History
Home to some of New York City’s “hidden treasures,” the northernmost tip of Manhattan (Washington Heights and Inwood) is a composite of historic sites, beautiful parks, and leading cultural institutions.
Audio is abit rough.
Our first discovery was the Morris-Jumel Mansion, the oldest house in Manhattan built in 1765 by British Colonel Roger Morris as a summer villa on a property stretching over 130 acres from the Hudson to the Harlem River, and was used by Gen. George Washington as his temporary headquarters before the house became the British headquarters during the revolution. In 1810 a wealthy shipowner, Stephen Jumel, and his wife, Eliza Bowen, purchased the house. After Jumel died, his widow married former Vice President Aaron Burr (the man who shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel), who lived in the mansion only briefly because he was divorced by Eliza after two years of marriage.
On the way to the Audubon Terrace historic district, located on Broadway between 155th and 156th streets, we discovered the only active cemetery in Manhattan and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places—the Trinity Cemetery. The cemetery was established in 1843 and is the burial ground of John James Audubon, Alfred Tennyson Dickens (Charles Dickens’s son, Philip Livingston (a signer of the Declaration of Independence), and many prominent New York families, such as the Astors, Bleechers, and Van Burens.
Set inside the cemetery is the Church of the Intercession, complete with a cloister, vicarage, vestry, parish building, and crypt. Built in the Gothic revivalist style, the church’s interior is massive and beautiful.
The Audubon Terrace historic district is home to the Hispanic Society of America, a museum and reference library. Its collections feature many aspects of Spanish culture as well as those of Portugal, Latin America and the Philippines. Among the famous paintings in its collections of the Spanish Golden Age (1550-1700) are works of El Greco, Francisco Goya, Diego Velasquez, and Jose de Ribera.
Also situated within the large courtyard of the Audubon Terrace are the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Boricua College (which formerly housed the American Geographical Society) , and two vacant museum buildings. Part of the historic district is the Catholic Church of Our Lady of Esperanza, originally built in 1912 for New York’s socially prominent Catholic families.
The Cloisters, which is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is located on a majestic crest in Fort Tryon Park, considered one of the most beautiful parks in the US (view my video on this museum of medieval art at this url:
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