Living Around | Morningside Park: The Name Evokes Dawn for a Reason
January 7, 2011
The city accorded Morningside Park landmark status only in 2008, long after it anointed other parks from the design team of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux — Central Park in 1974 and Riverside Park in 1980, for example.
“It’s absolutely picturesque beyond any description,” said Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell, whose Upper Manhattan district includes the park. “But for many years it was not treated with the same deference as other Olmsted parks, partly because of where it was.”
A narrow 30-acre expanse on a steep cliff of Manhattan schist, the park is named for its sunrise views. Standing on the western ridge, near Columbia University, you are about even with the middle floors of Harlem buildings.
Today there is evidence that decades of community activism have paid off. Signs of vitality include a dog run; a renovated playground; and, in the spring, the pleasing cracks of softball bats. A 25-foot sequoia, donated by a nursery in Portland, Ore., anchors a grove of pines near West 112th Street. And since 2005, at the behest of the group Friends of Morningside Park, a co-operative called Community Markets has run a seasonal market at 110th Street and Manhattan Avenue, said Jacquie Connors, the Friends president.
On exiting their apartments, those who live along the eastern edge of the park have a view of a distant waterfall; it pools into a pond on the site where Columbia planned to build a gymnasium in 1968, until protests halted construction.
Developers are realizing the golden opportunity of parkside living. “The good news-bad news is, there’s so much gentrification happening,” said Ms. Martin-Gianino, the Corcoran agent.
Even so, advocates have occasionally been frustrated by the slow pace of progress. The northern tip of the park, near 123rd Street, is fenced off; the city parks department stores equipment there. A department spokesman cites plans to improve nearby entrances, pathways and plantings, as well as to renovate a playground. But Brad Taylor, who heads Community Board 9’s parks committee, expressed concern that budget cuts could delay such efforts. “We’re a little wary about it,” he said.
Mr. Taylor, an architect, has for two years lived at 54 Morningside Drive, overlooking the park on 116th Street. He paid nearly $1 million for his three-bedroom one-and-a-half-bath apartment, which he shares with his wife and two children. For 18 years before his move, he lived on Amsterdam Avenue.
“The park is so aptly named — Morningside,” he said. “You’ve got these spectacular sunrises every morning that come up over Harlem. You can be on the second floor or third floor and you feel like you’re on the 15th.”
Cami Anderson and her partner, Jared Robinson, were both drawn by the area’s diversity and culture. In July 2009 they rented a two-bedroom two-bath place on Manhattan Avenue near 118th Street for $3,300 a month. “We hang around here a lot,” said Ms. Anderson, who works in education. “Some people come up here to get more space and then get on the subway. Not us.”
Last year the couple’s first child arrived. Given their proximity to Frederick Douglass Boulevard — and his statue at the northwest corner of Central Park — they named their son Sampson Douglass Anderson Robinson.
WHAT YOU’LL FIND
The park is bounded to the north by 123rd Street, to the south by 110th Street, to the west by Morningside Drive and to the east by Manhattan Avenue and Morningside Avenue. A mix of apartments, Columbia-owned buildings and institutions line Morningside Drive, the park’s lofty western edge. Among the institutions are the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, St. Luke’s Hospital and the pillared Church of Notre Dame, a Catholic church built in 1911. The apartment buildings are popular among Columbia faculty. Terraces along Morningside Drive allow spectacular views of the park and Harlem.
Morningside Avenue and Manhattan Avenue, along the eastern side, are dominated by town houses. Even though Morningside Avenue is very close to Frederick Douglass Boulevard, the feeling is more residential, said Beatrice Sibblies, the developer of 88 Morningside, a 73-unit condo tower now under construction on Morningside at 121st Street. “It’s a street that feels like a brownstone block, because of the low scale and because of the park.”
Ms. Sibblies’s building will have a gym, a media room and a roof deck with private cabanas. At 12 stories, it will be the tallest on the park’s east side. When completed — in February, according to the sales agent — 88 Morningside will join another sentrylike structure, Avalon Morningside Park, the 20-story rental tower at 110th Street and Morningside Drive. Completed in 2008, it occupies the same huge block as St. John the Divine and glassily guards the park’s southwest corner. Although Manhattan’s various neighborhood boundaries are impossible to etch in stone, even the most flexible observer might raise an eyebrow at Avalon Morningside’s telephone greeting, which describes “a luxury apartment community located in Manhattan’s Upper West Side.”
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