The Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group was established by a group of Upper West Siders who share an interest in the history of the area they loosely define as stretching from West 96th Street to West 110th Street, the Hudson River to Central Park. This article is adapted from a blog post about the 1855 state census posted on the website of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group at the link. 

By Pam Tice, member of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group

A question from a family researcher led me to the New York State Census of 1855. I was able to locate our Bloomingdale neighborhood, a part of Election District 1, itself a part of New York City’s Ward 12 which encompassed all of Manhattan north of 86th Street. ED 1 stretched from 120th Street between Fifth Avenue and the Hudson River down to West 86th Street. Many acres of the district became part of Central Park. I followed the Census Marshal, Mr. A. C. Judson, during the eight days in June, 1855, as he filled out the population schedule, writing down the names of the inhabitants of each dwelling, and was able to pinpoint the days when he was in our Bloomingdale neighborhood.

These 1855 census pages became a lens into Bloomingdale life in the mid-19th century—before the Civil War, before the Lion Brewery (1858), before the Ninth Avenue El (1879), and before most of the streets were laid out.

New York City historians covering this period characterize Bloomingdale before the Civil War as a place of “country seats,” many developed in the late 18th and into the early 19th centuries by wealthy merchants. They built in the bucolic neighborhood to escape the crowded downtown, especially important when a cholera or smallpox epidemic threatened. There’s scant attention paid to the working-class and poor residents of the neighborhood except to note that there was a “village” around 100th Street.

Bloomingdale was described in an 1868 Atlantic Monthly article as a rural village near the city with family mansions and large asylums for “lunatics and orphans.” (The Bloomingdale Insane Asylum opened in 1821 and the Leake and Watts Orphan House opened in 1843.)  The author describes the Bloomingdale Road as “Broadway run out into the country,” a road serving “fast-trotting horsemen.” The Hudson River Railroad runs beside the river with “much of the intervening ground occupied by market gardens.”  In his book on the history of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, located at today’s Amsterdam Avenue and 100th Street, John P. Peters describes two projects that changed the character of Bloomingdale. The first was the Croton Aqueduct, a “monumental structure” that emerged from underground at 113th Street and Tenth Avenue, turning eastward through Manhattan Valley, and running down the  westside to West 84th Street.

The other public project was the Harlem River Railroad, incorporated in 1846, and permitted to run locomotives along the Hudson from West 30th Street to Albany beginning in 1849. Peters describes this improvement as destroying the beauty of the country residences along the Hudson River, driving many owners to other regions. Bloomingdale went from being a country suburb to having a more numerous, poorer population.

Locating a particular resident is a challenge as there are no street addresses in the 1855 census. However, some of the mansions are on old maps, and a few owners are listed in city directories for that year. We assume that the Census Marshals moved around in an orderly fashion; each page of names has a date. If a particular residence is a known address, like a country-seat mansion or a business with an address in the city directory, then the other dwellings listed on that page are assumed to be relatively close by.

The census covered all the expected categories and one that was surprising. For groups living in the same dwelling, labeled “families,” the population schedule listed name, age, gender, and position in the household—the head, the spouse, a child, or a servant.  Many labeled as “servant” were actually “employees” living in the home of their employer, a common practice. In the mansions, the servants were the “waiter” or a cook.  A place of birth was noted, and, if it was not the United States, was the person a naturalized citizen or an alien.  The Census Marshal noted your occupation, if you could read or write, and if you were a landholder or lease holder. Disabilities were noted. The surprising information was in the first two columns, noting the material a dwelling was made of—stone, brick, frame or plank —and its value.

In ED 1, Mr. Judd counted 1,635 people living in 216 families, in 188 dwellings.  I estimate that there were about 130 dwellings between 96th and 110th Streets. There were fifteen multi-family dwellings in the whole district, and only one held four families. Twenty percent of the entire ED 1 population were housed in three institutions: the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum, the Leake and Watts Orphan House, and the House of Mercy down on West 86th Street, a home for “fallen women,” a place I plan to write about soon. There were five hotels, four grocery stores, and one church. The nearest public school was not in ED 1, but located to the south, at West 82nd Street and Eleventh Avenue.

The mansions and asylums had the highest value. The greatest number of homes, some seventy-four, were valued between $1,000 and $8,000. Another sixty-two were frame but valued from $300 to $800. There were twenty-one “plank” dwellings, referred to as “shanties” by other Census Marshals. These tended to be clustered in small groups, but Bloomingdale did not have the large “shanty-towns” that covered other areas of Manhattan. These poor structures were occupied by recent immigrants, mostly Irish, who were immigrants to New York City in great numbers during the time of famine in their country.

In mid-19th century New York, the foreign-born population was over 50%, with Irish counted as 33% and Germans at just over 12%; this pattern of nativity was reflected in ED 1.

One frequently listed occupation was gardener. Bloomingdale and the surrounding area had numerous market-gardens, a feature that continued into the 20th century. Most of the gardeners were German immigrants, many of whom arrived in New York City with some resources and the necessary experience. The city’s fast-growing population, a ready work force, and the availability of stable manure made urban agriculture possible. Landowners were willing to lease their property on a short-term basis while they waited for their property to increase in value. The gardeners of the westside were close to the city’s food markets to the south, along the Hudson.

The most common occupation was laborer, but there was no match to where the person actually worked. These people became the workforce that cut through land to lay streets, built Central Park, and later the subways. Only one resident of Bloomingdale, Mr. Cavanagh on West 107th Street, claimed to be disabled, as his eyes were “burnt out” since he had been “blasting rocks since he was 14.”

Mr. Judd also noted that there were several rope-makers living in ED 1, although he noted that they had not been functioning for the past few months. I counted five homes where the head of the family had this occupation. Mr. Knapp had a broom factory in the area around West 100th Street, employing seven men and two boys. In his home, there were four “servants” with the occupation of broom-maker.

Several other homes and businesses were also clustered around West 100th Street, creating the “village” mentioned by historians. The rope and broom businesses were here, along with a baker, a shoemaker, a blacksmith, a grocery store, and a liquor store. Mr. Twine, a builder, who worked on rebuilding St. Michael’s Church after the original building burned in 1853, also had his business here.

Over on West 96th Street near the river was the Stryker’s Bay Hotel, a popular place for Sunday afternoon excursions.

One dwelling that caught my attention was Mary McLaughlin’s home, a plank dwelling valued at $200. Mary was a fifteen-year-old girl, an Irish immigrant. Her family consisted of her seven brothers and sisters, age two to thirteen. Women who headed families were not given an occupation so we don’t know how Mary supported her family. Mary’s home was part of a cluster of small dwellings mapped the following year by Egbert Viele as he prepared his topographical map of the land that would become Central Park, sketching these small dwellings on park land between West 100th and West 106th Streets.

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