place

Battle of Harlem Heights

Battles involving Great BritainBattles involving the United StatesBattles of the New York CampaignConflicts in 1776Harlem
United States Army Rangers
Battle of Harlem Heights
Battle of Harlem Heights

The Battle of Harlem Heights was fought during the New York and New Jersey campaign of the American Revolutionary War. The action took place on September 16, 1776, in what is now the Morningside Heights area and east into the future Harlem neighborhoods of northwestern Manhattan Island in what is now part of New York City. The Continental Army, under Commander-in-chief General George Washington, Major General Nathanael Greene, and Major General Israel Putnam, totaling around 9,000 men, held a series of high ground positions in upper Manhattan. Immediately opposite was the vanguard of the British Army totaling around 5,000 men under the command of Major General Henry Clinton. An early morning skirmish between a patrol of Knowlton's Rangers and British light infantry pickets developed into a running fight as the British pursued the Americans back through woods towards Washington's position on Harlem Heights. The overconfident British light troops, having advanced too far from their lines without support, had exposed themselves to counter-attack. Seeing this, Washington ordered a flanking maneuver which failed to cut off the British force but, in the face of this attack and pressure from troops arriving from the Harlem Heights position, the outnumbered British retreated. Meeting reinforcements coming from the south and with the added support of a pair of field pieces, the British light infantry turned and made a stand in open fields on Morningside Heights. The Americans, also reinforced, came on in strength and there followed a lengthy exchange of fire. After two hours, with ammunition running short, the British force began to pull back to their lines. Washington cut short the pursuit, unwilling to risk a general engagement with the British main force, and withdrew to his own lines. The battle helped restore the confidence of the Continental Army after suffering several defeats. It was Washington's first battlefield success of the war. After a month without any major fighting between the armies, Washington was forced to withdraw his army north to the town of White Plains in southeastern New York when the British moved west into Westchester County and threatened to flank Washington further south on Manhattan. After two defeats Washington retreated west across the Hudson River.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Battle of Harlem Heights (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Battle of Harlem Heights
Riverside Drive, New York Manhattan

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
placeShow on map

Wikipedia: Battle of Harlem HeightsContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 40.811944444444 ° E -73.963611111111 °
placeShow on map

Address

Riverside Church

Riverside Drive
10115 New York, Manhattan
New York, United States
mapOpen on Google Maps

Battle of Harlem Heights
Battle of Harlem Heights
Share experience

Nearby Places

Riverside Church
Riverside Church

Riverside Church is an interdenominational church in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, on the block bounded by Riverside Drive, Claremont Avenue, 120th Street and 122nd Street near Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus and across from Grant's Tomb. It is associated with the American Baptist Churches USA and the United Church of Christ. The church was conceived by philanthropist businessman and Baptist John D. Rockefeller Jr. in conjunction with Baptist minister Harry Emerson Fosdick as a large, interdenominational church in Morningside Heights, which is surrounded by academic institutions. The original building opened in 1930; it was designed by Henry C. Pelton and Allen & Collens in the Neo-Gothic style. It contains a nave consisting of five architectural bays; a chancel at the front of the nave; a 22-story, 392-foot (119 m) tower above the nave; a narthex and chapel; and a cloistered passageway that connects to the eastern entrance on Claremont Avenue. Near the top of the tower is the church's main feature, a 74-bell carillon—the heaviest in the world—dedicated to Rockefeller Jr.'s mother Laura Spelman Rockefeller. A seven-story wing was built to the south of the original building in 1959 to a design by Collens, Willis & Beckonert, and was renamed for Martin Luther King Jr. in 1985. The Stone Gym to the southeast, built in 1915 as a dormitory, was designed by Louis E. Jallade and was converted to a gymnasium in 1962. Riverside Church has been a focal point of global and national activism since its inception, and it has a long history of social justice in adherence to Fosdick's original vision of an "interdenominational, interracial, and international" church. Its congregation includes members of more than forty ethnic groups. The church was designated as a city landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 2000 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.

The Interchurch Center
The Interchurch Center

The Interchurch Center is a 19-story limestone-clad office building located at 475 Riverside Drive and West 120th Street in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, New York City. It is the headquarters for the international humanitarian ministry Church World Service, and also houses a wide variety of church agencies and ecumenical and interfaith organizations as well as some nonprofit foundations and faith-related organizations, including the Religion Communicators Council. The National Council of Churches also occupied the building from its inception, but in February 2013, the NCC consolidated its offices on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, and vacated its New York headquarters facilities. NCC's sister agency, Church World Service, remains a tenant in the building. Its concentration of religious organizations has led some to nickname the building the God Box. Samuel G. Freedman describes the building as "the closest thing to a Vatican for America’s mainline Protestant denominations." The mainline churches include the Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Reformed Church in America, Methodist and United Church of Christ denominations. But across the years many of them moved their headquarters closer to the majority of their constituents, leaving only certain divisions or offices in the New York facilities.The Center benefits from a strong religious and educational environment. One of its tenants is the New York Theological Seminary. The building is located immediately south of Riverside Church and west of Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University, and is a short walk to Jewish Theological Seminary, Manhattan School of Music, the Korean Methodist Church and Institute, and the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The building is assigned its own ZIP Code, 10115; it was one of 41 buildings in Manhattan that had their own ZIP Codes as of 2019.