Washington Heights & Inwood Online

For almost two centuries, Inwood has been served by two institutions that are involved with publishing and education. These are the Dyckman Institute and the Inwood Branch of the New York Public Library. During an overlapping period of 41 years, they served the community as separate entities with one common goal. This is to lend books to the public and assist in educating the students of the community.

The Dyckman Library was established in 1860 as the first free public library in upper Manhattan. Originally, it was created as the Hamilton Free School. Alexander Hamilton’s widow, Eliza, donated the building and land for the Hamilton Free School. The school was founded in 1818 to provide an education for, in Eliza Hamilton’s words, “the poor near fort Washington on the upper part of this island.” It was originally located on Broadway and 188th Street. In 1857 the school building burned down and because there was no longer any need for such a school, the Dyckman Library was established.

One of the head librarians was Clara Flitner. Her family lived in a home in what is now Inwood Hill Park. Later, with the creation of the Inwood Branch of the New York Public Library, the Dyckman Library in the early 1920s became the Dyckman Institute. The Institute operated both a museum in Inwood Hill Park devoted to local archaeology and a publishing house.

The building was located in the park on what was once Bolton Road near Payson Street, between Dyckman and Beak Streets. A map drawn up in 1932 by the Dyckman Institute shows the location of the Dyckman Library and the Flitner home within the park. The book “Washington Heights Manhattan, Its Eventful Past” by Reginald Pelham Bolton was one of the books published by the Dyckman Institute in 1924.

In 1943 the Dyckman Institute closed and turned over its assets to Columbia University. These assets were to be used for scholarships for students of the Washington Heights and Inwood communities to attend Columbia, and for research.

In the 1950s the scholarship was pooled with other funds for needy students in a broader region. In 1986, with the help of then New York State Senator Franz Leichter and State Assemblyman Brian Murtaugh, Columbia University formally redefined the scholarship to focus on the specific needs of the neighborhoods of Washington Heights and Inwood to receive this annual educational award.

The Inwood Branch Library had its origins dating back to 1902, when it opened as a storefront branch on Dyckman Street. It took up where the Dyckman Institute had left off as a library.

Over the next 25 years, the branch moved to four different locations. These were a private house, a study hall at George Washington High School (where it took the name “Inwood”), to another store, and finally a renovated storefront at 215 Sherman Avenue at Dyckman Street. The Inwood Branch Library remained on Sherman Avenue until 1950, when it relocated to a three-story building on Broadway, about 1/2 block north of Dyckman Street in 1952, where it became the regional library for the area.

The Inwood Branch was recently renovated at a cost of $3.84 million. This was done with a $500,000 grant from the Louis Calder Foundation and the New York public Library’s Adopt-A-Branch program, and $3,340,000 from the City of New York. The interior was newly renovated and there was a 2,100 square-foot addition to the building. The basement has a community room and two new classrooms.

The renovation also includes newly finished floors, walls and ceilings, as well as upgrading of fire alarm systems, elevators, electrical, air conditioning, heating, and sprinkler systems, and the addition of 16 new computer workstations. The building has been made accessible to people with wheelchairs.

The Inwood Regional Branch Library offers circulation and reference collections for adults, teenagers and children. These are in English and Spanish. There are also circulating videos, CDs and audiocassettes. Some of the programs offered are English as a Second Language, children’s story hours, preschool programs, weekly toddler open houses, and book discussion groups.

To apply for the Dyckman Institute Scholarship, students should contact the Columbia College Admissions Office at 212-854-2522 or via their website. The recipients of the scholarship for the 2004-2005 academic year were freshman Vera Tseylikman, sophomore Brenda Cepeda, and seniors Alexandra Hernandez and Katherine Paez.

The Inwood Regional Library is located at 4790 Broadway. For hours and services of the Inwood Branch Library, call (212) 942-2445. For more information on the New York Public Library, log onto its Web site.