Washington Heights

Area: 135th St. on the south to 193d St., Hillside Ave., and Dyckman St. (to
Harlem River) on the north; from Riverside Drive east to St. Nicholas Ave. (135th
to 155th St.) and Harlem River (155th St. to Dyckman St.). Map on page 293.

Hamilton Place runs diagonally from Broadway at 136th Street to a
square at Amsterdam Avenue and 143d Street that also bears the name of
the first Secretary of the Treasury and most distinguished resident of the
region that became known as Washington Heights. This southern portion
of Washington Heights is often called Hamilton Heights. On a bluff
above Hamilton Place, between 136th and 138th Streets, is the bulky red-
brick Hebrew Orphan Asylum of the City of New York. The
buildings were erected in 1884. The stolid main structure at 1560 Am-
sterdam Avenue has a tall tower and a steep-pitched dormered roof. The
orphanage, one of the largest in the city, was established in 1832.

The campus of the Main Center of City College extends along
Amsterdam Avenue from 136th to 140th Street. Occupying the two
blocks opposite the orphanage is Lewisohn Stadium, an athletic arena
given to City College by Adolph Lewisohn in 1915. The stadium is
known to the public less for its sports events than for the summer-night
concerts given there since 1918 by the Philharmonic Symphony Society
(concerts from the last week in June to the end of August; admission
25c to $1.50). Low admission fees permitted a wide New York audience
to enjoy symphonic music at the stadium long before this music was made
available by radio. Willem van Hoogstraten, José Iturbi, Albert Coates,
and Alexander Smallens are among those who have conducted these con-
certs. Soloists and dancing and choral groups are featured. With the tem-
porary chairs in the field or "orchestra," the stadium has a seating capacity
of about fifteen thousand. Built of concrete on the grade sloping east
from Amsterdam Avenue, with tiers of stepped seats and a Doric colon-
nade, the structure, designed by Arnold W. Brunner, is a simplified ver-
sion of the ancient Greek hillside amphitheater. Its classicism is in marked
contrast to the medievalism of the college buildings proper, to the north.

The group of City College buildings crowning the ridge between St.
Nicholas Terrace and Amsterdam Avenue, 138th and 140th Streets, was
built in 1903-7 at a cost of four million dollars from plans by George
B. Post. Its units form an imperfect quadrangle split by Convent Avenue.
The Library Building, erected in 1929 and designed by Crow, Lewis, and
Wich, is on St. Nicholas Terrace at 140th Street; a new wing is being