CATHEDRAL PARKWAY, NO. 542
Between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue
OCTOBER 25, 1938. ABBOTT FILE 311

The move of Columbia University from midtown to Morningside Heights at the turn of the century accelerated the development of this previously rural area. By the 1920s the broad east-west parkway running along the northern edge of Central Park and the southern edge of Morningside Park, named for the nearby Cathedral of St. John the Divine, was ripe for real estate development. In this photograph, Abbott documented a relic of the previous era: an old wood-framed house lodged between two new apartment buildings.

The house survived the 1940s; the lot, too narrow for large-scale development, remained vacant until the 1980s, when a three-story, multi-dwelling building was erected.

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