125th
Street, the land rises into a ridge of commanding height, forming
Cathedral Plateau, breaking down in terraces to the Hudson River, and
declining more abruptly into the Harlem Flats at Morningside Park. A
bird's-eye view of this region from 59th Street to 125th Street on the
west would have presented not many years ago a blistered and contorted
surface of rock carved out with creases and sinuous depressions, with
also a general gradient upward to the north and somewhat coarsely
traversed by east and west folds. In many portions of this area there
were quite deep valleys, as in and about 76th Street, since raised by
material removed from the hills to the general street grade.
From
Morningside Park the eye surveys an alluvial or drift plain towards the
east, terminating in the blue thread of water of the Harlem River and
broken by the pinnacle-like prominence of Mt. Morris Park, itself the
terminal peak of an interrupted ridge, stretching southward between
5th and 3d Avenues. Northward the transverse gorge or clove at 125th
Street bending northwestwardly to 129th Street is encountered, and
beyond it from Convent Avenue another upheaval carries the rocky
prolongation, still rising to Washington Heights at 155th Street to
176th Street. Transferring our aerial seat of vision to above this
point, we see a spur striking northward to Fort George, and a divergent
axis of elevation somewhat parallel, also running northward into the
backbone of Inwood, overlooking the Kingsbridge road, while at our
feet, peacefully embosomed between precipitous or receding banks, the
Harlem River flows, leading the gaze northward to Fordham Heights and
to a broad back of elevation which forms the eastern embankments of the
Hudson River. Still continuing our imaginative flight, we find our
station in In-wood at the northern limit of the steep ridge overlooking
the Lafayette (or French) Boulevard. Immediately below us is a
depression leading to the river, and on the north side and to the east
of it rise the beds of the Kingsbridge limestone or marble, which,
again to the northwest and west, at the ex-
