The lively arts abound outdoors in Upper Manhattan. One troupe, Pied Piper, focuses on children. Another, Up Theater, features Equity performers in new productions, while the People’s Theatre Project is open to aspiring actors. For a different approach, try the Broadway Haven Players (formerly the Bard Hall Players), who are medical students at Columbia’s College of Physicians & Surgeons. Sadly, the pandemic seems to have set the medical troupers on hiatus; they haven’t produced a play since spring 2021.

     The music scene reflects the city’s eclectic tastes. On Broadway at 175th Street is the United Palace Theatre—originally one of three Loew’s Wonder Theatres in New York—the Washington Heights venue for off-beat and popular music. It went mainstream in 2023 when it played host to the Tony Awards.

     The Academy shares space on Audubon Terrace with the Hispanic Society of America. Its museum and research library, which include treasures from Spain and Portugal, are usually free and open to the public. The museum opens this year after an extensive renovation. The plaza includes monumental statues of Don Quixote, El Cid, and Boabdil.

     Its museum holds more paintings by Goya than any institution outside Spain, and a first edition of Don Quixote. “The collections of the Hispanic Society are unparalleled in their scope and quality outside the Iberian Peninsula,” the Society says. Underscoring that point is the 2017 Princess of Asturias Award for International Cooperation, awarded by Spain.

     The neighborhoods of Washington Heights are featured in In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical about a young man whose dreams are bigger than the bodega he runs. For the 2021 debut of the filmed version, the city published this guide of the best of Latino culture.

     Trinity Cemetery lies one block south of Audubon Terrace at Broadway between West 154th and 155th Streets. In 1824 Trinity Parish bought the land from John James Audubon, the naturalist. He is buried here, along with Clement Clarke Moore, a professor of Classics at Union Theological Seminary who is best known for writing A Visit From Saint Nicholas (1822). Most people recognize the poem as ’Twas The Night Before Christmas., and each December on an Advent afternoon the church hosts a reading of the poem and a visit to Moore’s tomb.

     Other notables are buried there. The tomb of Charles Dickens’ son, Alfred Tennyson Dickens, is here, and many members of the Astor family lie here as well, including John Jacob Astor, who died in the sinking of the Titanic. The cemetery was declared a historic landmark in 1969.

     A short introduction to a handful of cultural spots in Lower WaHi comes from a 2023 installment by Hidden City.

     Fort Washington Park begins where Riverside Park ends, with a bike trail from Hudson Heights to the Battery. Like Bennett Park, it has a connection to the Revolutionary War. These days, the park is home to peregrine falcons, the monarch butterfly, tennis courts, basketball courts, and the Little Red Lighthouse, perched on Jeffrey’s Hook, of  storybook fame. The lighthouse is the focal point of an annual children’s festival. It’s also opened occasionally on summer weekends; check our Kids’ Events page for the next chance to climb to the top.

     There’s plenty more there today than a battle site. The New York City Parks Department ranks it as a Flagship Park, entitling it to greater resources. Among the benefits is the Heather Garden, where amateur botanists join park professionals in keeping the plantings resplendent year-round.  There’s even a ping pong table, with free paddles and balls, for anyone’s use in the spot called Fort Washington Terrace (it’s just east of the upper entrance to the 190th Street “A” Train Station).

     Time Out ranked Fort Tryon Park as the city’s most under-rated park (it calls the High Line the most over-rated), thanks in part to The Cloisters Museum, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe. The park’s Javits Playground, at Margaret Corbin Circle, got a rave from Curbed thanks to its view. The online real estate site includes it in its list of the eleven best playgrounds in town (and one of the seven best in Manhattan).

     Summing it all up, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Inwood resident wrote this appreciation of the park. Fans of medieval and Renaissance music enjoy the concerts, and parents take their children to the weekend events geared to the young.

     The park’s hills also offer spectacular views of the Harlem River Valley. And since the High Bridge reopened in 2015, you can retrace the steps of generations of New Yorkers: it’s the borough’s oldest bridge. The 179-foot-tall water tower can be seen for mile from the park, located east of Academy Street between Trinity Cemetery and Sherman Creek, and after a $5 million renovation project that started in 2018 you can climb the stairs to its top to enjoy the best views of the Hudson Vally. The city is investing in other areas of the park, too: A playground near Edgecomb Avenue and 164th Street received a $30 million upgrade in late 2020.

     Historically, the upper portion of Highbridge Park was home to the Fort George Amusement Park, described at the time as Harlem’s Coney Island. The amusement park opened in 1895, before much of Upper Manhattan had been developed for the middle classes. At its peak it featured two Ferris wheels, a short-line scenic railroad, a hotel, and even a casino.

     As the park grew in attractions it grew in visitors. The Schenk Brothers managed the operation and opened a set of thrill rides in 1906 in what they called Paradise Park, charging 10¢ to ride them. (That’s almost $3 today.) Thanks in part to the Third Avenue Trolley Line having its terminus near

the park, visitors topped 70,000 people on summer Sundays in 1905, according to The New York Sun (whose article includes a photo of that rather terrifying roller coaster on the right in the postcard image, above).

     When the area began transforming from a park in Fort George to the Fort George residential neighborhood, the newcomers disliked the crowds and the noise they brought. Some of the park-goers were of the less savory type, according to The Sun, including “highwaymen” and palm readers, groups whom the police attempted to disperse. The police also enforced segregation in the park.

     The fun and games ended in June 1913, when a suspicious fire, with flames shooting up “more than one hundred feet,” The Tmes reported, decimated the amusement park. It was condemned, torn down, and incorporated into Highbridge Park. Today the Fort George Playground is at the park’s site.

Take rowing lessons from the Peter J. Sharp Boathouse, off Swindler Cove in the Harlem River.

     It’s all accessible by the A Train, which runs express from Midtown. J. Hood Wright Park is at the 175th Street stop; Bennett Park at 181st, Fort Tryon Park at 190th, and Inwood Hill Park at the end of the line, at 207th Street.

Education takes pride of place here too. In Fort George, the Yeshiva University High School for Boys was named the eighth-best all-boys’ high school in the city by Niche in 2021, and the seventh-best Jewish high school.

     University education includes the Fort George campus of Yeshiva University, which is where its storied basketball team competes. You can also find a branch of City University called CUNY in the Heights—which despite its name is actually in Inwood. Boricua College, on Audubon Terrace, prides itself on education for Caribbean immigrants.

     Also in Lower WaHi, the Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons makes its home at the New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, which also houses Columbia’s schools of dentistry, nursing, public health, and social work.

     Lively retail activity on 181st and 187th Streets includes several restaurants (northern Italian, sushi, and Irish, among others), a wine bar, and a Pilates studio. A specialty skateboard shop in Fort George is open by appointment only, in its owners’ apartment. Even more stores line Broadway and St. Nicholas Avenue, retail activity that is supplemented by the overhaul of shops at the George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal. The renovation cost around $200 million and created 120,000 square feet of retail space.

While New Yorkers from outside Upper Manhattan rarely think of WaHi as a place worth their visit, royalty doesn’t seem to mind.
      Queen Litizia of Spain visited Dos Puentes Elementary School in Fort George in 2014. She was there to announce that the dual-language school had received membership in the International Spanish Academies.
     Years earlier, during the U.S. Bicentennial celebrations, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip made a trip to Jumel Terrace to visit the Morris-Jumel Mansion, the oldest house in Manhattan and the temporary quarters of George Washington.
      And you don’t have to be a historian to recall that the George in Fort George referred to the Hanoverian monarchs of Britain in the eighteenth century, in whose territory the Colonists lived, and against whom they rebelled when George III was king.

Upper Manhattan’s residents create one of the most vibrant—some would say soulful—streets in the city, inspiring writers and other story-tellers.

     For one photographer, who's lived here for more than two decades, the people are his inspiration. Northern Manhattan as Muse is Mike Fitelson’s tribute to the the old-timers, newcomers, visitors and everyone else who makes Inwood and the neighborhoods of Washington Heights so fascin-ating. It was published in 2011 by Blurb.

     The busiest bridge in the world crosses the Hudson River. In 2017, about 43 million vehicles crossed the steel structure. Built in 1931, it even has a minor role in Citizen Kane. Le Corbusier called it “the only seat of grace in the disordered city.” But remarkably little has been written about until now, with The George Washington Bridge: Poetry in Steel. Michael Aaron Rockland traces its history from the planning stage (when it was “The Bridge from Fort Washington to Fort Lee,” reflecting an earlier name for our neighborhood and no name for the GWB) to the post-9/11 mentality. It was published in 2008 by Rutgers University Press.

     A look at how WaHi became Quisqueya Heights is examined in Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York City, which traces the neighbohood’s history since the Great Depression. Written by Robert W. Snyder, who grew up in WaHi in the 1980’s, the book tells how “disparate groups overcame their mutual suspicions to rehabilitate house, build new schools, restore parts, and work with the police to bring safety to streets racked by crime and fear.” Snyder is now a professor of American studies at Rutgers. Cornell University Press published the book in 2014.

     An exhaustive collection of photographs of upper Manhattan has been put together in Washington Heights, Inwood, and Marble Hill, a pictorial history edited by James Renner. Images of architectural sites, parks, historical markers, and aerial views are described by Renner, a member of the Washington Heights-Inwood Historical Society who lives in the area. (He also wrote the entry about Trinity Cemetery that's linked to above.) Published in 2007, you can order it from Arcadia Publishing.

     For a scholarly study on the demographics of Washington Heights, read Frankfurt on the Hudson: The German Jewish Community of Washington Heights, 1933–82, Its Structure and Culture, above right. The author, Prof. Stephen M. Lowenstein, grew up in Hudson Heights when it was known as Frankfurt-on-the-Hudson. His book traces the area’s changes, from the time it was known as Fort Tryon through the twilight of German influence. It was published in 1989 by Wayne State University Press.

     The neighborhood also attracts novelists and storytellers. One is Linda Fairstein, who in her seventeenth Alexandra Cooper thriller takes readers to Manhattan’s waterfront and magnificent vistas of the Statue of Liberty and the George Washington Bridge, the world’s busiest span for motor vehicles. In Devil’s Bridge, Detective Mike Chapman will discover the peril that lurks along this seemingly benign expanse. Published in 2015 by Dutton.

     Junot Díaz wrote a novel about an overweight computer nerd who lives in New Jersey, Washington Heights, and the Dominican Republic. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao tells the story of a young Dominicano who is an aspiring science fiction writer, which garnered a Pulitzer Price for Fiction in 2008. It was published in 2007 by Riverhead Books.

    A children’s classic, The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge tells the story of an important little guy whose purpose is eliminated when a massive steel structure, festooned with lights, is built above it. Jeffrey’s Hook is the setting, and (spoiler alert!) the George Washington Bridge becomes the lighthouse’s friend. By Hildegarde H. Swift with the memorable illustrations of Lynd Ward. It is published by Harcourt Children’s Books.

     A children’s book tells how a girl in Upper Manhattan, with the help of her aunt and some new friends, finds a place where she can tell her story. Produced entirely by a volunteer collective in Lower WaHi, Home at Word Up: A Story of a Bookshop in Washington Heights is a tale of finding and building community anywhere you live. You can even visit the bookstore where the story began. Published in 2016.

     The most famous, most popular, and most upbeat depiction of Uptown life comes from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights. It started as a muscial, became a Broadway sensation, and is now a hugely successful movie, and it was filmed here in WaHi. The scene above, at 175th and Audubon Avenue, is a ten-minute walk from our building. (For another take on the film’s musical paeon to the neighborhood, enjoy this spoof made by students of the Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons.)

     The neighhorhoods of Washington Heights have appeared in plenty of other films too, sometimes to demonstrate the city’s grit and others to show of its beauty. Here’s a growing list:

The Adjustment Bureau In this 2011 sci-fi take on predestination versus free will, the characters of Matt Damon and Emily Blunt have a date in Fort Tryon Park at the New Leaf Café, which (in real life) was one of WaHi’s few restaurants to be listed in the prestigious Michelin guide. The realism shatters, at least for locals, when in the next scene the two lovers casually stroll from the park to the South Street Seaport, over 12 miles away. 

Annie In the 2014 version, not only did Jamie Foxx (as Will Stacks, the Daddy Warbucks character) and Quvenzhané Wallis (as the Little Orphan) film in WaHi, they filmed inside the United Palace’s Grand Foyer, which was the setting for a movie premiere that Stacks takes Annie to.

Christmas With You When she feels burned out by her music career in the big city, Angelina (Aimee Garcia) takes a fan’s advice to change pace in a small town. There she meets a handsome suitor (Freddie Prince, Jr.), whose wooing sparks her inspiration. She gives a concert in the United Palace, with scenes in the Grand Foyer and in the auditorium. Released in 2022.

Citizen Kane Orsen Welles’ first feature film is considered the greatest American movie ever made. Toward the end of the 1941 classic, when Kane visits a former colleague in a sanitarium, the building sits near Jeffrey’s Hook, directly under the George Washington Bridge. No such building was ever there. The shot with the GWB lasts mere seconds, so keep your eyes open.

Coogan’s Bluff An Arizona sheriff, played by Clint Eastwood, heads to the big city to extradite a criminal. Released in 1968, the drama covers a lot of ground in Manhattan, including Fort Tryon Park’s vistas of the Cloisters and a motorcycle chase along its paths.

Frances Ha The story of Greta Gerwig’s under-employed dancer who’s between youth and adulthood comes to a happy ending in a Fort George apartment all her own, on Audubon Avenue, proving once again that dreams do come true in Uptown. Directed by Noah Baumbach in 2012.

The Greatest Beer Run Ever In 1967, an Inwood native was drinking with friends in the Inwood bar Doc Fiddler’s, which later went by the name The Red Barrel, when one of them suggested taking beers and good cheer to their buddies fighting in Vietnam. John Donohue took the idea and ran with it. Zac Efron stars in the 2022 film as Donohue; with Russell Crowe and Bill Murray.

John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum In the third iteration of the tale of the reluctant assassin, Keany Reeves takes on and casts aside a vast array of impediments. The 2019 film includes a scene filmed at the United Palace. 

Mad Hot Ballroom The 2005 documentary is a local favorite. It stars fifth-grade students from three city schools, including P.S. 115 in Lower WaHi, whose students are primarily Dominican and grew up a world away from the staid traditions of the ballroom dancing. Through effort and talent, they charm their way to the championship.

Spider Man: No Way Home The latest in the series shows all manner of explosions and other Uptown pyrotechnics. In the 2021 release, Spidey jumps over cars’ roofs on the Henry Hudson, with the exit for 181st Street and the GWB in the background.

Trouble in the Heights WaHi local Jonathan Ullman serves up a raw, up-close-and-personal vision of the sometimes mean streets of the neighborhood. This 2011 movie may have held the record for devoting the most screen time to the neighborhood until In the Heights. The film’s well-attended premiere at the United Palace played an outsized role in launching Movies at the Palace.

Uptown at 7 p.m. memorializes the selflessnesss of healthcare workers during Covid-19. Each night at 7 during spring 2020 people would open their windows and bang pots, or clap, or cheer to give thanks to the women and men who braved the pandemic to take care of the ill.

West Side Story Steven Spielberg’s 2021 remake of the tension between the Sharks and the Jets features the Cloisters as the setting of the first date of star-crossed lovers Tony and Maria.

We Were so Beloved The 1986 documentary by Manfred Kirchheimer interviews WaHi Jews who escaped Germany before the Holocaust, settling in Uptown. Several exterior scenes show what was once known as Frankfurt-on-the-Hudson, today called Hudson Heights.

As WaHi grows in popularity, so does the neighborhood as a shooting location for streaming shows. The cast of Only Murders in the Building spent six weeks in spring 2023 shooting season three in the theater.

     Find out current information from The Pinehurst’s Events page, and our neighborhood weekly newspaper, The Manhattan Times, which is published in English and Spanish. Its reporting on neighborhood restaurants is essential for the curious gourmet.