Bloomingdale Playground, a spit of land on Amsterdam Avenue and 104th Street, is a reminder that much of the west side was once known by Dutch settlers as Bloemendaal, or “valley of flowers.”
Bloemendaal turned into Bloomingdale once the British moved in.
In 1703, an early highway called Bloomingdale Road was built. It eventually ran through today’s Upper West Side.
By 1900, Bloomingdale Road had become Broadway, and the Bloomingdale name forgotten.
Collect Pond was never a neighborhood name. But after the pond was filled in by the city in 1811, it eventually became the site of the notorious 19th century slum called Five Points.
[Illustration depicting Collect Pond in the late 18th century. What was once the city’s water source soon became a filthy, polluted body of water.]
Collect Pond Park, on Leonard Street off Lafayette Street, is all that’s left.
Ephemeral New York 