Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard in the context of "Manhattanville, Manhattan"

Manhattanville (also known as West Harlem or West Central Harlem, after its location near Harlem) is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is bordered on the north by 135th Street; on the south by 122nd and 125th Streets; on the west by Hudson River; and on the east by Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and the campus of City College.

Throughout the nineteenth century, Manhattanville bustled around a wharf active with ferry and daily river conveyances. It was the first station on the Hudson River Railroad running north from the city, and the hub of daily stage coach, omnibus and streetcar lines. Situated near Bloomingdale Road, its hotels, houses of entertainment and post office made it an alluring destination of suburban retreat from the city, yet its direct proximity to the Hudson River also made it an invaluable industrial entry point for construction materials and other freight bound for Upper Manhattan. With the construction of road and railway viaducts over the valley in which the town sat, Manhattanville, increasingly absorbed into the growing city, became a marginalized industrial area. In the early 2000s, the neighborhood became the site of a major planned expansion of Columbia University, which has campuses in Morningside Heights to the south and Washington Heights to the north.