Brain Injury Association of NYS to Walk the High Bridge to Raise Awareness of Brain Injury

Date: Saturday, August 27th, 2016, 10AM 

Location: Handicap assessable Park Entrance at 164th St. and Edgecombe Ave.

Organization: BIA-NYS

  Website: hudsonvalleymarchon.bianys.org/Team/View/22860/BIA-NYC-at-High-Bridge

Please join BIA-NYS for the very first March On For Brain Injury walk across the High Bridge in New York City 

The walk's purpose is to raise awareness for the millions of people in New York State who live with brain injury.

Directions:Take the 1, A and C subway trains to 168th Street (only the A & C trains are handicap accessible) or take the C to 163rd Street. The meeting spot is the handicap assessable park entrance at 164th Street and Edgecombe Avenue directly across the street from Middle School 326 at 631 Edgecombe Avenue. New York, NY 10032

Bronx Highbridge Park Welcomes the World with New Gatehouse Cafe and Street Level Plaza

According to Aninagerchicdesign The small half acre park in the Bronx, also named Highbridge Park has been reopened with new amenities and pedestrian walkways.

The Washington Heights Broadway Business Improvement District (BID)

Information has just been received that the landowners and merchants and other stakeholders along Broadway corridor from 155th St. to 178th St. have just about gathered enough signatures to bring the matter of establishing a Business Improvement District (BID) to that stretch of Broadway. For those of you not familiar with the BID concept you can either go online and look up the details or simply know that the establishment of the BID will bring increased street cleaning and beautification along with more lighting and security services to the area.  This will spruce up the area making it more attractive to visitors and residents alike.  The costs associated with the improvement activities will be borne by the stakeholders through a special assessment tax payable by all non tax exempt landowners in the area.
From our understanding, Columbia University and the Presbyterian Hospital will also contribute even though they are not required to do so.

The exact configuration of this BID is as stated above is on Broadway from 155th St. to 178ths St. and an additional leg from Broadway on 168th St. to Amsterdam Ave.  It is hoped that as the BID is formally established it will be then expanded to also include Amsterdam Ave. from 168th St. north to around 180th St.

Please show your support for this effort by asking any merchants and land owners in the areas described above to sign up now to be a charter subscriber if they have not done so already.

Armed Guard Protecting High Bridge

A Watson, photographer

This is a stereoview card from the mid-19th century before 1850.  It shows an image of the High Bridge taken from the Manhattan side. Note the curious fellow with the rifle in the foreground.  The stereoview is labeled "B. Pike & Son, 518 Broadway".  Benjamin Pike operated an establishment in lower Manhattan from about 1798 to 1863. He operated as B. Pike & Son from 1831 to 1841, and again from  1843 to 1850. Outside of these years, he operated as B. Pike or B. Pike & Sons.

Benjamin Pike (b. 1777, London– d. 1863, New York) moved to New York at age 21 in 1798, and set up shop as an optician. By the mid-19th century, Pike and his sons were the leading dealers of mathematical, optical, and philosophical instruments in New York City,  making surveying, drafting, navigational, electrical, and astronomical instruments (including telescopes and microscopes) with customers all across the country and internationally.  Benjamin Jr. (1808–1864) joined his father in business in 1831, trading as Benjamin Pike & Son. In 1841, when Daniel joined the firm, the name changed to Benjamin Pike & Sons.  It reverted back to Benjamin Pike & Son around 1843, when Benjamin Jr. went into business on his own, competing with his father and operating at 294 Broadway.  In 1850, when Gardner came of age, the firm was again known as Benjamin Pike & Sons. It became Benjamin Pike’s Son in 1867, and remained in business until 1916. Some instruments with a Pike signature may have been made by craftsmen working for the Pikes, and under their direction. Others were made in workshops and factories elsewhere in the United States, and some were made abroad. Those marked "Warranted" were probably made for the Pikes, but not by them. But the Pikes probably made several instruments that they displayed at local exhibitions. At the 1837 fair sponsored by the Mechanics’ Institute of New York, Benjamin Pike & Son won a silver medal for their "very superior mountain barometer & theodolite compass." At the 1854 New York State Agricultural Society exhibition, Benjamin Pike Jr. won a silver medal for the "best set of surveyors’ instruments" and a diploma for his theodolite. Note from Sept. 11, 2023: I have found another stereoview of the same view as the one above but without the man with the gun. Also, it was taken by a different person.  Here is the stereoview:  Notice that the tree up and over the shoulder of the person in each stereoview is the same tree. These must have been taken in approximately the same year.  This stereoview was taken by William England for the London Stereoscopic Co. last revised 9/11/2023