The last natural forest and salt marsh on the island are in Inwood Hill Park. The 1 train runs on steel above Tenth Avenue.
What Inwood looks like
Inwood sits between the Hudson and the Harlem Rivers at Manhattan's northern tip, with Broadway running its length. Apartment buildings five to eight stories tall line Broadway and the side streets, many with Art Deco stonework over the entrances. Detached and semi-detached houses are rare elsewhere on the island. They sit behind low fences between the apartment blocks, some with small lawns and hedges.
The 1 train runs on an elevated steel structure over , with stops at , 207th Street and 215th Street. Storefronts crowd Broadway and , with clothing racks and mannequin legs set out on the sidewalk under the awnings.
A wooded ridge rises steeply above the ballfields at the edge of , holding the last natural forest and salt marsh on the island. Shallow rock shelters cut into the hillside. Next door in , pale bands of schist and marble break through the ground at the Seaman Avenue corner.
The stands at Broadway and 204th Street, whitewashed brick worn back to red in patches, with a plank porch across the front. Farther up Broadway, the is a marble gateway half hidden behind commercial buildings, its stone stained and cracked.
The Broadway Bridge crosses the Harlem River Ship Canal at the neighborhood's northern edge, a steel lift span with twin towers rising above rail tracks that curve along the bank. Broadway runs on its lower deck and the elevated 1 train crosses on the upper one. At the Dyckman Street marina, a row of corrugated Quonset huts back onto the boat slips.
Shot in Inwood
In the Heights came up here for one scene, shot on Tenth Avenue under the elevated 1 train. Nina walks this block to meet her father at Floridita, playing a stretch of Washington Heights the story is actually set in.
In the Heights, 2021
Played Floridita, Nina's father's restaurant, Washington Heights, New York City, present day
Nina walks under the 1 train on Tenth Avenue to meet her father at Floridita, the restaurant at 3856 Tenth Avenue by the 207th Street station. The block the film is built around is thirty streets south, at 175th Street and Audubon Avenue in Washington Heights, where the subway is underground. Here the deck sits low over the roadway and the columns stand in the middle of the street.
Riverdale's brick apartment blocks back onto the wooded slopes of Riverdale Park and Van Cortlandt Park above the Hudson, the same pairing of apartment block and forested bluff that Inwood has at Payson Avenue and Inwood Hill Park. Riverdale Avenue climbs the same kind of grade, with retaining walls and stairs where the street meets the hillside. Riverdale's own apartment towers run taller than Inwood's, so a wide shot holds together better on Inwood's five and six story blocks than on Riverdale's own brick towers from the 1960s onward. Try searching apartment blocks above a bluff now.
Kew Gardens in Queens, New York
Kew Gardens' prewar apartment buildings are four to ten stories in a Tudor style, sitting near Forest Park's oak woods on their western side. Inwood has the same edge, where its own blocks meet Inwood Hill Park. Colonial Hall and Kew Hall, both built in the early 1920s, carry the pitched rooflines and stone trim a production would need to match. Forest Park is a deeper stretch of oak woods without Inwood Hill Park's exposed rock, so a frame that leaves the schist out of shot holds the comparison together. Try searching Tudor apartment buildings near woods now.
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