A Neighborhood Place

Artist's rendering of the "Bakerfield Apartments" 1930

It occurred to me today that one thing Columbia has, and has always had, is a football stadium and sports complex in a REAL neighborhood with an incredibly rich history.

The Columbia and city-haters will say nasty things about Inwood. They’ll call it “Harlem,” (still thinking that’s a pejorative thing), or say that Columbia plays football among the tenements… stuff like that.

But Inwood is actually a very beautiful part of the city, even with the often messy Broadway dominating the landscape at times.

West of Broadway, on streets like Seaman and Academy, etc., you see a lot of beauty you don’t see anywhere else in Manhattan. I’m talking stately detached houses, beautiful views of Inwood Hill Park, historical sites, and now there are many up-and-coming restaurants and bars as well.

Unlike Washington Heights, which became almost a drug war zone by the mid 1980’s, Inwood never crashed hard as a neighborhood.

But real people, with no connection to Columbia at all have lived their lives in this area and I was touched by a Navy retiree who recently wrote down his memories of growing up in Inwood. See below:

“In no particular order…..I vividly remember when Columbia University was a powerhouse of collegiate football. Lou Little was the coach. This was back in the late thirties. While walking along Broadway with my shoeshine kit one day I heard a band and slowing coming up the street was the West Point marching band on their way to a game with Columbia (can’t recall the name of the stadium)……..Going shAopping at Lipshitz’s grocery underneath the el. Lipshitz wasn’t the cheapest, but he gave credit during the depression……a few stores away was a make shift barber shop with two barrels and a plank. It cost me 15 cents, plus I got a jelly apple too……Speaking of shoeshines, I shined shoes up to about 1939 when LaGuardia told the cops to get the shoeshiners off the streets because of the World’s Fair. Running away from cops with my shoeshine kit banging against my leg as I ran…..Attended Good Shepherd. I lived on 205th, down the street from the Hoffman Bottling plant. Across the street from me was a Hooverville…..My parents were deaf mutes and one night a cop knocked on our door and said that a neighbor saw a prowler on our fire escape. The cop looked underneath a bed and there was the culprit. He took the offender down to his patrol car and he and his partner worked him over with night sticks, no doubt discouraging him from returning to his beat……Monsignor Miller was the pastor at G.S. and he was feared! An ascetic looking guy who rarely smiled. I don’t recall if the nuns were Sisters of Mercy or Sisters of Charity…..attended Mt. St. Michael and then St. Joseph’s Juniorate in Esopus, N.Y….Joined Navy at 17 in 1946 and retired as Lt. Cdr. in 1969. Now live in Port Townsend, Wa., close to the Canadian border….Still have my health and faculties, Thank God!”

The only other Ivy football stadium located in a real neighborhood is Brown Stadium. But that’s kind of a boring, upper middle class area… nice, but just not that interesting.

Anyway, there are other memories and a lot of great photos of Inwood then and now at this site. 

Sadly, not too many of the pictures are of Baker Field, but maybe some of the readers of the site will send them in.

I plan to check back often.