Character

Housingedit

Six-story apartment houses were constructed in the 20th century, and in the early 1950s urban renewal came to the area. A complex was built bounded by Broadway, Exterior Street and 225th Street and was called the Marble Hill Houses. This property was acquired by New York City on August 26, 1948. The houses were completed in 1952. Part of the acquisition became the Marble Hill Playground, which is located on Marble Hill Avenue between 228th and 230th Streets. Despite the name, only seven of the 11 towers are actually in Marble Hill; the other four are in Kingsbridge.

Out of Marble Hill's 4,000 households, only 135 lived in private houses as of 1995update, down from 138 such households in 1989. The majority of Marble Hill's 9,481 residents (as of the 2010 United States Census) live in the Marble Hill Houses. There are also Art Deco apartment buildings lining some streets. These buildings even boast one pedestrian alley, Marble Hill Lane, in a manner similar to in Inwood and surrounding Bronx neighborhoods.

Private residences in Marble Hill include detached single- and two-story houses. It is not uncommon to see a detached house next to a multilevel apartment building in Marble Hill. The neighborhood is described as cozy, with neighbors watching out for one another, and a sense of "community spirit." The blocks of Marble Hill with these single-story houses were described as a "well-kept secret": relatively cheap, with ample space and a backyard. In 1995 one reporter wrote of these houses, "Where else in Manhattan can you find a six-bedroom, three-story house on a quiet, tree-lined street with an attic, a basement, an enclosed front porch and a pretty facade for sale for $174,000? Or a three-family house with six bedrooms on an architecturally magnificent street with an asking price of $295,000?"

Street namingedit

Many of the neighborhood's streets were named for Dutch settlers to Marble Hill. For instance, Teunissen Place, a dead-end alley off Terrace View Avenue to the neighborhood's west, is named after Tobias Teunissen, a wool washer from Leyden, Holland, who came to the area in 1636. He applied for and received a land grant to live in Inwood near 213th Street. Occasionally he had worked on the De La Montagne farm, which was in what is now the Harlem section of Manhattan.:98 Teunissen was killed in an Indian raid in 1655, and his wife and child were held hostage until they were ransomed by the Dutch authorities. The Dyckmans and the Nagles, who owned land in Inwood, purchased the Teunissen property in 1677.:356

Adrian Avenue is named after Adriaen van der Donck, an early lawyer in New Amsterdam. With permission, he bought a strip of land from local Native American tribes in 1646. This land stretched from Spuyten Duyvil to present-day Yonkers along the Hudson coastline.

Van Corlear Place, which comprises half of a U-shaped street curving around Marble Hill, has detached one- and two-family homes in addition to a few brick townhouses. It was named after Anthony Van Corlaer, a messenger of New Amsterdam Governor-General Peter Stuyvesant who was sent to the mainland Bronx for backup soldiers following reports of attempts by British forces to seize New Amsterdam. In Washington Irving's book A History of New York, van Corlaer is said to have drowned while crossing Spuyten Duyvil Creek. The street's name is misspelled.

Jacobus Place, the other half of the U-shape that includes Van Corlear Place, has both a large brick apartment building and freestanding private houses with diverse designs. It is named after Jacob (Jacobus) Dyckman, the owner of the Dyckman Tavern and a sponsor of the Dyckman Free Bridge.

Fort Charles Place remains as a token of the Hessian-named Fort Prince Charles.