Carmanville was just another little hamlet, like Harsenville and the Piggery District, thriving on Manhattan’s West Side in the 19th century.
Named after its founder, a wealthy contractor named Richard Carman, Carmanville’s exact boundaries are a little unclear.
According to Phelps’ New-York City Guide, published in 1853:
“This is a pleasant village, situated upon the rising ground, on the Hudson River, in the vicinity of Fort Washington.”
Another reference, The Tree Bore Fruit, about nearby Manhattan College and published in 1953, puts Carmenville a good 28 blocks south at 155th Street.
[NYPL postcard of 155th and Amsterdam Avenue in 1917—the remains of Carmanville?]
And according to a 1914 New York Times article, a Carmanville Park once was located at Amsterdam Avenue and 152nd Street.
Still another Times article, published in 2004 to commemorate the opening of the New York City subway, has Carmanville at 125th Street.
Tags: Carmanville Fort Washington, Carmanville NYC, Carmanville Upper West Side, Hersensville, New York City street, old Manhattan neighborhoods, Phelps' New-York City Guide, Piggery District, Richard Carman, Upper West Side history
January 3, 2011 at 3:45 pm |
link to phelps:
http://books.google.com/books?id=TqArAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA82&lpg=PA82&dq=carmanville+manhattan&source=bl&ots=xEWwexirbA&sig=3ACUYEyTczFmxwAUWE4z8KUTk-w&hl=en&ei=7r-QStzVJs6RlAe-_N26DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7#v=onepage&q=carmanville%20manhattan&f=false
January 3, 2011 at 6:09 pm |
Carmansville wrapped around Trinity Cemetery, stretching across the upper part of present-day Harlem and the lower part of Washington Heights, encompassing a large part of the land between 145th Street and 158th Streets (including the cemetery briefly before Richard Carman sold it to the Trinity Corporation in 1843). The village, with a blacksmith, butcher, grocer, etc., clustered around Amsterdam between 152nd and 157th Streets and houses stretched from it in all directions. The Carmansville Station at the foot of 152nd Street on the Hudson serviced the Hudson River RR.
Picture of Richard F. Carman’s monument in Trinity Cemetery:
http://audubonparkny.com/AudubonParkTrinityCemeteryCrypts.html
More information about Carmansville and its immediate neighbor, Audubon Park: http://www.audubonparkny.com/AudubonParkBriefHistory.html
January 3, 2011 at 6:42 pm |
Thanks so much for the info and link. The Minniesville/Audubon Park history is fascinating.
January 31, 2011 at 8:57 pm |
The image identified above as “[NYPL postcard of 155th and Amsterdam Avenue in 1917—the remains of Carmanville?]” is neither a postcard nor Carmansville. It depicts the little wooden railroad depot at the foot of West 130th Street by the Hudson River at Manhattanville, a town established in 1806. This was the first northbound stop on the Hudson River Railroad. The newly-elected President Abraham Lincoln stopped here on February 20, 1861, then once again in death as his funeral train passed by on April 25, 1865. The depot was demolished in about 1920. In the central background stands Manhattan College (now in Riverdale, The Bronx) and the steeple of the Church of the Annunciation on the Boulevard (now Broadway) at West 131st Street. The image was most likely made in the early 1870s after the grading of Broadway and the re-modeling of the College. This image and others of the depot, college and church are featured in my book, “Manhattanville: Old Heart of West Harlem”:
Manhattanville: Old Heart of West Harlem (NY) (Images of America)
Best,
Eric K. Washington
January 31, 2011 at 9:24 pm |
Thank you for setting the record straight. It’s mislabeled by the New York Public Library:
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=692446&imageID=805111&word=155th%20street%20amsterdam%20avenue&s=1¬word=&d=&c=&f=&k=0&lWord=&lField=&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&total=9&num=0&imgs=20&pNum=&pos=2
February 1, 2011 at 7:50 pm |
[...] http://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/where-was-manhattans-lost-town-of-carmanville/ [...]
February 6, 2011 at 3:53 am |
[...] http://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/where-was-manhattans-lost-town-of-carmanville/ *** begin quote *** [...]
February 9, 2011 at 7:02 pm |
I luv u Erik u are indeed “THE MAN”
February 9, 2011 at 7:57 pm |
P.S. – The Carmansville Park referred to above that in 1914 “was located at Amsterdam Avenue and 152nd Street” still exists today at the SE corner of the same crossing, right next door to the Dance Theatre of Harlem.
Also, the 2004 NY Times article cited above that “has Carmanville at 125th Street” was in error; a correction, which appears at the bottom of the article, makes note that the old neighborhood “over which the [subway] tracks soared” was indeed Manhattanville.
October 17, 2012 at 9:01 pm |
A comment from a charactor in a BBC America mini-series, Copper, now on TWC brought me to this page. He had moved from Five Points to the country, ” Carmenville “.
October 17, 2012 at 9:40 pm |
I was wondering why this post was suddenly getting lots of traffic. How is the show?
October 20, 2012 at 9:05 pm |
Dark and gloomy. The movie, Gangs of NY, was better. But It’s good for references to old NY.
October 29, 2012 at 12:29 am |
I love the show. The season is $17 on iTunes, worth it.
October 17, 2012 at 10:59 pm |
My frequent tours of Trinity Church Cemetery (Uptown) usually end at the grave of Richard F. Carman, namesake of Carmansville. I also feature him in my iPhone app, “Trinity Church Cemetery,” produced by Rama/Crimson Bamboo. It was Carman who sold Trinity Church the 24 acres of land for its cemetery in 1842. (The land was not part of James J. Audubon’s adjacent estate, as is often claimed.)
Carman’s several public offices included Alderman and School Inspector. But his earliest claim to fame appears to have come from rebuilding much of New York City that was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1835. Writers of the time claim its blaze was seen as far away as New Haven, Connecticut, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In the 1840s, Moses Yale Beach wrote in his survey, “Wealth and Biography of the Wealthy Citizens of New York City,” that Carman, born in 1801, acquired his carpentry and building skills “as a poor boy, making packing boxes for merchants.” Carman’s reputation won him building contracts in the “burnt district” of the Great Fire. The enterprise brought him enough wealth to continue building and investing in real estate, which grew in value.
Carman’s son-in-law was city surveyor Gardiner Avery Sage (1813-1882), whose is buried in an adjacent plot. Sage’s detailed maps remain invaluable chronicles of the city’s mid-19th-century growth from lower Manhattan to its upper reaches. I’ve no proof, but I suspect that Sage’s maps might have contributed to nailing the eponymous name of the new village his father-in-law was laying out in the late 1840s.
On July 18, 1867, Richard F. Carman’s obituary in the New York Times read in part, “Mr. Carman dispensed his wealth liberally, and his ear was ever open to the appeals of the needy and friendless.”
Unfortunately, I’ve not yet found an image of him.
October 22, 2012 at 5:56 am |
[...] the Upper West Side consisted of the suburb of Bloomingdale and some smaller hamlets, such as Carmanville (or Carmansville), Manhattanville, and [...]
October 23, 2012 at 8:50 pm |
[...] Harsenville is the subject of a fascinating retrospective over at Ephemeral New York, along with the Manhattan towns of Strycker’s Bay and Carmanville. [...]