Neighborhood Portrait of Washington Heights
I originally chose to write about Washington Heights because I knew that my parents and I were moving there next summer. At the time, all I knew about the neighborhood was that it was uptown, a little less gentrified than what we were used to, and had a large Dominican population. Since that time, I’ve learned a lot about a quirky and unique neighborhood up where Manhattan starts to look like it needs to be ironed before it can be put away. It has an interesting past, and possible an even more interesting present.
Washington Heights takes its name from Fort Washington, which was built during the Revolutionary War. The fort was built on the highest point in Manhattan for strategic reasons, the area not really having been settled at that point. The fort was pretty much a failure from the strategic perspective (it got captured by the British), but it enjoys modest fame today as a tourist attraction, so that’s something. The area wasn’t permanently settled until the early 1900s. There were certainly structures built there before that, but for the most part they were the summer retreats of the wealthy New York elite, rather than permanent residences.
Washington Heights has been an immigrant/minority community as long as it’s been a community at all. The first people to settle there permanently were Irish immigrants, and the trend they started continues to the present day. They were joined by other Europeans, but the area didn’t change substantially until WWII, when Germanic Jews flooded into the neighborhood, fleeing the ascent to power of the Nazi party. Their numbers and influence transformed the area, to the point that it came to be known as Frankfurt-on-the-Hudson. This remained the defining character of the area until the 1970s, when immigrants from Soviet Russia redefined the neighborhood once again. They were in turn followed by the Dominicans and other Hispanics who currently define the neighborhood.
This latest transition, which only recently came to a close, was readily apparent in the first few people I interviewed: an elderly Russian couple and a young Dominican high schooler. They had very different perspectives on the neighborhood. Anna and Vladamir Shevel left Russia behind thirty years ago due to anti-Semitism. They worked and retired in Washington Heights, and their favorite thing about the about the neighborhood was its aesthetics; they simply thought it was a beautiful place. This contrasts with the fifteen year old Walder. He came to Washington Heights when he was six, his parents having decided to leave the Dominican Republic in search of better education for their children. He seemed surprised by the question of what made Washington Heights special, saying he viewed it as a pretty typical neighborhood.
The most common responses I got to such a question, though, involved the neighborhood’s ethnic makeup. A man walking his dog said that what impressed him most about the place was its diversity and tolerance, which he considered impressive even by the standards of New York City. A woman from California said the strong Latino culture reminded her of home. This is backed up by my research online, as the strong Hispanic/Latino/Dominican/Caribbean culture is invariably one of the first things mentioned about the neighborhood. This was visible even in the relatively short time I spent in the neighborhood. Just while interviewing people in Fort Tryon Park I saw two separate instances of people playing guitars while singing in what I assume was Spanish, which is probably the only ‘ethnic’ activity I would be able to identify at a glance. More seriously, the description from the man with the dog (whose name was actually Luke) was also borne out. Just walking around the park, I saw an enormous degree of diversity. I expected to see White and Hispanic people, but I was surprised at how many people I saw who looked like they might be Asian or Indian Americans. Running into representatives of every continent on a walk in the park isn’t that unusual by New York standards, but it still made an impression on me.
Sadly, I didn’t have time to visit every part of Washington Heights in order to understand regional variations between sub-neighborhoods. Fortunately, the internet is a wonderful thing, and I managed to find the information I needed by a less direct route. The most significant distinction I found is between Washington Heights as a whole and the smaller area of Hudson Heights. Hudson Heights is basically a richer, whiter, version of Washington Heights proper. Hudson Heights is 43% Hispanic, whereas Hispanics are the majority in Washington Heights as a whole. In addition, most of the apartments there are co-ops, and tend to be more expensive than in other parts of the neighborhood. It occupies the highest part of Washington Heights, overlooking the Hudson River.
My first thought after learning about Hudson Heights was how similar it was to the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, which we learned about earlier in the semester. They are both more expensive and prestigious than the areas around them. They are both located physically higher up than the areas around them, creating sought-after views. They are both part of immigrant communities and, most importantly, they both hold (or held) onto the previous generations of immigrants long after they have ceased to be the dominant factor in the neighborhood at large. The Grand Concourse remained largely Jewish long after the rest of the Bronx had become predominantly African-American and Latino. Whites are still the largest demographic in Hudson Heights, even though Washington Heights as a whole has long since had a Hispanic majority.
Upon further reflection, Washington Heights has a lot in common with the Bronx in general, even leaving aside the Concourse all together. They are both immigrant neighborhoods that exchanged their European immigrants for a population of Blacks or Latinos during the fourth wave of immigration. I hesitate to say Black or Latino immigrants because many of the people traveling to the Bronx were technically coming from within the same country. Nevertheless, they both became destinations for working class or poor members of minorities, so the semantics are beside the point. I have been unable to find descriptions of the severity or lack thereof of the ‘white flight’ phenomenon in Washington Heights. However, the rapid transition of the neighborhood away from ethnicities falling under the category of ’white’ strongly suggests that it must have happened to some degree, as in the Bronx.
Now, Washington Heights never burned quite the way the Bronx did. Exactly why it sustained less physical damage and recovered more quickly is a difficult question to answer, given that it isn’t really certain what caused the Bronx to turn out the way it did in the first place. That Washington Heights lacked the particular combination of legislative and economic factors that created a strong incentive toward arson seems like a good guess, but it’s hard to say for certain. Whatever the reason, though, most of Washington Heights’ multitude of pre-war buildings still survive today, untouched by arson.
That is most certainly not to say that Washington Heights was not affected by the wave of crime and drugs that swept over the United States in the 1980s. Washington Heights was hit very, very hard by the crack epidemic, thanks in part to a gang called the Wild Cowboys. In fact, Washington Heights was at one point considered the largest center for the distribution of drugs in the Northeastern United States. The neighborhood also had severe problems with homelessness during that time. So Washington Heights did manage to compare with the Bronx in sheer amount of crime for a while, just not as far as damaged infrastructure is concerned.
Ultimately, Washington Heights is a neighborhood with a long and complex history, and a staggering amount of diversity, even for New York. Learning the facts described in this essay has definitely changed my perspective on the place. While I can’t say I’m now totally behind the move (I’m one of those people that reacts to change the way cats react to a thrown bucket of water), I can definitely say that there are things I’m looking forward to exploring. I know for sure that everything I’ve done so far has only scratched the surface of what there is to know about Washington Heights. If you’re even in the neighborhood next summer, feel free to say Hi. I’ll be the guy trying not to trip and fall in the Hudson.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Heights,_Manhattan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_Heights,_Manhattan
https://www.airbnb.com/locations/new-york/washington-heights
http://www.nycgo.com/articles/neighborhood-spotlight-washington-heights
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