Timeline of Historic Bloomingdale
By Gil Tauber — New York City historian, author, and tour guide
1600s & EARLIER: Manhattan Island inhabited by Lenape Indians. There is no evidence of permanent settlements in the high rocky Manhattan Valley area, but it was almost certainly used as a hunting ground by Indians living on the Harlem flats to the east.
1625: Dutch West India Company establishes New Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan.
1664: British seize New Amsterdam, renaming it New York. Within a few years, the Upper West Side is parceled out in land grants, but there is no significant settlement.
1703: Bloomingdale Road is built, roughly along the line of the present Broadway. The newly accessible Upper West Side becomes an area of farms and country estates.
1811: The Commissioner’s Plan is adopted, laying out Manhattan’s system of streets and avenues. However, it will be decades before most of these streets are anything more than lines on a map.
1821: The Bloomingdale Insane Asylum is opened on what is now the site of Columbia University. In 1834 an unused part of the asylum property is transferred to the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum, now the site of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
1838: The Croton Aqueduct is built along Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues. It includes the ClendenningValley aqueduct bridge, up to fifty feet above ground level, extending from 102nd to 95th streets. The massive stone structure has only three openings for future cross-town streets.
1856: New York City acquires the land for Central Park.
1868: Broadway is opened, replacing the old Bloomingdale Road.
1871: Manhattan Avenue is opened.
1872-78: Sewers and water mains are laid in most of the streets east of Broadway. Underground pipes replace the aboveground aqueduct.
1870s-‘80s: Improved city services and low land costs attract major charitable institutions including the Hebrew Home for the Aged, the Catholic Old Age Home, and the Home for Aged Indigent Respectable Females.
1879: The Ninth Avenue Elevated Railway, powered by steam locomotives, is built along Columbus Avenue with stations at 99th and 104th Streets. It is followed by the first distinctly urban development: tenements along Columbus Avenue and row houses along the nearby side streets.
1880’S-‘90S: To serve the growing residential population, several new churches and schools are built, mainly on or near Amsterdam Avenue.
1903: Following the electrification of the Ninth Avenue El, a station is opened at 110th Street and Manhattan Avenue. Elevators lift passengers to platforms five stories above the street. Nearby vacant lots are rapidly filled with apartment buildings.
1904: The IRT subway is opened on Broadway, spurring construction of more-and bigger- apartment buildings.
1932: Eighth Avenue subway line opens along Central Park West.
1940: The Ninth Avenue El is closed and torn down.
1950s: Fourteen city blocks are demolished and are replaced by Frederick Douglass Houses and ParkWestVillage. Scandals in connection with the latter project lead to the downfall of Robert Moses.
1970s: City fiscal crisis. Drugs, crime, deterioration, and the abandonment of buildings beset the neighborhood.
1979: Community leaders organize Valley Restoration Local Development Corporation. It sponsors housing rehabilitation projects as well as programs to improve security and assist local businesses.
1990s: The area attracts new businesses and private investment in housing rehabilitation.