The highest ground on the island is here, where streets turn into stone stairs and a subway platform sits 173 feet down.
What Washington Heights looks like
A ridge runs along the west side of upper Manhattan, from 155th Street to Dyckman Street. Streets climb toward and Cabrini Boulevard, and several turn into flights of stairs where the grade is too steep for a roadway. The longest run, at 187th Street, is 130 steps between Fort Washington Avenue and . On the ground drops away fast enough that apartment buildings stand on stilts above the slope.
holds a bare outcrop of Manhattan schist that rises 265 feet above sea level, the highest ground on the island. A second outcrop pokes through a fenced lot on , rock rising past second floor windows next door. The ridge runs north to the George Washington Bridge, whose steel suspension towers rise 604 feet over the Hudson in exposed crisscrossed bracing.
Most of the housing is five and six storey apartment buildings from the early twentieth century, walk-ups and elevator buildings with fire escapes zigzagging down brick fronts. Art Deco entrances with stepped setbacks line the blocks west of above 181st Street. The tallest buildings are the hospital towers around 168th Street, tan brick blocks stacked with window units.
The subway runs deep under the hill. The platform at sits 173 feet below Saint Nicholas Avenue, reached only by elevator, with a thousand foot passage to a second entrance on Broadway. Stone retaining walls and concrete stairways connect streets that no longer meet by road, risers tagged with graffiti. Broadway and 181st Street carry the commercial strip, signs stacked two and three deep over each storefront.
Shot in Washington Heights
Spike Lee shot the exteriors of the assassination sequence in Malcolm X at the Audubon Ballroom itself. Two thirds of its original facade, the part along Broadway and West 165th Street, still stands behind Columbia's medical research building.
Malcolm X, 1992
Spike Lee filmed the exterior of the assassination sequence at the real Audubon Ballroom, 3940 Broadway near West 165th Street. The interior was built on a soundstage in the former Diplomat Hotel ballroom in midtown, the same room already dressed for the film's Roseland dance number.
The neighborhood climbs a steep hillside above the rivers on dozens of the city's public stairways, connecting streets where brick and frame houses from the same building boom line either side. Mission Street and the streets around it hold a similar grade and stair density to the hill blocks off Fort Washington Avenue. Pittsburgh's houses are mostly wood frame or vinyl sided rather than elevator apartment buildings, so a tight street level frame reads better than a wide one. The three rivers skyline gives the city away in an elevated shot. Try searching steep hillside stairway streets now.
Mission Hill in Boston, Massachusetts
Six storey prewar brick apartment blocks climb a ridge above a major hospital campus here, fire escapes zigzagging down the same kind of facades as the blocks below Fort Washington Avenue. Alleghany Street and the streets around Mission Park hold the closest match in scale. Boston's own hospital towers sit closer to the residential blocks than Manhattan's do, so a wide shot needs to avoid them. The brick also runs redder than the tan brick common on this hill. Try searching six storey prewar brick apartments now.
Mount Adams in Cincinnati, Ohio
Streets climb from the river here on stone retaining walls with public stairs cut into them, a similar grade to the blocks around Bennett Avenue. The buildings are smaller and lower, mostly two and three storey frame and brick houses rather than elevator apartment blocks. A tight frame on the walls and stairs holds the match. A wide shot gives away the lower building heights and the river valley behind them. Try searching stone retaining walls and stairs now.
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