Farming between the Heights
By Cynthia G. Falk
Quiara Alegría Hudes and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s stage musical, now turned feature film, has brought increased attention to northern Manhattan above 155th Street. In the Heights depicts a vibrant Latinx community facing the challenges of gentrification, immigration policy, educational and economic inequality, and stereotyping. Viewers come to understand Washington Heights as a tightknit neighborhood where Spanish and English phrases are melded as are homes and workspaces in a decidedly urban pattern. While there is some reference to earlier Irish settlement in the area, In the Heights is set in the present not the past, unlike Miranda’s other musical Hamilton. If we were to travel back in time to the northern Manhattan of Alexander Hamilton’s era, we would find a very different landscape than the one we see today in Washington Heights and neighboring Inwood to the north and Harlem to the south. That is true whether our observations are based on actual encounters with place or representations on the stage or screen.
The northern Manhattan of the late 1700s and early 1800s was defined by its topography rather than its streetscapes, with rolling fields bordered by salt marshes along the Harlem River and steep hills, or heights, bordering the Hudson River. The area that is today Washington Heights and Inwood, often referred to early on as North Haarlem or sometimes Kingsbridge after the bridge at the northern tip of the island, was settled by Europeans with names such as Zickelse, Meyer, Waldron, and Bussing.[1] Dutch words and forms were commonalities, and development was largely agricultural. Dutch farmhouses, barns, and hay barracks dotted the landscape. And crops such as cabbage and apples were produced for both local consumption and for sale at markets further south in the city. Fishing supplemented land-based crops, and the salt marshes along the river’s edge nourished grasses used for thatch and hay.[2] This was an agricultural area with Dutch roots.
All that changed as the 20th century approached. On May 18, 1870, the New York City newspaper the Sun advertised an upcoming real estate sale in what we know today as Inwood. V.K. Stevenson, Son & Co. publicized the availability of “upwards of 1,000 lots” occupying more than 100 acres on Broadway, Nineth and Tenth Avenues, and the Harlem River between 206th and 211th Streets. The advertisement assured potential buyers, “It is New York City property. There is no better place to make investments. The rapid growth of the city makes it doubtful if so magnificent a chance will ever again be offered to buyers for permanent or speculative investments.”[3]
Figure 1 Dyckman Farmhouse Museum as seen from Broadway, Inwood, New York. (Photograph by Cynthia Falk, March 2008).
The sale marked the end of an era and the beginning of the transformation of the northern end of Manhattan Island from rural to urban, from large farms to small, developed lots. The land under consideration was, according to the ad “part of the Dyckman Homestead.”[4] The property had been held by the Dyckman family since before the Revolutionary War. At least three generations of Dyckmans — William and Maria Dyckman, Jacobus and Hannah Dyckman, and brothers Michael and Isaac Dyckman — had farmed it. When it was advertised for auction following Isaac Dyckman’s death, the auctioneers bragged, “This splendid property is admirably located and adapted to immediate improvement the streets and avenues through it have been permanently established by law.”[5] While the anticipated development would not be immediate, with most growth occurring in the 20th century following the extension of the subway, the days of agriculture in northern Manhattan were coming to an end.
A real estate ad from 1788 for the same property, with significantly more acreage, shows just how agrarian northern Manhattan was in earlier periods. Following the death of William Dyckman in 1787 his family considered selling the farm. Advising in the New York Packet, his heirs alerted readers:
To be SOLD, and immediate possession given; that very valuable FARM, lately occupied by William Dyckman, decreased, or York Island; containing by estimation, 125 acres, great part of which is meadow—land, both salt and fresh; there are on said place, a good commodious dwelling-house, barn and other out-houses, in good repair; a young orchard; &c.—Theis farm is pleasantly situated between Hudson’s and Haerlem-rivers, on the post-road, about one mile from Kings Bridge. It is an excellent stand for public business, and convenient for fishing.[6]
The commonality between the proposed 1788 sale and the 1870 subdivision was that in both cases the title was “indisputable.”[7] However, by 1870, references to orchards, meadows, the barn and outbuildings, and the opportunity for fishing were no longer relevant. In fact, the “commodious dwelling-house” (at least by late 18th-century standards) was no longer an asset worth mentioning in 1870 (Figure 1). Fortunately, it survived long enough to be purchased by two Dyckman descendants, Mary Alice Dean and Fannie Fredericka Welch, in 1915, at which point the sisters began the process of converting the a small sliver of the property into the Dyckman House Park, a shrine to the earlier era but one largely devoid of any vestiges the agricultural heritage of the site.
Today if one visits the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum, now a property of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation and a member of the Historic House Trust of New York City, it offers an oasis tucked into city blocks developed following the 1870 sale. The park-like setting provides much appreciated open space, but it only offers the faintest suggestion of what the area would have been like when the Dyckman family constructed their new farmhouse following the destruction of the Revolutionary War.
Figure 2 Thomas Davies (c.1737-1812), A View of the Attack against Fort Washington and Rebel Redouts near New York on the 16 of November 1776 by the British and Hessian Brigades. New York Public Library's Digital Library, ID 54209. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:View_of_the_Attack_Against_Fort_Washington.jpeg
During the American Revolution, northern Manhattan with its elevated hilltops was a strategic location that both sides aimed to control. Fort Washington, just north of the base of today’s George Washington Bridge on the New York side of the Hudson River and Fort Lee on the New Jersey side served as defensive posts for the Americans, designed to prevent the British from traveling north up the Hudson. On November 16, 1776, Fort Washington fell to the British who occupied it and renamed it Fort Knyphausen after a commander of the Hessian troops with whom they were allied.
When the British and Hessians attacked the Fort Washington in 1776, Thomas Davies, a British officer and military artist, created an image that captured the landscape of northern Manhattan[8] (Figure 2). Looking across the Harlem River from the Bronx, he depicted the largely forested hills, or heights, that now form Fort Tryon Park on the western edge of the island along the Hudson River and Highbridge Park along the Harlem River.[9] Davies illustrated open fields nestled to their north, which were demarcated by some fencing, and rows of trees suggesting orchards. This agricultural landscape was disrupted in the aftermath of the fall of Fort Washington and the British occupation of New York City as British and Hessian troops erected military encampments, the remnants of which survived into the period of development in the early 1900s.[10] One of the “huts” that was part of an encampment has been reconstructed at the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Revolutionary-era military encampment building, relocated and reconstructed at the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum in 1915 with additional reconstruction in 1968 (Photograph by Cynthia Falk, October 2016).
For the Dyckman family, and presumably others, the years after the Revolutionary War marked a period of rebuilding with the goal of recreating the productive farm that had been lost during the war. Within four years of British defeat, the family could boast a house, barn, outbuildings, a young orchard, salt marshes, non-brackish fields, and meadow land.[11] A map by William Adams created in 1795 carefully delineated J. Dyckman’s 120 ½-acre holdings with notations about salt meadows, fresh meadows, wet meadows, and water sources. A house with two chimneys and a central doorway fronted on the Post Road, formerly Kingsbridge Road and now Broadway. It was complemented by a large barn. Not surprisingly, the property was labeled a “farm.”[12]
Figure 4 Farmstead at the Dyckman property as illustrated in “Protractions of Sheets 92 to 84 inclusive filed Feb. 1819.” Dyckman Family Papers, 1667, New-York Historical Society Library.
A survey from 1819 captured more details and hinted at some of the products being produced on the Dyckman farm[13] (Figure 4). The barn remained, as did the house, which included a new kitchen addition on the west end. Next to the barn was a smaller building labeled a corn crib, perhaps one of the outbuildings described previously. Its presence suggests both the growing of corn and the keeping of animals that would eat it. Two other unlabeled structures sat to the east of the barn and south of the corn crib. Their presence raises more questions than answers. Could they have been hay barracks, an agricultural form unique in the North America to the Dutch? (Figure 5). Given the earlier notations about salt and fresh meadows, it seems likely that hay was among the agricultural products that the Dyckmans grew, and the family may have chosen to build hay barracks to protect what could not be stored in the barn. Could they have provided shelter for animals? It is possible that in addition to horses for transportation, oxen for labor, and cows for dairy production, the Dyckmans could have kept pigs or poultry in smaller structures. The fact fencing extended from them suggests this might have been the case. Or, could they have housed the enslaved man and two free people of color — a woman named Hannah and perhaps her son — who were part of the Dyckman household in 1820?[14] It is not clear where on the property those held in bondage or employed by the Dyckmans to perform household and agricultural labor resided. The garret of the main house or kitchen are other possibilities.
Other parts of the survey are more definitive in terms of land and building use. One field is labeled “cabbage,” and, on a separate sheet, lines marked “ditches” show how the Dyckmans channeled water to support crops. A written label identifies another fairly sizable building as a cider mill. The presence of the mill explains how the fruit from the young orchard described in 1787 was being put to use by 1819. It also helps explain the scale of the agricultural endeavors that were part of the northern Manhattan landscape. It would be easy to imagine farms like the Dyckmans as being subsistence based with most products intended for personal or at least local use. A cider mill indicates otherwise. Such infrastructure provided a way to convert apples into a commodity that could be transported and sold in more urban markets.
This market orientation is confirmed by a petition to the New York State Assembly when a dam was proposed across the Harlem River in 1814. The “Land Holders on the bank of the Harlaem Creek” explained: “The creek whose waters are to be stopped is a navigable stream of water capable of floating vessels from four to five feet draft of water. It is within ten miles of the great market of New York.”[15] Agricultural prosperity in northern Manhattan was directly connected to the ability to sell products in the more urban, densely populated parts of New York City that were geographically nearby but a world away if water routes were obstructed.
The writers of the petition were also astute in noting the impending changes to the area. Arguing against the damming of the Harlem River they noted:
The effects hereafter will be more sensibly felt when in a short time the farms around this dam and creek owing to divisions and subdivisions… will be but small lots and gardens which though unable to support beasts of burthen [sic] for transporting their produce would by means of an easy water communication have gained their possessors a comfortable subsistence and have added both in variety and quality to the vegetables in the market of New York.[16]
Figure 5 Reconstructed hay barrack, Herkimer Home State Historic Site, near Little Falls, Herkimer County, New York (Photograph by Cynthia Falk, February 2006).
By 1814, it was already clear that change was coming as lot sizes shrunk and agricultural endeavors involving both crops and animals dissipated. And, yet, throughout the 1800s, northern Manhattanites remained tied to the land, even as salt-water marshes and orchards were subdivided and developed for other uses.
Today it is hard to image Inwood, where the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum is located, or Washington Heights or Harlem as rural places. Yet when Alexander Hamilton built his house the Grange as a retreat in 1802, he described his property between what are now 140th and 147th Streets as a “little farm.” On relocating there, he wrote to a friend, “A disappointed politician you know is very apt to take refuge in a Garden,” and he asked for advise on fertilizer and seed.[17] Hamilton’s primary concerns often strayed from farming, but his neighbors were, in fact, farmers. The northern Manhattan they knew was comprised of fields nestled between the heights; barns and orchards dotted the landscape and fencing created partitions between different uses and owners. Productivity was facilitated by ready access to water for irrigation and transportation, by slave labor, and by proximity to markets in urban southern Manhattan. It would be a few more generations before the streetscapes showcased in In the Heights began to take shape. For centuries following initial European settlement, northern Manhattan truly was a rural place.
Cynthia G. Falk is Professor of Material Culture at Cooperstown Graduate Program, SUNY Oneonta. She teaches material culture methodology, historic preservation, designing for accessibility, and thematic courses in America’s tangible heritage and is the author of the books Barns of New York: Rural Architecture of the Empire State (Cornell, 2012).
[1] Sale agreement between Reformed Dutch Church of N. Haerlem and Johannes Zickelse (in Dutch), February 23, 1760. Dyckman Family Papers, 1667, New-York Historical Society Library.
[2] “The Petition and remonstrance of the Land Holders on the Banks of the Harlaem Creek,” February 14, 1814. Dyckman Family Papers, 1667, New-York Historical Society Library; David C. Smith, Victor Konrad, Helen Koulouris, Edward Hawes, and Harold W. Borns, "Salt Marshes as a Factor in the Agriculture of Northeastern North America," Agricultural History 63, no. 2 (1989): 270-94. Accessed July 8, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3743517.
[3] “Executors’ Sale,” Sun, May 18, 1870, page 4. The real estate advertisement was repeated in the Evening Post, May 27, 1870, page 2 and the Real Estate Record and Builders’ Guide (New York) vol. 5, no. 115 (May 28, 1870).
[4] “Executors’ Sale,” Sun, May 18, 1870, page 4.
[5] “Executors’ Sale,” Sun, May 18, 1870, page 4.
[6] “To Be Sold,” New York Packet April 18, 1788.
[7] “To Be Sold,” New York Packet April 18, 1788; “Executors’ Sale,” Sun, May 18, 1870, page 4.
[8] R.H. Hubbard, “Thomas Davies,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 5 (1801-1820). http:///www.biographi.ca/en/bio/davies_thomas_5E.html.
[9] Matthew Skic, “View Finding: Thomas Davies and the Assault on Fort Washington,” Material Matters: Winterthur Program in American Material Culture. https://sites.udel.edu/materialmatters/2014/10/27/view-finding-thomas-davies/
[10] Reginald Pelham Bolton, Relics of the Revolution; the Story of the Discovery of the Buried Remains of Military Life in Forts and Camps on Manhattan Island (New York, 1916), especially 143-184.
[11] “To Be Sold,” New York Packet April 18, 1788.
[12] William Adams, surveyor, “The Farm of J. Dykman,” 1795. Dyckman family papers, 1667, New-York Historical Society Library.
[13] “Protractions of Sheets 92 to 84 inclusive filed Feb. 1819.” Dyckman family papers, 1667, New-York Historical Society Library.
[14] Richard Tomzack, “Dyckman Discovered: Generations of Slavery on the Dyckman Property in Inwood, 1661-1827,” Gotham Center for New York City History, February 18, 2021. https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/dyckman-discovered-generations-of-slavery-on-the-dyckman-property-in-inwood-1661-1827; “The Dyckman Family,” Dyckman Farmhouse Museum Alliance, https://dyckmanfarmhouse.org/about/history/dyckman-family/; “Dyckman Discovered, Dyckman Farmhouse Museum Alliance,” https://dyckmanfarmhouse.org/dyckmandiscovered/.
[15] “The Petition and remonstrance of the Land Holders on the Banks of the Harlaem Creek,” February 14, 1814.
[16] “The Petition and remonstrance of the Land Holders on the Banks of the Harlaem Creek,” February 14, 1814.
[17] From Alexander Hamilton to Richard Peters, 29 December 1802, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-26-02-0001-0055. [Original source: The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 26, 1 May 1802 – 23 October 1804, Additional Documents 1774–1799, Addenda and Errata, ed. Harold C. Syrett. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979, pp. 69–71.]