Here comes the sun

Looking east toward Harlem from Morningside Drive over the park.

In the 17th Century, the land that is now Morningside Heights was known as Vandewater’s Heights, named for a landowner, according to Wikipedia.

On September 16, 1776, the Battle of Harlem Heights was fought there, with the most intense fighting occurring in a sloping wheat field that is now the site of Barnard College. A plaque by the Columbia University gate on 117th Street and Broadway commemorates this battle.

A century ago, as the New York Times has recounted, Morningside Heights was a desolate outpost on the northern fringe of the metropolis, almost empty except for the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum and the Leake & Watts Orphanage.