Coogan's Bluff is a promontory near the western shore of the Harlem River in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan in New York City. Its boundaries extend approximately from 155th Street and the Macombs Dam Bridge viaduct to 160th Street, between Edgecombe Avenue and the river. A deep escarpment descends 175 feet (53 m) from Edgecombe Avenue to the river, creating a sheltered area between the bluff and river known as Coogan's Hollow. From 1890 to 1964, the hollow was home to the Polo Grounds sports stadium.
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👉 Coogan's Bluff in the context of Polo Grounds
The Polo Grounds was the name of three stadiums in Upper Manhattan, New York City, used mainly for professional baseball and American football from 1880 to 1963. The original Polo Grounds, opened in 1879 and demolished in 1889, was built for the sport of polo. Bound on the south and north by 110th and 112th streets and on the east and west by Fifth and Sixth (Lenox) avenues, just north of Central Park, it was converted to a baseball stadium when leased by the New York Metropolitans in 1880.
The third Polo Grounds, built in 1890, and renovated after a fire in 1911, was in Coogan's Hollow and was noted for its distinctive bathtub shape, with very short distances to the left and right field walls and an unusually deep center field.
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Coogan's Bluff in the context of 155th Street (Manhattan)
155th Street is a crosstown street separating the Harlem and Washington Heights neighborhoods, in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is the northernmost of the 155 crosstown streets mapped out in the Commissioner's Plan of 1811 that established the numbered street grid in Manhattan.
The street consists of upper and lower portions, linked only by a steep pedestrian stairwell. The upper portion starts on the West Side at Riverside Drive, crossing Broadway, Amsterdam Avenue, and St. Nicholas Avenue. At St. Nicholas Place, the terrain drops off steeply, forming Coogan's Bluff. 155th Street is carried on the 1,600-foot (490 m) long 155th Street Viaduct, a City Landmark constructed in 1893, that slopes down towards the Harlem River, continuing onto the Macombs Dam Bridge, crossing over (but not intersecting with) the Harlem River Drive. An unconnected lower section of 155th Street runs at ground level under the viaduct, between a dead-end west of Bradhurst Avenue and a service road of the Harlem River Drive.
Coogan's Bluff in the context of Washington Heights, Manhattan
Washington Heights is a neighborhood in the northern part of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is named for Fort Washington, a fortification constructed at the highest natural point on Manhattan by Continental Army troops to defend the area from the British forces during the American Revolutionary War. Washington Heights is bordered by Inwood to the north along Dyckman Street, by Harlem to the south along 155th Street, by the Harlem River and Coogan's Bluff to the east, and by the Hudson River to the west.
Washington Heights, which before the 20th century was sparsely populated by luxurious mansions and single-family homes, rapidly developed during the early 1900s as it became connected to the rest of Manhattan via the Broadway–Seventh Avenue and Eighth Avenue lines of the New York City Subway. Beginning as a middle-class neighborhood with many Irish and Eastern European immigrants, the neighborhood has at various points been home to communities of German Jews, Greek Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, African Americans and Russian Americans.