Water Heater Replacement in Manhattanville, NY

The village of Manhattanville was founded in 1806 and quickly gained prominence as an outpost of the city. The village grew around the crossroads of Bloomingdale Road and Manhattan Street, now roughly Broadway and 125th Street. The village’s original streets were laid out by Jacob Schieffelin and other wealthy merchants, mostly Quakers, who had country seats in the area. The town thrived as a result of the development of Manhattan Street from the Hudson River, whose convenient access also became a crucial catalyst in the growth of the older village of Harlem to the southeast on the Harlem River. Situated at approximately the same latitude, Harlem and Manhattanville flourished together throughout the 19th century as the two most prominent villages in upper Manhattan.

Manhattanville sits in a valley formerly called Moertje David’s Vly (“Mother David’s Valley”; in Dutch, Vly is short for vallei, or “valley”) during the Dutch Colonial period and as Harlem Cove during the English Colonial period. During the American Revolutionary War, the valley was also known as the Hollow Way, where the main action of the Battle of Harlem Heights began under the command of General George Washington. During the War of 1812 the valley’s southern ridges figured as the site of the Manhattanville Pass, whose defense fortifications and breastworks included Fort Laight and Blockhouse No. 4, which became the sites of Morningside Gardens Houses and PS 36, respectively.

Manhattanville’s early population was a diverse and eclectic mix of intermarried American patriots and British loyalists; at least one prominent former African slave trader (this seems to be a reference to Michael Hogan, whose wife was of mixed British and Indian ancestry, born in Bombay); slave owners and enslaved African-Americans; Quaker anti-slavery activists and free black abolitionists; tradesmen, poor laborers and wealthy industrialists. Many were affiliated with the same institutions, principally the historic New York City landmarked St. Mary’s Protestant Episcopal Church, organized in 1823, which was the first Episcopal church to dissolve pew rent in 1831, and the Manhattanville Free School (established in 1827, later Public School No. 43) still at their original sites. Manhattanville’s most prominent resident was industrialist Daniel F. Tiemann (1805-1899), owner of the D. F. Tiemann & Company Color Works, who was also Mayor of New York City from 1858 to 1859. The Tiemann laboratory and factory which was originally located on 23rd Street and Fourth Avenue in Gramercy, near Madison Square Park, relocated uptown to Manhattanville in 1832, in part due to an underground spring of running water at the new uptown location, which is today the site of 560 Riverside Drive.