Our Next Free Zoom Presentation
Wednesday, April 3 at 630pm "VOICES OF THE STONES: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Unfinished Tower of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine"
Presented by Robert F. Rodriguez, photojournalist and artist in residence at the Cathedral Co-sponsored by the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group and the Columbus Amsterdam BID. Register HERE for this free zoom presentation About the program: Forty years ago, the Cathedral of St John the Divine undertook a major project to build its long overdue towers. Despite that effort, they were never completed – thus the church's nickname, St. John the Unfinished. Via a series of never-before-seen photographs, "Voices of the Stones" offers a unique, up-close-and-personal look at the wondrous, intricate and often humorous carvings, traces them back to the dedicated men and women stone carvers who created them, and reveals some “secret” messages they carved into their limestone creations. More Information at our UPCOMING EVENTS page The Latest Blog is now available on the BLOGS page
The Bicycle Craze Comes to Bloomingdale written by Pam Tice, member of BNHG planning committee In the 1890s, a bicycling craze swept America as men and women purchased bicycles and took to the roads. The safety bicycle, a machine much like the one we have today with equal-size wheels and inflated tires, fueled the craze as the model became widely available by the mid-1880s. Bicycles cost from $45 to $75, making the craze very much a middle-class phenomenon.
In our Bloomingdale neighborhood, with its paved roadways and two parks, the bicycle craze became part of street life. Read this and other essays of interest on our BLOGS page New Exhibit on Display at the Bloomingdale Branch Library March 1, 2024 through April 30, 2024
"Eclipse! The remarkable story of New York City's 1925 total solar eclipse, and what to expect from the partial eclipse on April 8, 2024 The newest in a series of exhibits at the Bloomingdale library is now on view. Created by Rob Garber for the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group, the exhibit is being shown at the he Bloomingdale branch of the public library on West 100th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues. Many thanks to the library for hosting these exhibits.
Read more about the 1925 eclipse on our BLOG page The Solar Eclipse of 1925 Comes to Bloomingdale To catch up with Rob Garber's previous library exhibits, see our website pages: "The Old Community" December 2023-February 2024 "Bloomingdale As It Never Was (But Might Have Been)" September-November 2023 "Bloomingdale and Manhattan in 1927" June-August 2023 "History of the Police in Bloomingdale" March-May 2023 Free Walking Tours of Historic Bloomingdale
Wednesday, April 17th at 6pm Wednesday, May 29th at 6pm Wednesday, June 5th at 6pm Meet at south end of Straus Park,
Broadway at W106th Street No reservations needed Explore the history of the Upper West Side between W. 96th and W. 110th Streets Led by renowned local historian, Jim Mackin More Information at our UPCOMING EVENTS page Save the Date: Wednesday, May 15, 6:30 pm
Free Zoom Presentation "Before Central Park" presented by Sara Cedar Miller Click HERE to register for this event Central Park is an urban masterpiece. But before it became a model for city parks worldwide, the land was the site of farms, businesses, churches, wars, and burial grounds – and home to many different kinds of New Yorkers. In this program, Sara Cedar Miller will chronicle two-and-a-half centuries of the history of that land: the 17th and 18th century Dutch and English landowners; three wars; the land divisions of the 19th century; New York’s Common Lands; the land that became Seneca Village, with new research on the landowners and renters of the Black community; the immigrant experience; the reservoirs; and lastly, the system behind the monetary awards to the landowners so the city could create Central Park.
Sara Cedar Miller has been the historian emerita of the Central Park Conservancy since 2017. She was the Conservancy photographer from 1984, and its historian from 1989 to 2017. Miller is the author of Central Park: An American Masterpiece (2003), Strawberry Fields, Central Park’s Memorial to John Lennon (2011), Seeing Central Park: The Official Guidebook: Updated and Expanded (2021) and Before Central Park (2022). |
Happy New Year!
The Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group is starting off 2024 with lots to celebrate as we remember the Old Community, visit the theaters that used to be here, meet more notable residents, and inaugurate a new series on music in Bloomingdale. We welcome a new law that preserves a record of place names, learn the story of the House of Mercy, enjoy a happy warrior, and even unearth some new old history in our neighborhood between 96th and 110th Streets, from Central Park to the Hudson River. We look forward to feedback, comments, and ideas here. We hope you enjoy it all and will choose to support us with a donation. To view this bulletin click BULLETINS or download the file below:
We’re reaching out to our Bloomingdale community for your support through a tax-deductible donation.
We are a group of neighbors who banded together 23 years ago to explore the history of our region of the Upper West Side, roughly 96th to 110th Streets --- an area historically known as Bloomingdale. Our numerous public programs are free and open to all. Last year, both in-person and online, we gave presentations about our neighborhood buildings, how they were built, and even what happens when they are taken apart. We taught neighbors how to do local history research in general and then shared how two local historians researched their 100-year-old buildings. We spent an evening together with local residents looking at old maps of Manhattan. At the Bloomingdale Library, we presented displays on the history of the West 100th Street police precinct, how the neighborhood looked in 1927, and local building projects planned but never built. We wrote about the history of our area before it was made accessible by Bloomingdale Road, taking you back to 1668, and then presented a “census picture” of who lived here in 1855. To help us please click the "Donate now" button. For more Information visit our DONATE page BNHG’s downloadable digital brochure:
How To Research the History of Buildings in Manhattan Whether you’re a student, researcher or simply someone interested in finding out the history of any building in Manhattan, there’s now a free guide that will help you to get started. How to Research the History of Buildings in Manhattan, includes links to free online sources of data on individual buildings, their physical characteristics, the date of their construction and the name of their designer
To assist in your own research, click on the BNHG Building Database, which is the product of more than three years of research and field work by BNHG members, led by Gilbert Tauber. The table lists all of the 1,056 buildings in the area from the north side of 96th Street to the south side of 110th Street between Central Park West and Riverside Drive. A Video Overview of the BNHG
If a picture is worth a thousand words, is a video likely to be worth even more? We think so, which is why a few members of the planning committee of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group (BNHG} got together to produce this ten minute video. It's an introduction to the neighborhood that is our home, the neighborhood that inspires our research and is the inspiration for the free public programs we offer throughout the year.
Find out more about the BNHG at our ABOUT US page Reopening of the Bloomingdale Branch Library
and availability of the BNHG Library Collection! Our public archive of documents related to the history of the neighborhood is back at the Bloomingdale branch of the New York Public Library, on West 100th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues. The files are easy to find now, near the circulation desk, and they are chock-full of interesting material. Whether you are researching a specific topic or just browsing, you're welcome to copy pages in the library or to take a folder to one of the tables to read through it in comfort. On top of the filing cabinets you'll find an eclectic selection of books about NYC history donated by historian Peter Salwen, which are also for reading and reference use in the library. The Bloomingdale Library's own webpage is here, and a few highlights of our collection are posted digitally here.
Check out our Resources pages.
At our Resources pages you'll find fascinating Bloomingdale history under the following headings: Sources of Historical Information Useful Links and Resources Paterno Archive Bookshelf 2020 Project NYT Articles about Manhattan Valley from 1865-1998 Peter Salwen Collection Past Exhibits Upper West Side History Quiz PRESERVING NEIGHBORHOOD HISTORY
The New York Preservation Archive Project was organized in 1990 to “preserve preservation history.” Every effort to save an historic building or place has a story. NYPAP exists to provide an archival record of the people involved, their victories and defeats, and the many documents that tell the story of each place. Thanks to Pam Tice (member of the BNHG planning committee) , the story of 891 Amsterdam Avenue is now a part of that record. You can review the story of our neighborhood’s landmark, which began as the Association for the Relief of Respectable Aged Indigent Females, and is now Hostelling International-New York City. The record is preserved at the NYPAP site here. To receive email notification of upcoming monthly presentations and seasonal bulletins, please share your email at our CONTACT US page. Of course, we will not give your information to others.
The content of this website is offered for educational purposes; You may not reproduce, distribute, copy, sell or otherwise use any portion of this website for political or commercial purposes. If you know the identity of people depicted in historical photographs reproduced here, we’d love to hear from you.
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