Day 159 - Our Montmarte(s): NYC's Step Streets

The picture above is a New York City street, maintained by the city as a public thoroughfare. It's just not for cars.

We're not San Francisco. Nor Seattle. But we have hills--even a few steep ones.

Perhaps readers of this blog won't naturally fall into the category I'm about to describe. But I think it's fair to say that many New Yorkers--certainly those with largely Manhattan-centric lives--may not notice that the city has topography; that in rectilinear, orthogonal Manhattan there are hills and dips and rises. It's hard for many people to imagine the that New York Public Library's main branch is at the crest of a long, gentle hill dipping southward along the axis of the Fifth Avenue. If, on a quiet Sunday morning, maybe in the summer when the city has decamped for the weekend, you were magically able to place a bowling ball in the center of avenue in front of the lions, and you gave it a slight nudge downtown, it might not stop until it passed under the arch in Washington Square Park. Who'da thunk?

The scenic heights of northern Manhattan and the western Bronx, variously named, are dramatic exceptions. Beginning at the northwest corner of Central Park and running along the neck of Manhattan into the western Bronx a ridge of hard schist juts skyward with spectacular views west toward New Jersey's palisade, and east across the Harlem River's basin (eroded through softer, weatherworn marble) to more highlands in the Bronx. This spine has been thrust up over many millions of years as a massive sheet of the Earth's crust just off the Atlantic coast slowly, inexorably crashes into New York and New Jersey. If you imagine this happening in your bedroom between, say, your dresser and your bed, the resulting bunching of the carpet in between would represent this ridge.

It presented a challenge for stateman Gouverneur Morris, the lawyer John Rutherfurd, and the surveyor Simeon De Witt. This triumvirate comprised the commission which suggested to the New York State legislature, in 1811, how Manhattan, north of 14th Street, should be sold and developed. Most essentially, it laid down the grid pattern of streets and avenues which is the epitome of Manhattan today. The ridge, running obliquely to the grid, required the occasional imposition of odd-angled streets along the upper and lower edges of the ridge. In between, the rocky outcroppings that were not easily developable by real estate interests laid fallow until, eventually, several were planned and landscaped as parks by, among others, Central Park's chief designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. The line of parks along the ridge include Morningside Park, St. Nicholas Park, Jackie Robinson (nee Colonial) Park and Highbridge Park.

While parks were used as a natural alternative to building housing along stretches of the ridgeline through this area in the late 1800s, the arrival of the subway beginning in the early 20th Century, coupled with improvements in construction technology, created a synergy of demand and ability. Now buildings could and would be built along precipices, or straddling the change in grade. In some places, buildings are constructed into the sides of rock, creating the curious opportunity to enter the front door into the main lobby at the 7th floor from wher one can take an elevator down to the first floor at the back of the building.

Roadways could not easily navigate this steep change in grade. Where east-west streets crossed the ridge, they usually ended in cul-de-sacs at the top or bottom. The ridge was a natural barrier in many areas. But as development increased, this become more difficult to manage. Eventually, some streets were punched through--as step streets.

Not surprisingly, most are in northern Manhattan and the western Bronx. But there are some along the terminal moraine in Queens and Brooklyn and Staten Island--the points furthest south that glaciers pushed during earlier ice ages where they left all the soil and till that they had bulldozed along the way from Canada. I've been fascinated by them for awhile, now, and am beginning to catalog all of them. Most are elegant, appointed with balustrades and stonework at a time when public works had more elegance. Some are rickety and in disrepair. The tallest I've found so far is 130 steps. I also found one that was only 31.

The NYC Department of Transportation has jurisdiction over step streets. I'm working on getting a list and trying to visit each one, though it may not happen before Day 180! Stay tuned.