As far as highest numbered streets go, New York City is a contender, but can’t match western and southern towns such as Denver, Tulsa or Miami, whose numbered systems range widely outside the city boundaries proper and can get into the 300s and 400s. In NYC, Manhattan and Bronx share an east-west street and house numbering scheme, as until 1914, both were a part of New York County. With some exceptions, the Bronx’s numbered streets are located west of the Bronx River.
Queens’ numbered system was instituted by Charles U. Powell of the Queens Topographical Bureau in the mid-1910s, though it took nearly 20 years for it to be universal in the borough. Queens was once rural, dotted with small towns with their own numbered systems and numerous Spruce Washington and Pine Sts. However Powell and Queens residents got more than they bargained for, as there are locales such as Maspeth that have entire clusters of streets numbered 59 and 60.
Similarly, Brooklyn once consisted of separate towns and each one devised its own numbering systems that survive today. Brooklyn proper conceived of a planned street and avenue numbered system with no prefixes: Williamsburg, three sets of numbers with North and South numbered intersected by numbered streets with no prefixes; by 1885, those were given names such as Kent, Wythe, Berry, Bedford, etc. In Flatbush, there are East and West streets that run north and south; they are located east and west of McDonald Ave. (in general; there’s also a divider street called West St.). There are also sets of Bay, Beach, Brighton, Paerdegat and other numbered streets.
In Manhattan, the highest numbered street, W. 228th, is technically on the mainland. In a little-known quirk of geography, a small piece of Manhattan, known as Marble Hill, is on the mainland. It’s surrounded on three sides by the Bronx and on the south by the Harlem River. It shares its character with the neighborhoods of Kingsbridge and Kingsbridge Heights on its north and east. It’s protected from Spuyten Duyvil, on the west, by a steep hill.
Frederick Philipse built the first Kings Bridge, a tolled span over Spuyten Duyvil Creek, in 1693. Benjamin Palmer and Jacob Dyckman built a second bridge in 1759 to avoid paying the high tolls charged by Philipse. During his retreat from the Battle of Harlem Heights in 1776, General George Washington used both the King’s Bridge and Palmer and Dyckman’s free bridge to escape to White Plains. The original Kings Bridge has inspired a network of roads in Manhattan and the Bronx, some surviving, some not, named for it. The span survived until the excavations for the Harlem Ship Canal between 1913 and 1916. In 1895 it was separated from the island by the newly straightened, dredged and deepened Harlem River Ship Canal, leaving Marble Hill as an island itself. When, in about 1917, the creek was filled, Marble Hill became a part of the mainland. No one cared much until the el was built through Marble Hill and apartment buildings were constructed in the 1920s, joining the few frame houses already there. Marble Hill never changed its designation as part of Manhattan, and so a part of Manhattan it stays, separated from the rest of the borough by the Harlem River.
The oldest building remaining in Marble Hill is likely St. Stephen’s Methodist Episcopal Church, which as the cornerstone says, was built in 1897 (Alexander McMillan Welch). The congregation dates to 1826 in what would be the Mosholu Parkway area, moving to Riverdale in 1876. The longtime pastor (1946-1977) of St. Stephen’s, Dr. William A. Tieck, was also a Bronx historian and founder of the Kingsbridge Historical Society. He wrote several historical books about the Bronx, including Riverdale, Kingsbridge Spuyten Duyvil New York City, A Historical Epitome of the Northwest Bronx. He preceded Lloyd Ultan as the official Bronx County Historian.
In the Bronx, the highest numbered street is in Riverdale just below the Yonkers city line. The street runs from Spencer Ave. west to Riverdale Ave., where you’ll find the front gate of the College of Mount Saint Vincent. Its history began in 1847 when celebrated Shakespearean actor Edwin Forrest purchased it and built a Gothic Revival castle here. He named it Fonthill, perhaps in honor of the Fonthill Abbey in England. The dwelling was completed in 1852, but Forrest never lived in it. Suspecting his wife Catherine Sinclair of infidelity, he filed for divorce, she countersued and secured a generous alimony. He then looked to sell Fonthill.
The Sisters of Charity bought the 55-acre estate after being displaced from their initial location in Central Park, and the Academy of Mount Saint Vincent went uptown with them. The residential castle received a cross in 1857 and served as a consent, chapel, library and admissions office. This castle was among the earliest buildings in the Bronx landmarked by the city.
In their first decade on this site, the sisters commissioned Founders Hall which stands next to the Fonthill castle. This Romanesque Revival structure was completed in 1859 and expanded in 1865, 1883, 1906-1908, and 1951. The two buildings are landmarked and appear in the National Register of Historic Places.
In Brooklyn’s many street numbering systems, the highest number is 108… E. 108th St. in Canarsie, which employs the Flatbush numbering scheme. It runs mainly through the Breukelen Houses, from Stanley Ave. southeast to Seaview Ave. at Monroe Cohen Park. Of interest is this house on Flatlands Ave. Charles Vanderveer, a scion of one of Brooklyn’s larger landholding families, constructed this home in the southeast end of Canarsie on what’s now the south side of Flatlands between E. 106th and 107th Sts. in 1829. It’s one of a number of colonial and postcolonial-era farmhouses remaining in Brooklyn, most in the East Flatbush or Flatlands areas, and one of them, the Schenck House in Mill Basin, was taken apart and reassembled at the Brooklyn Museum in the 1960s.
The original Vanderveer, Cornelius, settled in what became eastern Kings County in 1659 and gradually the Vanderveers controlled a lot of territory in Brooklyn in the colonial and post-colonial times. The house in question was built by Charles Vanderveer (1796-1878), a sixth-generation Vanderveer to have lived here. Vanderveer’s Mill, also known as the Red Mill, stood nearby on Fresh Creek east of E. 108th St.
In Queens, you’ll find the highest-numbered street in NYC. In Glen Oaks, near the undefended border with Nassau County, there’s 271st St., which runs for four blocks from 76th Ave. at Long Island Jewish Hospital southeast to Langdale Street at 79th Ave. East of there, once within Nassau County, the numbers cease… but not always, as parts of Floral Park and Elmont have numbered streets that continue Queens numbering. And in Great Neck, some streets still have Queens house numbering, as its streets had Queens numbers, too.
A mapmaker named Harold Cooper made the Extend NY map of the Manhattan 1811 gridiron street system and extended it worldwide, which led to some high numbers.
Before 1899, all of Nassau County was part of Queens. This was long before the Queens numbered system was devised. But it’s interesting to speculate what would’ve happened had Queens remained fully intact and Powell’s street numbering went on and on… up to the Suffolk County border. How high would the streets go? 500s? 600s? I’m thinking of asking Cooper, who’s on twitter, to devise a map showing just that.
New Dorp, Staten Island, is a transliteration of Dutch nieuw dorp, or “new town,” so called because it was settled in 1670, 10 years after nearby “oude dorp,” a name remembered in the street name Old Town Rd. The town grew up around the junction of Richmond and Amboy Rds., where there were a proliferation of taverns serving stagecoaches and horse-drawn carriages. The Vanderbilt family was prominent in the area and owned several racing and trotting tracks. The family helped found the New Dorp Moravian Church and Cemetery along Richmond and Todt Hill Rds.; the Vanderbilt Mausoleum, built for $1 million and designed by Richard Morris Hunt, can be found at the cemetery’s rear section.
Although in the past, there have been other sets of numbered streets in Staten Island, the ones in New Dorp are the only ones remaining, and they’re only 1st through 10th. Fifth and 6th Sts. are missing: they’re on either side of the railroad, and New Dorp Plaza stands in for them.
—Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013)