215th Street and 10th Avenue;
Heins & La Farge;
1908|

Historic photographs show that recent, still-in-progress renovations have been sensitive to the original, distinctive 1908 structure.

5063–5067 Broadway;
Unknown architect;
1855|

Once the imposing entrance to the Seaman-Drake estate, the arch, which is said to be a scale model of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, is 35 feet tall and 20 feet deep and made of locally quarried Inwood marble. John Ferris Seaman bought 25 acres in Inwood in 1851 and created the estate and a mansion, also constructed of marble. The mansion was replaced in 1938 by the Park Terrace Gardens apartments.

West 215th Street between Broadway and Park Terrace East;
Ca. 1911|

The NYC Department of Design and Construction completed a restoration of the West 215th stepped streets in a form sensitive to its original historic design. Of approximately 100 original historic cast-iron lampposts in NYC that survive, two composite column cast-iron lampposts remain on this stepped street today and are designated New York City landmarks.

Dedicated September 28, 1912
ISHAM MEMORIAL,
ca. late 1930s
THE GINKGO TREE and
12 MILE MARKER

In 1911, land for the purpose of a public park was offered as a gift to the city by Julia Isham Taylor. Newspaper accounts reveal that Mrs. Taylor’s gift was intended to preserve green space and views from her father‘s land—a central, natural high point in the area. A bit later, Julia’s aunt Flora bought and added land to the gift “just to preserve the view” to the Hudson River. The gifts of land from the Isham family are detailed on a bronze plaque in the stone wall surrounding a circular paved terrace situated above Broadway between 214th and Isham Streets.

Samuel Isham, Julia’s brother, is quoted in the New York Times on March 24, 1912: “My father . . . re-graded the whole hill from top to bottom, planted nearly all of the trees that now remain . . . .” So the enormous gingko tree still seen at the Broadway entrance just above Isham Street, the former entrance to the estate, may have been planted by William Isham in the late 1860s.

When roadway workers were removing a red sandstone mile marker, William Isham had it installed at the right side of his entrance gate on Broadway. Part of the road system of the Old Albany Post Road, the stone indicated the 12 mile distance to City Hall in Downtown Manhattan and can still be seen today, although the text once engraved on it no longer exists.

530 West 215th Street;
James W. O’Connor;
1912|

This brick-and-terra-cotta mansion was constructed in 1912 for William Hurst, his wife and their 10 children. Hurst was the president of the Stock Quotation Telegraph Company, which supplied stock ticker equipment to financial firms. After Hurst died in 1929, his mansion was converted to a convent. In 1946 the property became the Garrard School of the Academy of the Sacred Heart of Mary which closed in 1969. In 1974 the Northeast Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists bought the house and continues to occupy the adjacent, more recent building as the Northeastern Academy.

On the south side of Hurst House in Isham Park is a community garden named for Bruce Reynolds (1960–2001), a Port Authority police officer who lost his life on September 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center.

(at the time known as PARK TERRACE NORTH);
Benjamin F.V. Dreisler, 1933;
C.G. de Neergaard, 1934|

This series of detached two-story residences are built in the Tudor Revival or Cotswold Cottage style, set back from lot lines with front and rear yards and either separate or basement garages. They reference the aesthetic of a small Garden City suburban enclave found nowhere else in Manhattan.

A. H. Zacharius;
1926|

These houses, constructed as two-family residences with accompanying two-car garages, are unique examples of the Arts and Crafts style, built when the styles of Art Deco and Modernism were becoming popular. They were constructed as multi-family detached dwellings when larger six-story apartment houses were predominant in the area.

Including bleachers attributed to Aymar Embury II, ca. 1936–40;
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, 1946–48;
December 1936|

Moses-era Art Deco elements appear throughout the park and its natural landscape, including concrete entrance-gate columns, bollards, flagpole bases, water fountains and painted-steel bridge railings. Re-opened as the Inwood Hill Park Urban Ecology Center in 1995 (popularly known as “The Nature Center”), the largest Art Deco structure in Inwood Hill Park was originally designed to be a boathouse. Today it is used for lectures and exhibitions about the area’s natural history. Also constructed during the Moses era is the single-span, steel arch bridge named to commemorate the voyage of Henry Hudson on his ship the Half Moon, which anchored near the site in 1609. The bridge is part of the Henry Hudson Parkway, placarded as New York State Route 9A.