The most interesting I found about Inwood is how much of Manhattan it does NOT represent.

When you think of Manhattan, you think of skyscrapers. You think of business men in expensive suits traveling into the financial center of the United States. You think of thousands of tourists hustling and bustling their way through Times Square. You think of thousands of cars, if not the dozens of train lines that encompass the world under Manhattan. You think of the capital of the world.

The closest you may come to thinking about nature is Central Park. Yet, not many people think of Inwood. I have lived in New York my entire life and not even heard of this northern tip of Manhattan. That is why visiting this neighborhood was such a fulfilling and engaging experience.

The first thing I noticed was how ‘natural’ the community was. Being right next to the Hudson River, and encompassing so much forestry such as Ft. Tyron Park, Inwood Hill really gives off the vibe of being one with nature. Of course, my thoughts might be biased because our class strolled by the Cloisters in Ft. Tyron Park, but it should be noted that there are other parks in the neighborhood, such as the much bigger Inwood Hill Park. All in all, Inwood presents itself as green, which you really wouldn’t find in most other parts of Manhattan.

As for the Cloisters, I felt like the museum fit perfectly into the neighborhood. From what I understand, the Cloisters offers art and artifacts from the Medieval era of Western civilization, and it fits quite well with the antiquity that Inwood presents.

Speaking more on this ‘antiquity’, Inwood really does not seem to represent so much change as the rest of Manhattan does. Rather, it seems to represent the preservation of how Manhattan looked in the olden days. These ‘olden days’ could mean just a few decades ago, as some pubs that made their names in the 20th century are still functioning today. Or, antiquity could date back to as far as the 18th century, as farmhouses like the Dychman Farmhouse is still standing today.

What amazes me the most is how such a glance into Manhattan’s, and New York’s, past is so close by. Just a few extra stops on the A train seems to take someone through a time machine into the past. Really, Inwood should be commended for preserving history, as other neighborhoods of New York fail to do so.