The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot

Book excerpt: “An illuminating treat! . . . it retraces the neighborhood’s fascinating arc from remote woodland estate to the enduring Beaux Arts streetscape.” —Eric K. Washington, award-winning author of Boss of the Grips This fully illustrated history peels back the many layers of a rural society evolving into an urban community, enlivened by the people who propelled it forward: property owners, tenants, laborers, and servants. It tells the intricate tale of how individual choices in the face of family dysfunction, economic crises, technological developments, and the myriad daily occurrences that elicit personal reflection and change of course pushed Audubon Park forward to the cityscape that distinguishes the neighborhood today. A longtime evangelist for Manhattan’s Audubon Park neighborhood, author Matthew Spady delves deep into the lives of the two families most responsible over time for the anomalous arrangement of today’s streetscape: the Audubons and the Grinnells. Beginning with the Audubons’ return to America in 1839 and John James Audubon’s purchase of fourteen acres of farmland, The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot follows the many twists and turns of the area’s path from forest to city, ending in the twenty-first century with the Audubon name re-purposed in today’s historic district, a multiethnic, multi-racial urban neighborhood far removed from the homogeneous, Eurocentric Audubon Park suburb. “This well-documented saga of demographics chronicles a dazzling cast of characters and a plot fraught with idealism, speculation, and expansion, as well as religious, political, and real estate machinations.” —Roberta J.M. Olson, PhD, Curator of Drawings, New-York Historical Society The story of the area’s evolution from hinterland to suburb to city is comprehensively told in Matthew Spady’s fluidly written new history.” —The New York Times