We visited Morningside Heights on March 24, 2014. Our first stop was Columbia University. Columbia has a dominant presence in the neighborhood because a large portion of the area is owned by the school. Other schools such as Barnard and the Manhattan School of Music have established themselves in the area as well. Most of the neighborhood with the exception of the schools were empty when we visited at 3PM in the afternoon.  The businesses concentrated around Columbia, while the parks concentrated around the residential area. Afterword, we visited Riverside Park, where we talked to a local babysitter. She was kind enough to let us record her while we asked her questions concerning the area. She said Morningside Heights didn’t resemble a college town and there were plenty of places for adults to go that didn’t have any college kids. She also claimed the area is nice and clean.

We visited the General Grant National Memorial, but it was eerily empty in the middle of the day. We noticed the area had many churches from various religions. The buildings in the area varied greatly. Each building had distinct architecture that separated it from the buildings next to it. The neighborhood residents seemed to be mostly middle class. We look forward to our next visit to Morningside Heights, especially their restaurants and other popular locations.

Aishwarya Bhatia

Ariel Yuan

Alan Chen

Xiaoji Zou