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Hi, Jonathan,
Good story about the unknown Jasper! I’m a sucker for happy endings.
I don’t always tout Wikipdia, but look at their article on Sanborn Maps. It gives a very good history and good rundown on how they work. I have over 40 years in the title insurance business, and I do history and architecture walking tours in the city. These maps have been invaluable in each of these pursuits. But always there is the caveat – The date can be misleading!
The insurance maps in NYC were published by either Sanborn or Belcher Hyde for use by insurance companies. The buildings are color-coded. Red is a brick building. Yellow is wood frame. Yellow with a red fringe is wood frame, with brick face. Blue is stone. Gray is iron. Insurance companies would set their rates accordingly. If a new building replaced an old one, the staff would cut and paste the new structure right over the old. They often did it so artfully that you can’t tell, unless you have the actual original in front of you. Most of the additions that you see on that bit of the map were just drawn in. These maps are widely available online.
I’m a Manhattan College graduate. I walked up and down that path 1,000 times. It is a public street shown as “Waldo Walk” on the current tax map. I doubt if it was ever open to vehicles. The large rocks on the north side of the path were blasted away for the Raymond Kelly Student Commons Building. The ones on the south side, which made a great visual and sonic backdrop for the Gaelic Park concerts of the 1970s are still there.
Hi, Jonathan,
The “1901 Map” is an insurance atlas map. These were periodically issued, and then were added to as improvements were built. So the map remained dated 1901, even as it was continuously amended to show improvements that came afterward, until such time as a whole new map was issued. There was no way, in 1901, to have anticipated that there would be a maintenance building there, as the original IRT plan had the Broadway Local terminating at 230th Street and Bailey Avenue, where it would connect with the New York Central 230th Street station.
That large storage building in the background was 154-160 West 230th Street. It’s where the Deegan is now.
Hi, Eileen, there is a photo of the building in the NYC Tax Assessor records from 1940. The building is a large, dead storage warehouse with various business signs. There is a furniture business at the easterly end of the 230th Street exposure. I can’t make it out clearly, but the business sign on the westerly end of the building, which would be 158-160, looks like it could say A.E. Rhine. The entire building’s address is given as 154-160 West 230th Street. The tax lot was Block 3264 Lot 85. Go to https://a860-collectionguides.nyc.gov/repositories/2/resources/64. The photos are for sale.
Tom Gaffney
Hi, All,
The “Along the Hudson Park” was not a City Park, but a private development. Most of the houses shown on that developer’s Map are still there, although the one shown fronting on Spuyten Duyvil Parkway, on Plot 22, may be torn down soon. Nipnicheson Glen has been obliterated, but that large house next to it is still there.
To search the provenance of City Parks, the deed registry is usually not always where you find it. Parks were often acquired by condemnation or by resolutions of the “Sinking Fund”. If you are going to search the deed registry, you need to find a veteran examiner at the Bronx City Register’s Office who will do a ‘common owner’ search, going back to when the overall area was owned by one party. In this case, that’s pretty easy, as the “Along the Hudson Company” owned the parcel when the Map was filed. I can’t make out a date on the Map, but it shows the Henry Hudson Bridge, which opened in 1936. Waterfront access was a common perquisite on filed maps. My guess is that the mapmaker acquired riverfront rights from the prior owner, which were not always wiped out by the Hudson River Railroad right of way, and that each homeowner had a right to this dock. Whether this right was lost since 1936, or simply fell into desuetude might be worth looking into for these property owners.
If you have the time, a good place to research City Parks might be the Parks Department Headquarters at the Arsenal in Central Park. As always, the trick is to find the right person there.
Thanks,
Tom
