods, the boundaries of Hudson Heights are imprecise.Neighborhoods in New York City do not have official status, and their boundaries are not specifically set by the city. (There are a number of Community Boards, whose boundaries are officially set, but these are fairly large and generally contain a number of neighborhoods, and the neighborhood map issued by the Department of City Planning only shows the largest ones.) Because of this, the definition of where neighborhoods begin and end is subject to a variety of forces, including the efforts of real estate concerns to promote certain areas, the use of neighborhood names in media news reports, and the everyday usage of people. One definition has it bounded by the Hudson River to the west, Broadway to the east, 173rd Street to the south, and Fort Tryon Park to the north,Harris, Elizabeth A. (October 16, 2009) Map included in "An Aerie Straight Out of the Deco Era" The New York Times. Retrieved June 22, 2010. "Hot Guide 2009. Hudson Heights: 173rd Street to Fort Tryon Park, West of Broadway" Retrieved June 22, 2010. but another would limit the neighborhood to the top of the high ridge which physically separates it from the rest of Washington Heights. By this definition, Hudson Heights is bounded in the west by the Henry Hudson Parkway, in the east by Fort Washington Avenue, in the south by West 181st Street and in the north by Fort Tryon Park.

The ridge the neighborhood sits on overlooks the river to the west and the Broadway valley to the east. In 2018, The New York Times defined it as being bordered by 173rd Street in the south, Bennett Avenue in the east, the northern boundary of Fort Tryon Park in the north, and the Hudson River in the west.Jacobsen, Aileen (March 28, 2018) "Living In: Hudson Heights: A Hidden Gem, Gaining Popularity" The New York Times

Using the more restrictive boundaries, the neighborhood's main north–south thoroughfares are Fort Washington Avenue (two-way), Pinehurst Avenue (one way south) and Cabrini Boulevard (formerly Northern Avenue, one way north). Riverside Drive runs intermittently along the bottom of the ridge to the west, while Bennett Avenue and Overlook Terrace do the same on the east, with Overlook Avenue climbing to the top of the ridge at West 190th Street. The east–west streets are all numbered, from West 181st Street to West 190th Street, but none of those streets, with the exception of West 181st at the southern end of the ridge, cross all the way through the neighborhood: they are all interrupted at one point or another.

History

17th century

Before European explorers and settlers, the Lenape Indians lived on the island they called Mannahatta. Just to the north of Hudson Heights, in what is now Inwood Hill Park, the Lenape tribe exchanged the island for items worth about 60 Dutch Gilders in a deal with Peter Minuit in 1626. He named the island New Amsterdam. The area north of central Manhattan was called Niew Haarlem until the British gained control of the area during the Revolutionary War. They renamed the area Lancaster, and gave it a northern border near what is now 129th Street. The ridge that overlooks the Hudson River was once inhabited by the Wecquaesgeek Indians and called Chquaesgeck. Later it was called Lange Bergh (Long Hill) by Dutch settlers until the 17th century.

18th and 19th centuries

In the 18th century, only the southern portion of the island was settled by Europeans, leaving the rest of Manhattan largely untouched. Among the many unspoiled tracts of land was the highest spot on the island, which provided unsurpassed views of what would become the New York metropolitan area.Burrows & Wallace (1999), p.448

When the Revolutionary War came to New York, the British had the upper hand. General George Washington and troops from his Continental Army camped on the high ground, calling it Fort Washington, to monitor the advancing Redcoats. The Continental Army retreated from its location after their defeat on November 16, 1776, in the Battle of Fort Washington. on AmericanRevolution.org The British took the position and renamed it Fort Knyphausen in honor of the leader of the Hessians, who had taken a major part in the British victory.Jenkins, Stephen (1911) The Greatest Street in the World: The Story of Broadway, Old and New, from the Bowling Green to Albany, New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. p.36 Their location was in the spot now called Bennett Park. Fort Washington had been established as an offensive position to prevent British vessels from sailing north on the Hudson River. Fort Lee, across the river, was its twin, built to assist in the defense of the Hudson Valley.

Not far from the fort was the Blue Bell Tavern, located on an intersection of Kingsbridge Road, where Broadway and West 181st Street intersect today, on the southeastern corner of modern-day Hudson Heights.Burrows & Wallace (1999), p.232 On July 9, 1776, when New York's Provincial Congress assented to the Declaration of Independence, "A rowdy crowd of soldiers and civilians ('no decent people' were present, one witness said later) ... marched down Broadway to Bowling Green, where they toppled the statue of George III erected in 1770. The head was put on a spike at the Blue Bell Tavern ... "

The tavern was later used by Washington and his staff when the British evacuated New York, standing in front of it as they watched the American troops march south to retake New York.Renner, James (2007) Images of America: Washington Heights, Inwood, and Marble Hill. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing.

By 1856 the first recorded home had been built on the site of Fort Washington. The Moorewood residence was there until the 1880s. The property was purchased by Richard Carman and sold to James Gordon Bennett Sr. for a summer estate in 1871. Bennett's descendants later gave the land to the city to build a park honoring the Revolutionary War encampment. Bennett Park is a portion of that land. Lucius Chittenden, a New Orleans merchant, built a home on land he bought in 1846 west of what is now Cabrini Boulevard and West 187th Street.Feirstein, p.170 It was known as the Chittenden estate by 1864. C. P. Bucking, a manufacturer of sheepskins,Norcross, Frank Wayland (1901) A History of the New York Swamp Chiswick Press. p.208 named his home on land near the Hudson "Pinehurst", a name that survives as Pinehurst Avenue.

Early to mid-20th century

At the turn of the 20th century the woods started being chopped down to make way for homes. The area was settled by Irish immigrants in the early years of the century.

The cliffs that are now Fort Tryon Park held the mansion of Cornelius Kingsley Garrison Billings, a retired president of the Chicago Coke and Gas Company. He purchased and constructed Tryon Hall, a Louis XIV-style home designed by Gus Lowell. It had a galleried entranceway from the Henry Hudson Parkway that was high and made of Maine granite.Staff (January 4, 1917) "C.K.G. Billings Sells Famous Tryon Hall: Prominent New Yorker, Whose Name is Withheld, Buys Riverside Drive Estate; Mansion Cost $2,000,000 – Built on Site of Fort of Revolutionary Frame, the House is One of New York's Show Places", The New York Times p.22. Accessed June 4, 2009Renner, James. "C.K.G. Billings" , on the Hudson Heights Owners Coalition website Accessed June 4, 2009. In 1917, Billings sold the land to John D. Rockefeller Jr. for $35,000 per acre. Tryon Hall was destroyed by fire in 1925. The estate was the setting for the book The Dragon Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine,Van Dine, S.S. (1934) The Dragon Murder Case. New York: Charles Scribner's. in which detective Philo Vance had to solve a murder on the grounds of the estate, where a dragon was supposed to have lived.

Fort Tryon The beginning of this section of Washington Heights as a neighborhood-within-a-neighborhood seems to have started around this time, in the years before World War II. One scholar refers to the area in 1940 as "Fort Tryon" and "the Fort Tryon area." In 1989, Steven M. Lowenstein wrote, "The greatest social distance was to be found between the area in the northwest, just south of Fort Tryon Park, which was, and remains, the most prestigious section ... This difference was already remarked in 1940, continued unabated in 1970 and was still noticeable even in 1980..."

Lowenstein considered Fort Tryon to be the area west of Broadway, east of the Hudson, north of West 181st Street, and south of Dyckman Street, which includes Fort Tryon Park. He writes, "Within the core area of Washington Heights (between 155th Street and Dyckman Street) there was a considerable internal difference as well. The further north and west one went, the more prestigious the neighborhood..."Lowenstein (1989), pp.42–44

During World War I, immigrants from Hungary and Poland moved in next to the Irish.Bennet, James (August 27, 1992) "The Last of Frankfurt-on-the-Hudson: A Staunch, Aging Few Stay On as Their World Evaporates" The New York Times Then, as Nazism grew in Germany, Jews fled their homeland. By the late 1930s, more than 20,000 refugees from Germany had settled in Washington Heights.Lowenstein (1989), p.18

Frankfurt-on-the-Hudson

In the years after World War II, the neighborhood was referred to as Frankfurt-on-the-Hudson due to the dense population of German and Austrian Jews who had settled there.Hendrickson, Leslie (October 18, 2007) "Hudson Heights Climbing to the Next Level" New York Sun A disproportionately large number of Germans who settled in the area had come from Frankfurt-am-Main, possibly giving rise to new name. No other neighborhood in the city was home to so many German Jews, who had created their own central German world in the 1930s.Ressig, Volker. Frankfurt on the hudson, oder: Die Liebe für Amerika, die Sehnsucht für Europa (Trans.: "Frankfurt on the Hudson, Or: The love for America, the longing for Europe.") Körber-Stiftung.