225th Street, Marble Hill – The Bronx (Or is it…?)

This one comes with a bit of fascinating NYC history.  If you look at the map (below), you can see that this stop is geographically located  in The Bronx.  But that wasn’t always the case. The Marble Hill area was originally the northernmost tip of Manhattan.  In 1895, however, the Harlem River Ship Channel was constructed to its south in order to connect the Harlem and Hudson rivers.  This made Marble Hill an island, with the channel to the south and Spuyten Duyvil Creek to the north.  Fast-forward to 1914 when Spuyten Duyvil Creek was filled in…which resulted in Marble Hill being physically located in The Bronx, while it remained–and still does to this day–technically part of Manhattan.  It is, in fact, the only neighborhood in Manhattan that’s on the mainland of North America.

Fascinating stuff!  And I had no idea until I happened to look up the history of a cool church I found there (the beautiful St. Stephen’s United Methodist Church, built in 1898, also pictured below).  I love this project!