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Upcoming Zoom Presentation
October 17 at 6:30pm Free and open to all Register HERE to receive email confirmation for this Zoom presentation  photo courtesy of the Straus Historical Society
"The Strauses in Bloomingdale:
the Family, the House, and the Neighborhood" With Joan Adler and Rob Garber The program: Isidor and Ida Straus made a bold decision to move their young family to West 105th Street in 1884, when Bloomingdale was still a semi-rural neighborhood. For nearly 30 years they made it their primary home, even as their fortune grew and the Straus name became internationally known. Learn the story of the Strauses and their home on Broadway during the decades when Bloomingdale changed from country paradise to dense urban neighborhood, The presenters: Joan Adler has been Executive Director of the Straus Historical Society since 1990. Rob Garber is a 25-year resident of Bloomingdale with an interest in neighborhood history. Co-sponsored by the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group (BNHG) and the Columbus Amsterdam BID 
Surprising Fall Stories!
The new season is here and it’s time to discover more neighborhood history. How about a Brazilian millionaire living on West End Avenue who just couldn’t make it in New York? How about Wilbur Wright flying in for a very big event? Maybe something about cults that flourished here? This issue of Bloomingdale Bulletin will give you all that and a selection of tours of the neighborhood, library exhibits, and evening programs. We look forward to feedback, comments, and ideas here. We hope you enjoy it and will choose to support us with a donation. To view this and previous newsletters, go to our BULLETINS page. The Latest Blog is now available on the BLOGS page
The Votes for Women Grocery Store and Other Tales of Upper West Side Suffragists written by Pam Tice, member of BNHG planning committee 
The opening of the Votes for Women Grocery Store at 2540 Broadway at West 95th Street in February 1913 made news across the country. The store was a project of Sophia Kremer of 233 West 83rd Street, a Hungarian immigrant and the wife of Dr. Geza Kremer. The profits from the store were to be used for suffrage work in the “upper part” of the city.
Sophia Kremer was just one of several suffragists who lived on the Upper West Side. Their determination to pursue the right to vote resonates today as women struggle to gain and regain rights. Read this and other essays of interest on our BLOGS page Free Walking Tours of Historic Bloomingdale
Sunday, November 24th, at 2 pm Sunday, December 22nd, at 2 pm  Jim Mackin
Meet at south end of Straus Park,
Broadway at W.106th Street No reservations needed Explore the history of the Upper West Side between W.96th and W.110th Streets Led by renowned local historian, Jim Mackin More Information at our UPCOMING EVENTS page Free Walking Tour with Stephanie Azzarone
Riverside Drive in Bloomingdale: 96th-110th Streets Saturday, November 9 at 1:00 pm Meet at Riverside Park and 95th Street (northwest corner) at 1:00 pm No reservation needed 
Curving gracefully along the great Hudson River on New York’s Upper West Side, Riverside Drive is best known for elegance and quiet. But behind its serene facades overlooking lush Riverside Park lie secrets, from hidden architectural details to headline-making scandals. Join BNHG’s Stephanie Azzarone, author of the award-winning book, Heaven on the Hudson: Mansions, Monuments, and Marvels of Riverside Park, and a licensed New York City tour guide, for this special tour.
You’ll take in the sad fate of America’s first supermodel, see the mansion where William Randolph Hearst ensconced his paramour, Marion Davies, visit the Drive's tallest apartment building, its only privately owned freestanding villa (whose owner stiffed his architect), and the site of a one-story prefab designed by a famous architect. Multiple affairs, a scandalous divorce, and a murder (or two) color this tour’s tales. NEW BLOOMINGDALE LIBRARY EXHIBIT
On Display August 1 through October 31, 2024 "The 1909 Hudson-Fulton Celebration New York City’s Biggest Party Event" An exhibit by Rob Garber for the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group Op Sail 76? Lindbergh’s ticker-tape parade? Big, but arguably New York’s greatest public spectacle was the now-forgotten Hudson-Fulton event in the Fall of 1909. It was a celebration of human flight, the electrification of cities, and—by the way— Hendrik Hudson’s “discovery” of New York Harbor and Robert Fulton’s invention (ish) of the steamboat. The two-week extravaganza lit up the East River bridges and culminated in a parade up Fifth Avenue, but the heart of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration was the Bloomingdale/Morningside Heights neighborhood, with a mammoth water gate at 110th Street and Orville Wright thrilling millions with his unprecedented flight past Grant’s Tomb. 
The Bloomingdale Library
West 100th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues (across from the 24th precinct station house) Mon-Tue 10am-7pm | Wed-Thu 11am-7pm|Fri-Sat 10am-5pm Catch up with Rob Garber's previous library exhibits. See our website pages:
"The Bloomingdale Branch Library: Serving Our Community for 125 Years" May-July 2024 "Eclipse!" March-April 2024 "The Old Community" December 2023-February 2024 "Bloomingdale As It Never Was (But Might Have Been)" September-November 2023 "Bloomingdale and Manhattan in 1927" June-August 2023 "History of the Police in Bloomingdale" March-May 2023 |
We’re reaching out to our Bloomingdale community for your support through a tax-deductible donation.
We are a group of neighbors who banded together 23 years ago to explore the history of our region of the Upper West Side, roughly 96th to 110th Streets --- an area historically known as Bloomingdale. Our numerous public programs are free and open to all. Last year, both in-person and online, we gave presentations about our neighborhood buildings, how they were built, and even what happens when they are taken apart. We taught neighbors how to do local history research in general and then shared how two local historians researched their 100-year-old buildings. We spent an evening together with local residents looking at old maps of Manhattan. At the Bloomingdale Library, we presented displays on the history of the West 100th Street police precinct, how the neighborhood looked in 1927, and local building projects planned but never built. We wrote about the history of our area before it was made accessible by Bloomingdale Road, taking you back to 1668, and then presented a “census picture” of who lived here in 1855. To help us please click the "Donate now" button. For more Information visit our DONATE page BNHG’s downloadable digital brochure:
How To Research the History of Buildings in Manhattan 
Whether you’re a student, researcher or simply someone interested in finding out the history of any building in Manhattan, there’s now a free guide that will help you to get started. How to Research the History of Buildings in Manhattan, includes links to free online sources of data on individual buildings, their physical characteristics, the date of their construction and the name of their designer
To assist in your own research, click on the BNHG Building Database, which is the product of more than three years of research and field work by BNHG members, led by Gilbert Tauber. The table lists all of the 1,056 buildings in the area from the north side of 96th Street to the south side of 110th Street between Central Park West and Riverside Drive. A Video Overview of the BNHG
If a picture is worth a thousand words, is a video likely to be worth even more? We think so, which is why a few members of the planning committee of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group (BNHG} got together to produce this ten minute video. It's an introduction to the neighborhood that is our home, the neighborhood that inspires our research and is the inspiration for the free public programs we offer throughout the year.
Find out more about the BNHG at our ABOUT US page Reopening of the Bloomingdale Branch Library
and availability of the BNHG Library Collection! 
Our public archive of documents related to the history of the neighborhood is back at the Bloomingdale branch of the New York Public Library, on West 100th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues. The files are easy to find now, near the circulation desk, and they are chock-full of interesting material. Whether you are researching a specific topic or just browsing, you're welcome to copy pages in the library or to take a folder to one of the tables to read through it in comfort. On top of the filing cabinets you'll find an eclectic selection of books about NYC history donated by historian Peter Salwen, which are also for reading and reference use in the library. The Bloomingdale Library's own webpage is here, and a few highlights of our collection are posted digitally here.
Check out our Resources pages.
At our Resources pages you'll find fascinating Bloomingdale history under the following headings: Sources of Historical Information Useful Links and Resources Paterno Archive Bookshelf 2020 Project NYT Articles about Manhattan Valley from 1865-1998 Peter Salwen Collection Upper West Side History Quiz 
PRESERVING NEIGHBORHOOD HISTORY
The New York Preservation Archive Project was organized in 1990 to “preserve preservation history.” Every effort to save an historic building or place has a story. NYPAP exists to provide an archival record of the people involved, their victories and defeats, and the many documents that tell the story of each place. Thanks to Pam Tice (member of the BNHG planning committee) , the story of 891 Amsterdam Avenue is now a part of that record. You can review the story of our neighborhood’s landmark, which began as the Association for the Relief of Respectable Aged Indigent Females, and is now Hostelling International-New York City. The record is preserved at the NYPAP site here. To receive email notification of upcoming monthly presentations and seasonal bulletins, please share your email at our CONTACT US page. Of course, we will not give your information to others.
The content of this website is offered for educational purposes; You may not reproduce, distribute, copy, sell or otherwise use any portion of this website for political or commercial purposes. If you know the identity of people depicted in historical photographs reproduced here, we’d love to hear from you.
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