Manhattanville - Other Sites of Interest

Other Sites of Interest

Aside from Grant's Tomb, Riverside Church and the Manhattan School of Music at the southwestern corner, the principal landmarks in Manhattanville are the elevated section of the IRT Broadway – Seventh Avenue Line and the elevated Riverside Drive Viaduct. Within the neighborhood is Manhattanville Houses, a 1,272 unit development of the New York City Housing Authority, which opened in 1961. Designed in the international style by noted Swiss-born architect William Lescaze, the development was initially created to house middle income residents.

The neighborhood also contains the landmarked neo-Renaissance Claremont Theatre where Thomas Edison once shot a short film in 1915 featuring the building's entrance, the Manhattanville Bus Depot, St. Mary's Church, and the Fairway Supermarket, whose broad selections attract distant customers.

In Riverside Park, north of Grant's Tomb, is the site of the former Claremont Inn, a riverside respite and hotel for the affluent back in its heyday. It was originally built around 1775 as a private mansion and estate. By the end of the 19th century it was bought by the city of New York and leased to a hotelier. There was also a place to rent bicycles at the inn. It had a serious fire in the 1940s which caused its demise. A plan was in the making for a reuse of the inn and restaurant and grounds when yet a final fire caused its closing in 1951. A stone plaque marks where it once stood.

In the 1920s, on 131st Street between Broadway and Twelfth Avenue, a Studebaker automobile factory plant made luxury cars. The building was sold in the Great Depression in the 1930s to Borden to be used as a dairy plant. In the 21st century it is used by Columbia University and has a Studebaker Cafe in it.