527 West 110th Street;
Waid and Waller, 1909|

This grand apartment house was designed in the style of an Elizabethan manor house and resembles England’s famed Hardwick Hall, which was described as having “more glass than wall” due to its numerous windows. The building features projecting bays, steep gables, multi-colored brickwork, and limestone and terra cotta trim.

Amsterdam Avenue at West 113th and 119th Streets;
Unknown Architect, 1870–73;
West 119th St.: New York City Individual Landmark|

The Croton Aqueduct was constructed in 1835–42 as the city’s first fresh water system, delivering water via a raised platform along Amsterdam Avenue. When the system was moved below ground, these granite pumphouses powered the water flow through the underground pipes.

500 West 113th Street;
Napoleon LeBrun & Sons, 1889–91;
New York City Individual Landmark|

In the late 19th century, the city’s fire services extended to Upper Manhattan through the construction of new firehouses. This Romanesque Revival firehouse, characterized by a highly ornamental façade of yellow brick, brownstone, terra cotta and cast-iron, was one of many designed by the firm of Napoleon LeBrun & Sons.

Amsterdam Avenue to Morningside Drive, West 114th to West 115th Streets;
Ernest Flagg, 1893;
Plant & Scrymser Pavilion for Private Patients: New York City Individual Landmark|

The hospital’s original design consisted of nine marble-clad pavilions with a central domed pavilion set back from 113th Street by a small courtyard. Its symmetrical Renaissance style bears much resemblance to the Luxembourg Palace in Paris. Due to lack of funds, some pavilions were simplified and not completed until much later. In the mid 20th century, alterations included the demolition of two pavilions along Amsterdam Avenue and removal of the central dome.

405 West 114th Street;
Daus & Otto, 1910; Cross & Cross, 1914;
New York City Individual Landmark;
State and National Registers of Historic Places|

This French Neo-Classical church was donated by Geraldine Redmond after her son was cured at the famous pilgrimage site and sanctuary at Notre Dame de Lourdes in France. Its interior grotto recalls the grotto of its namesake.

Roughly between Morningside Drive and Morningside Avenue, West 110th to West 123rd Streets;
Park: Frederick Law Olmsted & Calvert Vaux, 1883–95;
Statue: Karl Bitter & Henry Bacon, 1912;
New York City Scenic Landmark|

Morningside Park was an early city initiative to create an amenity out of undevelopable land. It is comprised of a narrow strip extending from West 110th to 123rd Streets and encompasses the dramatic escarpment which gives credence to “The Heights.” The park’s tiered design incorporates the land’s natural topography with a mix of picturesque and pastoral landscapes. The promenade on Morningside Drive features observation platforms, imposing stone steps and a statue of social reformer Carl Schurz.

Roughly between Claremont Avenue and Broadway, West 116th to West 120th Streets;
Milbank, Fiske and Brinckerhoff Halls: Charles Rich, 1897–98;
Brooks and Hewitt Halls: Charles Rich, 1906–08 and McKim, Mead and White, 1926–27;
Students’ Hall/Barnard Hall: Arnold Brunner, 1916|

After a lengthy campaign for women’s education at Columbia College, Barnard College was established with funds from wealthy female donors. The college was named after Frederick A. P. Barnard, the recently deceased president of Columbia College. Its first buildings, Milbank, Fiske and Brinckerhoff Halls, form a U-shaped complex that references Columbia’s Beaux-Arts style, with red brick and limestone façades incorporating Classical and Renaissance motifs such as ornamental quoins, cartouches, roundels and keyed window surrounds. The construction of dormitories soon followed. Brooks Hall mimics the Milbank complex, but includes a large portico. The Renaissance-inspired Hewitt Hall was built later to accommodate the college’s growing population. With views to the river blocked by new construction on Claremont Avenue, Barnard re-oriented itself eastward with a new student center called Students’ Hall (later renamed Barnard Hall), aligned with an entrance gate on Broadway.

Roughly between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, West 120th to West 121st Streets;

Main, Macy and Milbank Memorial Halls: William Potter, 1892–97;

Horace Mann School: Howells & Stokes with Edgar A. Josselyn, 1899–1901;

Whittier Hall: Bruce Price, 1900–01;

Grace Dodge Hall: Parish & Schroeder, 1909|

Teachers College began as the Kitchen Garden Association, a charity to educate working class youth in domestic arts. The campus’ buildings are remarkable in their stylistic cohesion despite being the work of numerous architects. The Collegiate Gothic-style Main, Macy and Milbank Memorial Halls are the campus’ first buildings. They are made of red brick with brownstone trim and feature picturesque rooflines with gables, dormers and lantern towers. Horace Mann School, the campus’ most westerly building, features Gothic and Renaissance details, including burned brick diaper patterns, a steeply sloped roof and a large ornate cupola. Whittier Hall, the campus’ most easterly building, takes design inspiration from Horace Mann, but on a grander scale, with red brick diaper patterns, stone trim, large gables and a central cupola. Grace Dodge Hall (not pictured), oriented to the south and barely visible, is distinguished by a clock tower above the main entrance.

509 West 121st Street;
Emery Roth, 1910–11|

This fanciful Vienna Secessionist style building features copper-clad bay windows and a timber Tuscan-style roof. Originally an apartment house, Teachers College purchased the building in 1919 to serve as a dormitory. Emery Roth is renowned for the iconic Central Park West apartment buildings The Beresford, The San Remo and The Eldorado.

Roughly between Claremont Avenue and Broadway, West 120th to West 122nd Streets;
Allen & Collens, 1910;
State and National Registers of Historic Places|

This English Gothic complex was inspired by the institutions of Oxford and Cambridge, England and was widely praised by architecture critics and the media. The James Memorial Chapel is the architectural crown of the campus. Its façades are clad in Manhattan schist quarried directly from the foundation, a novel but lauded concept at the time. Its architects designed many institutional buildings in the neighborhood.

3080 Broadway;
William Gehron, 1930|

The Jewish Theological Seminary building is made up of three interconnected wings in the Colonial Revival style. The building’s most pronounced feature is its tall entry tower, which features a Lee Lawrie–sculpted representation of the burning bush above its grand arched entryway.

West 122nd Street and Riverside Drive;
John Duncan, 1890–97;
New York City Individual and Interior Landmark;
State and National Registers of Historic Places|

This Classical Revival mausoleum, the largest in the United States, is the resting place of President Ulysses S. Grant and his wife, Julia Dent Grant. Its design is based on the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Once one of the most popular tourist destinations in the city, it is run by the National Park Service.

490 Riverside Drive;
Allen & Collens with Henry C. Pelton, 1927–30;
New York City Individual Landmark|

Riverside Church, conceived as an ecumenical Christian center and funded by John D. Rockefeller, features the tallest Gothic-style tower in the United States at 392 feet. The church is clad in Indiana limestone and its interiors are faced with Guastavino acoustical blocks. Though invisible, the church’s most marked feature is its steel structure, which used skyscraper construction methods rather than medieval load-bearing wall construction, like St. John the Divine. Harnessing this modern technology, Riverside Church was completed in just three years. Consistent with its ecumenical mission, its entrance portal bears the faces of scientists, philosophers and leaders of diverse religions.

Drive: West 72nd to West 181st Streets, east of Riverside Park; Park: West 72nd to West ;158th Streets, west of Riverside Drive;
Frederick Law Olmsted, 1873–80;
New York City Scenic Landmark;
State and National Registers of Historic Places|

In 1865, the Parks Department proposed a park and drive to stretch from 72nd to 129th Streets along Manhattan’s western cliff to obscure the industrial waterfront below and attract residential development at grade. As conceived by Olmsted, the drive was both scenic and functional, while the park afforded access to river views via winding foot paths and a promenade along the park’s edge. Augmented by service roads and mini green spaces to enhance the park-going experience, Riverside Drive is an outstanding example of Olmsted’s vision for parkway planning.

440 Riverside Drive
435 Riverside Drive
Schwartz & Gross
1909 and 1910|

Joseph, Charles, Michael and Anthony Paterno were prolific apartment house builders in Morningside Heights between 1898 and 1924. The Paterno and the Colosseum were constructed across 116th Street from one another on the corner of Riverside Drive. Both buildings feature curved corner façades with stone bases and Renaissance ornamentation.

C. P. H. Gilbert;
1897–08|

This sophisticated row of single-family houses features Colonial motifs such as rounded bays and oriels, rectangular and segmental-arch entrances and leaded-glass transoms and fanlights. Numbers 623–627 housed an Episcopal convent before they were purchased in 2010 by Columbia University, which plans to convert them into a student-faculty center.

Amsterdam Avenue to Morningside Drive, West 110th to West 113th Streets.;

Cathedral: Heins & LaFarge, 1891–1911, Ralph Adams Cram 1911–42;

St. Faith’s House: John LaFarge, 1909;

Synod House: Ralph Adams Cram,1911–13;

Choir School: Walter Cook and Winthrop A. Welch, 1912–13;

Episcopal Residence: Ralph Adams Cram, 1912;

Open-Air Pulpit: Howells & Stokes, 1913;

Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum: Ithiel Town, 1837–42|

Heins & LaFarge won the design competition for their Byzantine/Romanesque/Gothic cathedral conception. One of its most prominent features is the Guastavino tiled dome, constructed as a temporary roof during fundraising for the massive central crossing tower, which was never completed. The cathedral famously suffered many setbacks, including waning public interest to provide funds, significant design alterations, the replacement of Heins & LaFarge with Ralph Adams Cram, and building hiatuses during two world wars. Despite its uneven developmental history, the cathedral remains a fascinating juxtaposition of styles and construction technologies. Its subsidiary structures were built around the Close in Gothic variations. In spite of being an international icon, the complex remains unprotected by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. In 2007, the cathedral leased the Close’s southeast parcel for the construction of a residential high-rise, and two residential high-rises next to the Cathedral’s north wall were built. The Greek Revival Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum, restored in 2006 and currently the home of the cathedral’s tapestry conservation studio, is Morningside Heights’ oldest extant structure.

The introduction of the subway into Morningside Heights in 1904, coupled with the neighborhood’s magnificent parks and prestigious institutions, led to a frenzy of speculative apartment house construction, attracting middle-class residents who could now commute directly downtown to work. Even before the advent of zoning regulations for land use, developers erected rowhouses and modest apartment buildings on the side streets and grand apartment houses on the avenues, with particularly monumental examples on Riverside Drive, Claremont Avenue and Cathedral Parkway, and mixed-use commercial buildings along Broadway, giving the neighborhood a heterogeneous yet cohesive character. Morningside Heights’ unorthodox yet distinctive sense of place comes from the coexistence of residential and institutional clusters, as exemplified by elegant rowhouses and apartment buildings just steps away from renowned academic institutions and houses of worship.

Today the neighborhood still enjoys this singular sense of place. Its institutions are impressive examples of Beaux-Arts planning and design, including the graceful approach to Grant’s Tomb, the entrance façades of St. John the Divine and Riverside Church aligned with the axes of 112th Street and 122nd Street, and especially Charles McKim’s plan for Columbia University, whose symmetry and axial layout emphasize the monumentality and unity of the surrounding architecture. The residential architecture, though sometimes grand, offers a human scale and balance to the whole neighborhood.

Roughly between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, West 114th to West 120th Streets;
Low Library: Charles McKim, 1895–97: New York City Individual and Interior Landmark, ;State and National Registers of Historic Places;
Butler Library: James Gamble Rogers, 1931–34;
Macy Villa/Buell Hall: Ralph Townsend, 1885;
St. Paul’s Chapel: I. N. Phelps Stokes, 1903: New York City Individual Landmark;
Casa Italiana: McKim, Mead & White, 1926–07: New York City Individual Landmark, State ;and National Registers of Historic Places|

Charles McKim designed the campus in the Beaux-Arts style popularized at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Its focal point is Low Library, designed in the Roman Classical style, with Italian Renaissance–inspired classroom buildings flanking it in the forecourt and rear. Fashioned after the Baths of Caracalla and the Pantheon, the library’s granite dome is the country’s largest. The university outgrew Low Library in the 1920s, and a new library named for then president Nicholas Murray Butler was built on the campus’ southern end. A highlight of the campus is St. Paul’s Chapel, designed in a Lombardic style using the red brick and limestone motif of the campus classroom buildings. The only extant building of the Bloomingdale complex is Macy Villa (currently Buell Hall), which was constructed as a residence for mentally-ill, wealthy male patients. On Amsterdam Avenue is Casa Italiana, a cultural center designed to evoke a Renaissance palazzo.