Marble Restoration in Marble Hill, NY

Marble Hill has been occupied since the Dutch colonial period. On August 18, 1646, Governor Willem Kieft, the Dutch Director of New Netherland, signed a land grant to Mattius Jansen van Keulan and Huyck Aertsen which included the whole of the present community. Johannes Verveelen petitioned the Harlem authorities to move his ferry from what is now the East River and 125th Street to Spuyten Duyvil Creek because the creek was shallow enough to wade across, thus providing a means of evading the toll. The ferry charter was granted in 1667. Many settlers circumvented the toll for the ferry by crossing the creek from northern Marble Hill to modern Kingsbridge, Bronx, a point where it was feasible to wade or swim through the waters. In 1669 Verveelen transplanted his ferry to the northern tip of Marble Hill, at today’s Broadway and West 231st Street.

Bridges[edit]

Two bridges connected Marble Hill with the mainland: the King’s Bridge and the Dyckman Free Bridge. In 1693 Frederick Philipse, a Frisian-born merchant who had sworn allegiance to the Crown upon the British takeover of Dutch New Netherlands in 1664, built the King’s Bridge at Marble Hill near what is now West 230th Street in the Bronx. A prominent trader in New Amsterdam, Philipse had purchased vast landholdings in what was then Westchester County during the 1670s and 1680s. Granted the title Lord of Philipse Manor, he established a plantation and provisioning depot for his shipping business upriver on the Hudson in present-day Sleepy Hollow. His toll bridge provided access and opened his land to settlement. Later, it carried the Boston Post Road.

In 1758, the Free Bridge was erected by Jacob Dyckman and Benjamin Palmer. It opened on January 1, 1759. Its purpose was to serve the farmers who refused to pay the toll. Stagecoach service was later established across the span. The new bridge proceeded to take much of the traffic away from the King’s Bridge.