Kips Bay - History

History

Kips Bay was an inlet of the East River running from what is now 32nd Street to 37th Street. The bay extended into Manhattan island to just west of what is now First Avenue and had two streams that ran from it. The bay was named after New Netherland Dutch settler Jacobus Hendrickson Kip (1631-1690), whose farm ran north of present day 30th Street along the East River. The bay became reclaimed land, yet "Kips Bay" remains the name of the area. Kip built a large brick and stone house, near the modern intersection of Second Avenue and East 35th Street. The house stood from 1655 to 1851, expanded more than once, and when it was demolished was the last farmhouse from New Amsterdam remaining in the city. Iron figures fixed into the gable-end brickwork commemorated the year of its first construction. Its orchard was famous, and, when George Washington was presented with a slip of its Rosa gallica during his first administration, it was claimed to have been the first garden to have grown it in the colonies.

Kips Bay was the site of the Landing at Kip's Bay (September 15, 1776), an episode of the American Revolutionary War and part of the New York and New Jersey campaign. About 4,000 British Army troops under General William Howe landed at Kips Bay on September 15, 1776, near what is now the foot of East 33rd Street. Howe's forces defeated about 500 American militiamen commanded by Colonel William Douglas. The American forces immediately retreated and the British occupied New York City soon afterward.

A single survivor of the late 18th or early 19th century in the neighborhood is the simple vernacular white clapboard house, much rebuilt, which has been variously dated from around 1790 to as late as 1870, standing gable-end to the street, at 203 East 29th Street (illustration, left); it is one of a mere handful of wooden houses that remain on Manhattan Island. The house, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is privately owned and not open to the public.

South of the Kips Bay Farm stood the substantial Federal-style villa erected facing the East River by Henry A. Coster, in the thirty-acre estate that was purchased in 1835 by Anson Greene Phelps; towards the city, the Bull's Head cattle market fronting the Boston Post Road extended southwards from 27th Street to 23rd Street, affording a distinctly less rural aspect; the villa was removed to make way for rowhouses in the 1860s and the cattle market was moved farther out of town, to 42nd Street.