☞ REMEMBER: 155th and St. Nicholas Avenue

The hills of Harlem get pretty dramatic up by its northern borders and along with it, a distinct intersection. At that corner of St. Nicholas Avenue, there's a handsome low rise section of buildings right by the C train subway entrance. Most of the prewar buildings, as seen in the top photo from 1940, are all intact so the sky and dramatic vistas are basically unchanged from a century ago (click on photo to enlarge). There's a low level white terra cotta commercial space with a pizza parlor on the corner but the stars of the block are half dozen brick row houses that are half a block up. With their Dutch gable roof line and striking oriel windows, these houses mark the last low level blocks of Harlem before the taller buildings of Washington Heights take over upper Manhattan. Archival photo by NYPL. Current photos by Ulysses.