Hamilton Heights Historic District

This quiet, exclusively residential community on the Upper West Side was named after founding father Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton originally built his country house The Grange, designed by American-born architect John McComb, Jr. in 1802, near the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and West 143rd Street. In 1889, the house was relocated to 287 Convent Avenue to accommodate the expansion of the street grid; it had been purchased by the congregation of St. Luke's Episcopal Church for use as a worship space. St. Luke's new structure, erected next to The Grange, was built in 1892-95, and is the earliest of three churches within the bounds of the district. Over time the massive Romanesque Revival structure, designed by R.H. Robertson, and a neighboring apartment building, overshadowed the diminutive Grange. In 1924, The Grange became a public museum, and in 2008, the National Parks Service, which had acquired the property, moved the structure to its current location at the north end of St. Nicolas Park using hydraulic lifts.

Hamilton Heights remained relatively rural until 1879, when the elevated railroad was extended to the West Side and development stretched north. Nearly all the district's row houses and low-rise apartment buildings were built between 1886 and 1906 and cover a variety of styles ranging from Romanesque Revival, Flemish, Dutch, French and Italian Renaissance and Beaux-Arts. When the building boom in Harlem ended in 1907 due to a financial panic, many newly constructed houses were left unoccupied, or turned into rooming houses. By the 1930s, African Americans were moving into the area. In 1948, Dr. Walter Ivey Delph, who lived at 21 Hamilton Terrace, commissioned Vertner Tandy, the first African America architect registered in New York State, to design the Ivey Delph apartments at 19 Hamilton Terrace.

Today the area remains residential. The unusual street pattern in this district and its well-preserved turn of the century character create the impression of a protected enclave, insulated from the busy thoroughfare nearby. ©2014