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It might be advantageous to have a fade-out overlay of today’s streets to show where the hotel would be in today’s world. Would that be possible? I don’t have the skills to do so.
It’s sad that such a historical site degraded to one stone/brick wall in the 21st century. Going forward without a historical site designation, I easily see its destruction, to be replaced by a high-rise or a mini-strip mall.
The coincidence of these visuals and structures is so strong. I’d like to believe that they have a common origin. Is there anything that survives today ?
Nick, I’m wondering if you informed the lady who showed you her basement wall seven years ago the historical significance of it. If so, what did she think of that?
Thank you for this, Stephanie. An interesting history. I hope that the efforts to have the site designated a historical building, and thus save it from the wrecking ball, are successful.
Before reading the entire article, I wanted to find out the year that the building was constructed and went to the NYCMap site and searched for the address. The information given was 1961.
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/d826b115c87841d491c2b41fcb175305
I knew that that could not be so. I then continued to read further and found that the building was built in 1927.
This is not the first time that that site has had dubious construction dates, or outright error in this case!
Can anyone suggest a trustworthy on-line site for accurate, original construction dates in NYC?Brendan, you speak of old memories and distortion. I have one that I can’t find any evidence for and it is of an accident on the elevated train at the 242nd street station. I “think” that the train accelerated and crashed through the bumper on the west side track, ploughing through the wooden platform and coming to rest, hanging out over Broadway. I can’t find any evidence that this occurred.
I was away, either at college or in the army (1955-1963). I remember new planking in that area of the station when visiting home during that period. I probably am making it all up in my mind. I’d like to have you go through your memory bank to see if there is anything there.
I recall the traffic diversion on Broadway when the bridge in your picture was being put in place. Fun times!
I’m not sure if this is the place to put this, but…
It looks like the Tibbetts Brook Daylighting Project construction is about to begin. Work on cleaning up the VCP Lake began in 2024 and will conclude in the Fall of 2028. All of the contracts and permits have been issued. Pre-construction is to begin this month and be completed by November when major construction is to start. Final completion is scheduled to be complete by August 2030.
https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/whats-new/tibbetts-brook-daylighting-project.page#
Click to access tibbetts-advisory-group-meeting-presentation-9.pdf
Here is an article in The Riverdale Press, dated August 5, 2026.
I’m happy to see that it is actually happening!
tmara2, that is a great find! I see that the wooden building I referenced is no longer there behind the Gulf station. Looking at NYCMap the development of that corner where the wooden building was, occurred in 1931, so my picture must have been taken a little time before 1931.
Peter, was the diving pool located just north of the existing pool? Google Earth seems to show a filled in square area. I can say with certainty that during the 1940s and up to 1955 there were no gangs in the area. It’s a shame that concern over gangs are with us today.
Thank you, Tom. I can see that the shape lends itself to bicycle racing as opposed to a baseball field. I’m sorry for the misdirection. Was it built on the same site as the aborted new Hilltop Park stadium?
With regard to the Hilltop Park stadium, I believe that I located the new stadium that was being built at 221st street and Kingsbridge Road. According to the article, the construction was not completed, but some structure (yellow oval) is evident in the 1924 aerial photo below (from the NYC Then & Now app).
In regard to The Hoboken Turtle Club, judging from the description of how the members ate (gorged), it wouldn’t surprise me that the majority of the men didn’t last into their 60’s before dying of either cirrohosis of the liver or arteriosclerosis, or both. Wow, what appetites! (Too bad about the turtles 8^(
If the purported history of the Kingsbridge Hotel is correct, what a shame that such history was ignored and disregarded. Is there even a plaque to commemorate the site? Probably not.
https://nytransitmuseum.catalogaccess.com/photos?search=&page=475&size=50&withImages=falseScroll
Scroll down to “Swimming Pool”
I was scanning through the N.Y. Transit Museum looking for photos of W242nd Street and came across this photo of the swimming pool and skating rink that I mentioned in my post #4308 above. The pool and rink supplanted the baseball field. The photo was probably taken from the catwalk that went from elevated train tracks to the repair barn. The photo is undated.
The low white building that is behind the pool’s vertical light posts may be the Gulf gas station (or not) and beyond that building is the wooden building that was just south of the carousel, both shown in the aerial photo in post #4957.I can’t count the number of times I looked at my Xrayed feet on the green screen as a child. I’m surprised that I haven’t grown a second head or had deformed children. I guess that the unit was shielded well…hopefully. I also vaguely remember turning in a used toothpaste tube at Fuhrmans (lead material If I remember correctly…UGH) during WWII…scrap metal. It was so long ago that I may be wrong about the scrap metal memory at Fuhrman’s. There may have been a collection bin at the entrance.
It’s a shame that de Babula’s home was razed. It looks so interesting.
I like his use of “cyclopean masonry” which makes his buildings look impressive as evidenced in the pictures above.
I wonder what happened to his wife, Eurana, or where they both are buried.Thank you, Tom and bstein, for the history of the Hotel. Indeed, Paul’s Restaurant was the place where we ate. Peter, I, too, recall that it had a dark ambience. I don’t recall why I chose that restaurant. I hosted the small group of friends who had attended the memorial for my Mother that was held at the Riverdale Presbyterian Church that day.
It looks as though the hotel was replaced with a new building in 1996, according to NYCityMap.Thank you, Tom. These answer my question as to the location of the Hotel. The triangle that is on the North side of Mosholu Ave was thought I had. I see, now, that it isn’t a part of this discussion.
Do you happen to readily have the history of the Hotel? I had a luncheon held in a restaurant, whose name I can’t recall, in that general location at the bottom of Mosholu Ave, on Broadway in 1976. Could the building have lasted that long?
Great picture of the trestle and map showing the station, Nick. Do you have a map showing the Lafayette Hotel at the corner of Broadway and Mosholu Ave.? I seem to recall that there was something of historical interest located in a triangle at that corner mentioned in another posting
Thank you for this, Stephanie.
IIRC the Study on the second floor in the existing structure was Sam’s bedroom. If the proposal for the addition is approved, the home will have six bedrooms with the possibility of making the upstairs Study into a seventh bedroom. That’s going to be a big house!Thank you, Stephanie, for this bit of history of Riverdale. Giovanni Morosini appears to be a self-made man with fortuitously good luck! As always, I’m enjoying this bit of Riverdale history.
Do you know if the home at 5294 Sycamore Ave was one of the Baum homes in the article? I was in that house a number of times in my teens as a good friend, Samual McCain, lived there.
Thanks, Nick, for your continuing efforts regarding the cemetery adjacent to the Van Cortlandt house.
I recall reading a description of the ground penetrating radar effort somewhere in the forum. Has it been determined exactly how many bodies are buried within the cemetery?
Has the Parks Department followed through with placing signage during the seven years since your request? Has any city condemnation record been found to substantiate the Parks Department claim to the cemetery grounds?
Has any further efforts of any kind been made regarding the cemetery since 2018? What efforts were made to preserve the headstones that were found behind the VC House?
Regarding the 1936 picture of the boy sitting between two headstones, it appears that the inscriptions were filled with a contrasting paint (?) that cannot be seen in the 1971 picture. Was this possibly due to weathering in the intervening 35 years? Who was the boy? Was he a descendant of the people buried there?
The journal describing the burial of Brigadier Buttler and the Hessian jäger is a good find.
Thank you, Blackbird1, for this information.
Regarding Cuthbert, I’m having a problem accepting the premise that the lawyer whose funeral took place on February 9, 1918 was the horticulturist who discovered the Cuthbert raspberry circa 1865.
What we know about a Thomas Newby Cuthbert is that he got an undergraduate degree in 1870 and a law degree in 1874, both from Columbia College and that he died on February 7,1918 (at the age of 68?).
We can assume that his age may have been 24 in 1874, making him only 15 at the time of discovery of the Cuthbert raspberry variant. It seems unlikely that a boy that young would have been that engrossed in horticulture. It seems logical to assume that it had been his father who was the horticulturist involved in the raspberry.
Any thoughts?
Thomas, this may be our subject’s son, Thomas W. Cuthbert who died on February 7,1918.
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:2W6M-CX4?lang=en
A Google search for Thomas N. Cuthbert resulted in 222 “relevant” returns, none of them being for our desired gentleman. Apparently, our man left no mark in the pages of history other than, briefly, for the red raspberry. Presumably he died and was buried, but no one seems to know precisely when or where. Was he the first CIA plant? lol
I was curious and so did a query with Duck.ad, Grok, and ChatGPT regarding Thomas N. Cuthbert. Although there was information, including that he immigrated from Scotland, there seems to be no public information regarding his life. Being Scottish, I thought that he might have been a member of the Riverdale Presbyterian Church but their records aren’t digitized it seems. Do you think that there is more about him in the KHS archives yet to be discovered?
