“The Next Stop on this Train” 225th Street, Marble Hill – The Bronx (Or is it...?)

***This project has a new home. Please visit www.thenextstoponthistrain.com***

This one comes with a bit of fascinating NYC history. If you look at the map (below), you can see that this stop is geographically located in The Bronx. But that wasn’t always the case. The Marble Hill area was originally the northernmost tip of Manhattan. In 1895, however, the Harlem River Ship Channel was constructed to its south in order to connect the Harlem and Hudson rivers. This made Marble Hill an island, with the channel to the south and Spuyten Duyvil Creek to the north. Fast-forward to 1914 when Spuyten Duyvil Creek was filled in…which resulted in Marble Hill being physically located in The Bronx, while it remained–and still does to this day–technically part of Manhattan. It is, in fact, the only neighborhood in Manhattan that’s on the mainland of North America.

Fascinating stuff! And I had no idea until I happened to look up the history of a cool church I found there (the beautiful St. Stephen’s United Methodist Church, built in 1898, also pictured below). I love this project!

For anyone new to the page, this is part of a series in which I’m visiting every subway stop in New York City and taking photos of what I find there. To see where in the city the photos here were taken, scroll all the way down past the photos to the subway map at the bottom.

To explore all of the stops I’ve photographed thus far, or to find a specific stop, click here.