A farmhouse once stood near the present day intersection of West 84th Street and Broadway; in 1830, the 213 acre property was purchased by Patrick and Mary Brennan, who occasionally rented rooms to boarders. In 1844, their new tenants were none other than horror writer Edgar Allan Poe and his family. He proportedly wrote “The Raven” during his time on the Upper West Side, perhaps his most famous eerie work. But where exactly did the farmhouse stand?

Conflicting accounts place the farmhouse both east and west of Broadway. There are even two plaques celebrating those two locations, one to the west on The Alameda at 255 West 84th Street, and one to the east formerly located on Eagle Court, a building now being demolished, previously of 215 West 84th Street. Could archaeological excavation shed some light on the exact location of this spooky farmhouse?

The Upper West Side was alive with activity during the Revolutionary War. New York City remained primarily under British control during the war, particularly after George Washington’s defeat at the Battle of Brooklyn in 1776. There were several British army barracks throughout the city, including in Inwood Hill Park (see John Ward Dunsmore’s 1915 painting below, on the right) and another in the Great Hill section of Central Park today. Great Hill’s high vantage point would have afforded troops strategic views of the surrounding areas. 

While constructing this area of Central Park nearly a century later, Frederick Law Olmstead discovered evidence of those barracks underground. We are left wondering what modern archaeological excavations could uncover today…

San Juan Hill was a predominantly Black and Puerto Rican neighborhood that existed near the present day Lincoln Square neighborhood; you might have seen LW!’s own research series all about it. Originally developed as a form of Hell’s Kitchen north, it saw many waves of immigration and community building throughout the decades. African American families leaving downtown neighborhoods like Greenwich Village settled here in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, joining existing communities of Irish immigrants. Later waves of settlement brought a rich community of Puerto Rican immigrants. During the 1940s and 50s, it was demolished in an urban renewal initiative that created campuses like Lincoln Center, Fordham University, and the Amsterdam Houses. Over 7,000 families and 800 businesses were displaced, dispersing what was at the time the country’s densest African American community before Harlem.

What stories are still lost to time, locked underneath these modern buildings? Perhaps excavation could unearth information about the lives and homes of this lost community.

Before the MTA consolidated New York City transit, there was the Interborough Rapid Transit Company. The first public transportation line to reach the Upper West Side was the 9th Avenue Elevated, an above ground train that ran parallel to the storefronts and rooftops of Columbus Avenue. Its ghostly footprints can be seen in vintage photos from a bygone era. Most of the stations in our neighborhood opened in 1879, and development along Columbus was spurred on by its convenient presence. 

As both the city’s transit and the city’s urban development expanded uptown through the turn of the century, this pioneering line began to fall out of favor. All of the stations on the UWS were eventually closed for good on June 11, 1940. But what traces do they leave behind? Perhaps we need to go underground to find out…

Today, the area between West 97th and 100th Streets near Central Park West is home to the Park West Apartments. But underneath, odds are traces still exist of the Old Community, a tight-knit Bloack community wiped out as part of one of the first urban renewal projects undertaken by Robert Moses. The community began forming in 1905 when major Black realtor Philip Payton Jr. began leasing properties in this mostly wealthy white neighborhood to Black tenants. Prosperous Black residents in the city arranged a meeting to discuss why African Americans should not live in aristocratic sections of the city, if they could afford it, and thus sparked interest in leasing properties in the Upper 90s. Black tenants paid the same rent as white tenants – around $25-40 a month, and there was no shortage of potential renters.

An enclave of pioneering Black artists resided in this mini neighborhood, many of whose careers were only starting in the early 20th century. Billie Holiday lived at 9 West 99th Street; others included actor Robert Earl Jones, artist Charles Alston who made the bust of Dr. Martin Luther King displayed in the White House, and historian and collector Arturo Schomberg. What evidence of their lives could we find buried today?