United Palace And The 4 Other Loew's Wonder Theaters

The House. Loew's 175th Street / United Palace. Photo: Tinseltoes

This unbelievable jewel, this incredible space that only could have constructed at a certain time in history, I boastfully declare could have only been built in New York City.  I know that other cities had places like this but New York’s where the biggest and the most extravagant.  This was a neighborhood palace, bestowed upon the city along with so many long gone temples to the motion picture.  A place that not only took your breath away but was entirely geared to wrap the patron within another world. Whether it was a baroque opera house, a De Medici villa, or a chunk of Versailles, the entertainment did not end when the picture finished or the stage show ended.  The space itself was part of the show. 

The balcony at the United Palace / Loew's 175th Street. Photo:  Tinseltoes

When Loew's divested itself of this theater it was 1969 and the era of large single screen houses was  At that time the possibilities for a place like that was supermarket, demolition or church.  Triplexing and the even worse “quading” of these spaces had not come into vogue yet but were on the horizon.  Reverend Ike purchased it for $1 and Loew's got a huge tax break.  To Reverend Ike's credit, he did not alter anything in the space.  He added quotes from the bible but that was about it. He even had the research done to find opening day paint colors.  The company that did the interior decorating for almost all of Thomas Lamb's theaters, Rambusch Studios, is still around. 

very much over.

House right and the proscenium at the United Palace.  Photo: Leo Sorel

The idea for these "Wonder Theaters" actually began with Paramount.   Paramount hit a financial bump, this is sometime in the late '20's, and the idea was dropped.  This part my memory is a little fuzzy but the Robert Morton Wonder Organs (all of these big houses had huge Wurlitzer type machines - basically analog synthesizers) that were ordered for the Paramount theaters had been built.  These were the biggest organs that Morton had manufactured.  Loew's (the parent company of MGM) bought them and decided to build these "Wonder" theaters in NYC.

There was one in every borough except Staten Island.  There were 5, all still standing and all designed by three of the greatest theater architecture firms ever - Thomas Lamb did Loew's 175th, Rapp & Rapp did the Kings in Brooklyn and the Loew's Jersey in Jesrey City and John Eberson did the Paradise in the Bronx and the Valencia in Queens.  They were called Wonder Theaters" not only because of their organ installations but because they were to be the last word in movie theaters.  All were built with stages, all initially included Vaudeville as part of the evening.  

 Loew's Paradise on the Champs-Élysées of the Bronx, the Grand Concourse.  The Concourse is so very Champs-Élysées that the zoning laws forbid the installation of a marquee over the sidewalk.

A cherub watches the action on the screen and stage at the Paradise.

The Paradise has been beautifully restored, even after being triplexed back in the mid '70's and a fire in the stage house 20 years ago. The Valencia is a church, which probably saved this theater, however there was one thing done to this ire-replaceable space that is almost unforgivable. The architect, John Eberson, was famous for designing "atmospherics" - the side walls were built out and the ceiling curved into the recesses and was painted usually a sky blue, little lights imbedded in to the smooth plaster simulated stars and clouds were projected onto this "sky".  The church hung a chandelier from the middle of the sky.  The organ at the Paradise was removed prior to the restoration and moved to the Loew’s Jersey were it now rises up on it’s lift and plays (the original organ at the Jersey had been removed years ago and moved to a theater in Santa Barbara).   

The Valencia soon after completion.  The orchestra pit was on a lift but had a separate lift for the piano. Photo: CharmineZoe

The Valencia, a recent picture showing the chandelier hanging from the sky.  Photo: Scouting NY

Although the Valencia was called the most successful Loew’s theater in Queens, it closed in 1977 and became and still is the Tabernacle of Prayer for All People church. Other than the ceiling light fixture, the church covered up any (and there were enough) nude statues.  Loew’s had dropped vaudeville in the mid ‘30’s so the orchestra pit came to be considered wasted space.  At some point in the ‘50’s, the pit and the organ lift were covered over with concrete so an additional couple of rows could be installed (this sort of thing was such a common occurrence).  Unfortunately the organ console was buried under the concrete.  It was finally removed and now resides in a theater in San Diego. 

Opening day shows included Frills and Fancies’ a revue, Wesley Eddy & his Kings of Syncopation, and the Chester Hale Girls along with the Loew's grand Orchestra. Photo: BrooklynGil

Loew’s Kings on Flatbush is the last of the Wonder Theaters to be saved.  It was last used as a theater in 1977.  Loew’s had done nothing to the interior décor from the time it opened in 1929 up to their divestiture of this beautiful space.   Like the Jersey, this theater was designed buy the Chicago based firm Rapp & Rapp.  This firm did quite a bit of work for Paramount (The New York Paramount in Times Square and the Brooklyn Paramount) but did only 4 theaters for Loew’s.

Stairs to the balcony at Loew's Kings. Photo: Tinseltoes

The kings was built with a seating capacity of 3676, 2798 of those seats on the orchestra floor. This was a departure for Rapp & Rapp as they normally did not do that, most of there work contained the traditional balcony.  What is not a departure for them is the style of the theater, which is sort of baroque gone beserk.  Almost every theater they did was based on spaces at Versailles.  I am not saying that they were not beautiful, I am just saying 

 Versailles played a heavy role in their work.

Behind the scenes The Kings  had a gym and basketball court located in the basement, which were provided for the use of the theater staff.

Even with the orchestra pit raised, the stage is a mess. There were 2 elevator platforms on the stage that look as if they collapsed in to the depths below.  All the white areas indicate water damage to the plaster work.

This is what happened to the Wonder Organ at the Kings, according to the New York City chapter of the American Guild of Organists (yes they got a guild):

“In 1974, Loew's donated the Kings' Wonder Morton to the NYC-owned Town Hall in Manhattan. The organ was played for the last time in the Kings on Sunday morning, January 27, 1974, with Lee Erwin at the console and about 200 organ buffs in the audience. The American Theater Organ Society and its Greater New York chapter took care of the Morton's removal, which cost about $15,000, including transportation to storage facilities owned by NYC. Unfortunately, while the organ was under NYC's protection, most if not all of the organ's esssential parts mysteriously "disappeared," and only the console remained. In 1998, the console was sold to Paul and Linda Van Der Molen of Wheaton, IL, who had the console rebuilt and connected to the four-manual, 26-rank theatre organ in their residence”

The Kings, after decades of abandonment, water damage, vandalism and false starts, the theater were Barbara Streisand worked as an usher once upon a time, is finally getting it’s long over due restoration. 

Amazing is that the light fixtures are intact at the Kings. Photo: Tinseltoes

Although the 5 theaters had different architects, Harold Rambusch Studios worked on most of them.  In 1979 a documentary was made about the Kings called Memories of a Movie Palace.  It has interviews with the last manager who served in that capacity for over 30 years and is still alive (she just turned 100), the last organist who came up on the empty lift, and the last projectionist who had worked there for decades as well.  During the interview the projectionist broke down and sobbed at the condition of this theater.  Harold Rambusch had been interviewed before the theater was in horrible shape.  His firm hired the first woman to graduate from Columbia University’s school of architecture, Ann Dornin.

As for the United Palace, it is the only one of the 5 theaters that has it’s original organ, it is playable and the theater is in great shape.  Although the interior is incredibly similar to a theater he did in Syracuse and the exterior is repeated on his now ruined Loew’s Pitkin, this is one of Thomas Lamb’s greatest works.  I read somewhere once long ago that the style could be referred to as “Hashish nightmare”. I find that a bit harsh but if there was ever a Baroque / Rocco period in Asia, it would have looked like this.

This is the point, in my opinion, having just missed this era and only remembering remnants of this abstract masterpiece, when the Times Square area looked the best.  A cornucopia of neon trying to deny the night at the same time needing the darkness so the bright brash colors could stand out.  So much of this is gone, the longer I look at it the sadder I get.  As the city prepares to lose yet another what was a theater (the 1910 Columbia Theater), some of us are reminded of what once was.  This vista was one of the multitude of reasons why people came to New York, to see this. I passed a brand new Pinkberry today on Broadway at 94th street. What had been there before, for as long as I can remember, was an antique store.  Maybe antique is kind, maybe it was junk. The store was dusty, kept strange hours, smelled like cat (not in a good way) but the store and the storefront was unique.  Now it is a Pinkberry, it looks like it was ripped out of a mall and dropped onto Broadway.  That storefront no matter how small, was part of the mosaic that makes New York special.

The Columbia Theater and the building it was built with are most certainly part of that mosaic.  Most of us do not recall the the name Columbia being used as the name of this house.  Very few of us remember the second or third name bestowed upon this house and for many years it was known as the Embassy 2, 3 and 4 (the theater known as just The Embassy, or Embassy 1, was on 7th Avenue between 47th and 46th streets).  Names come and go, the Embassy moniker was re-applied to what had been a newsreel theater during World War II. The Columbia was renamed Mayfair in 1930,  then the DeMille in 1960 and eventually it was Embassy(ed).

 

 The site in May of 1909.  This looking at the north east corner of 47th and Seventh Avenue from the south west corner.

This is on the same day but further down 7th Avenue at 46th Street. All of this will soon be gone and replaced by the Valhalla of Vaudeville  -  B.F. Keith's Palace Theater as well as the what will be known as the Embassy 1 and now the Times Square Visitor Center. 

Originally opened on January 10th, 1910 as the Columbia Theatre at the northeast corner of 47th Street and Broadway inside an office building.  The office building was home to the Columbia Amusement Company, one of the larger burlesque circuits.    In 1910, the term burlesque had not grown into what it would become associated with.  Instead the emphasis was on comedy, musical numbers and beautiful showgirls.  The 1800 seat theater was designed by noted theatre architect William McElfatrick in a sort of Beaux Arts style.  Above the proscenium arch, there had been a mural called “The Goddesses of the Arts,” painted by Arthur Thomas.  The Columbia was also noted as one of the first theaters to install a ventilation system designed to remove tobacco smoke from the air.  Although it wasn't airconditioned, at least you didn't leave smelling like a Chesterfield.

The Columbia's Auditorium.  The two balcony configuration was almost typical of McElfatrick's designs.

“The Goddesses of the Arts,” by Arthur Thomas.

Walter Reade bought the Columbia in 1928 and gutted it, leaving no trace of the original.   It reopened in October 1930 with a new name, the RKO Mayfair, movies only and movies with RKO as the studio of origin.

The task of redesigning the space and turn the Columbia into a movie theater was left to my favorite architect Thomas W. Lamb.  Lamb combined the two original balconies into a single balcony.  The auditorium was done in an Art Deco style. Around the same time Lamb had designed one of the five "Loew's Wonder Theaters", now known as the United Palace but once upon a time went by the name "Loew's 175th Street".  If the far east had ever underwent a period where the Baroque was blended with Art Deco, it would have looked like Loew's 175th.  What you can see in this picture, the wall treatment, is not too slightly reminiscent of Lamb had created up at Loew's 175th.

Eventually Loew's took over.  Real air conditioning was added during the redesign.  Well, the sign says the place was air conditioned, "always".  In a pre - TV era, continuous shows from 8:30AM til 2:30AM for the entertainment starved. 

The Mayfair was owned by Brandt Theaters by 1955 when Night of the Hunter had it's New York premier there.  The name Mayfair was not to last and was ultimately changed to the DeMille Theatre, after Cecil B. (well he did play God's voice).  Big world premieres of big pictures, when reserved-seat movies were popular in the early-1960’s included “Spartacus” (1960) “The Fall of the Roman Empire” (1964) and “Hawaii” (1966).

However, one of the most famous pictures ever made, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho in June of 1960. It also had one of the most famous "No one will be admitted after the start of the picture" policy.

This picture was taken by one of the nicest guys to ever put a picture on a blog, Ed Solero.  When I first photographed the Hamilton Theater on 146th Street, it was Mr. Solero who helped put the pictures on the web.  Always interesting and always helpful.  
In late-1976, the theatre became the Mark I, II and III. The triplexing was crudely done by putting a wall dividing the balcony down the center, similar to the degradation of Loew's 83rd. 
It became the Embassy 2,3,4 Theatre in December 1977 when Guild Enterprises took it over. (The Embassy 1 Theatre was on Broadway at W. 46th Street, next to the Palace Theatre).  In 1997, after the Embassy 1 was closed for conversion into the Times Square Visitor Center, this theatre was renamed Embassy 1,2,3 Theatre. The Embassy 1,2,3 Theatre was one of the last Times Square movie houses to close.

Another Ed Solero picture of the Embassy 2, 3 & 4. It was shuttered for several years and was a mega NYC souvenirs / t-shirt shop. Parts of the Mayfair's lobby ceiling was visible.  There was a Famous Dave’s BBQ Restaurant in there at one point. The theater had been gutted again  and by May 2013 every thing was out so demolition could begin.  One more piece of the mosaic lost forever.

Artisinal Brewery in the 'hood? Sort of.

With all this fuss about "Craft Beers" these days, it should be remembered that once upon a time New York City had quite a few breweries.   Remember Miss Rheingold and "my beer is Rheingold the dry beer, think of Rheingold whenever you buy beer"? Does anyone remember Colonel Jacob Ruppert, his father's contributions to New York beer as well as his own role in creating one of the most revered
baseball teams ever or Rupperts beer? How about George Ehert, a german immigrant who dug 700 feet to create a well and who most beer historians believe to be the first great American brewer?  And what about Peter Doelger whose mansion once stood on Riverside Drive at 100th Street? His brew was sold all over, including the saloon at 100th street and Broadway which is now home to the Metro Diner.  And it won first prize!

Beer was as common centuries ago as it is now in this burg, it is just that there are more choices (go into any bodega, convience store or supermarket and you see why we live in the greatest country in the world - freedom of choice) and most of it is kept refrigerated.  However once upon a time, before we had a clean, reliable drinking water system on this rock, very often beer was a safe bet in the early New Yorker's continuous game of avoiding Cholera. In fact, John Randel Jr., the surveyor who laid the grid upon the isle of Manhattan kept within his copious and precise notes a recipe for beer to be made while out in the field.  

This is a section of the 1868 map showing 3 important items. One of course is the brewery.  Two, the Aqueduct of the Croton sytem of 1842 turns at 107th and Amsterdam and heads south east and this raises yet another question. Was the Brewery getting water from the Croton system or an on-site well?  And at the top of the map is a small space labeled Burying ground at what is now 110th Street and Columbus Avenue - practically right underneath Giovanni Pizza.  Lion Brewing was a New York City - based brewery established in 1857; it closed in 1944.
Shortly after immigrating to New York, Catholic Bavarians August Schmid and Emanuel Bernheimer founded the Costanz Brewery at East 4th Street near Avenue B in 1850. The brewery produced a lagered beer, a favorite among German immigrants. By 1852, they built a second Costanz Brewery in Staten Island, home to a large German community.  Finally after five years of success, in 1857 Bernheimer and Schmid establish the Lion Brewery.

At its peak, the Lion Brewery occupied about six city square blocks, from Central Park West to Amsterdam Avenue and from 107th to 109th Street. At the time Manhattan's Upper West Side was an open area with inexpensive land, housing, a few public institutions and an insane asylum.  Although most of the population of what became Central Park had moved into what would become the Lincoln Center area (especially near what would become the 60th street yard of the New York Central's Hudson River Railroad) there were many people living on the Upper West Side in shanty's after being displaced in 1859.  Consequently, with the brewery and surrounding areas, the Upper West Side failed to increase its real estate value until the early twentieth century.

This is a 1932 picture of 127 and 129 West 108th street. These two 3 story frame houses were right across the street from brewery.  Although they were not Astor mansions, they are still nice houses. Were these structures connected to the brewery in some way?  Management housing? Once upon a time people worked and lived in the same neighborhood.  I have been told that they were the brew master's houses. 

This is the map from 1898, the brewery has grown and the houses are on the map. The building labeled "Iron Works" is still there. It is one of the three garages on the block. 

This is the 1911 map and clearly indicated are the two houses. 109th street is only slightly more developed.  The brewery had it's own delivery service.  There are two structures on the north side of 107th labeled "garage" (which are still there) as well as the old Iron Works now servings as a garage on 108th street.  The undeveloped property surrounding the two houses is now a small playground dedicated to a local kid who had served in Vietnam.

Lion brewing got caught up in a wave of mergers and closings among some of the smaller New York Brewers in the early 1940s which continued until 1941, when the business closed. The brewery (including the canning facilities) was auctioned off on August 26, 1943. The plant was demolished in 1944 and more than 3,000 tons of steel were taken from the original brewery structure and recycled for the war effort and the lot was paved over.  On Sundays, after the war, the returning WWII Veterans gathered there for a Softball League and played almost every Sunday afternoon. Home plate was located near 107th street and Columbus Avenue. Today the Booker T. Washington Middle School (we just called it "Booker T") occupies the Lion brewery's former location.

This is the Parish House of the Church of the Ascension.  It can be said that this Roman Catholic  church on 107th street is an out growth of the brewery; well it owes it's existence to the brewery at any rate. The brewery not only employed a large Catholic Bavarian population, the brewery sparked a large scale migration into the area surrounding the brewery of Catholic Barvarians in the mid - 19th century.  For many years, Sunday services were held within the walls of the brewery for lack of a real church.  Located at 221 West 107th Street the church that me and many others always referred to as just "Ascension" was established in 1895.  Constructed between 1896 and 1897 the elaborate midblock church was designed by the firm of Schickel & Ditmars.  The partners in this firm were of German descent and were awarded many projects, hired by other German - Americans. In addition to many private homes, they also produced a significant amount of work for the Catholic Church including Saint Monica's on East 79th Street, Church of St. Ignatius Loyola on Park Avenue at 83rd Street, part of St. Vincent's hospital and the "nobody steps on a church in my town" church - made famous by a colossal Stay Puff Marshmallow man in the picture Ghostbusters - the NYC Landmarked Holy Trinity Lutheran Church on 65th Street and Central Park West.

"I would rather have a square inch of New York than all the rest of the world." - Texas Guinan

The Upper West Side's "Colonial House" in Color.

Often referred to as the "Colonial White House",probably because of the columns and the colorof the house, this mansion was important enough to merit it's own postcard. Built by the dry goods wholesaler William P. Furniss, the house was on land once owned by Charles Apthorpe. Apthorpe's estate once upon a time stretched from 99th street down to 81rst street, from Riverside Drive to Central Park West.  In 1764 he sold a large chunk to Jacob Stryker.  This piece included 96th street and the cove that used to be there was called Striker's Bay (spelling's and politician very often are corrupted. 100 years earlier the land was owned by  Theunis Idens van Huyse, a Dutch tobacco farmer who once was the largest landowner on the island of Manhattan.

The Furniss estate briefly extended up to 104th street and Riverside Drive, and it did extend all the way to the edge of the Hudson River, but over the years lots were sold off or given away to his children and the construction of Riverside Drive cut off the river access.   Furniss and his wife had passed away by 1880, their daughter Margaret sold the lots south of what is now 99th street to John N. A. Griswold of Newport, Rhode Island. Then in 1899 Griswold sold the lots, which had remained undeveloped during his ownership.  This left a still ample piece of property for an already vastly different city from when the house first went up - the entire block from 99th street to 100th street from West End Avenue down to Riverside Drive.

 This is a piece of the 1867 map and the house is clearly indicated on its eventual plot / block of land.  On this map, the only indication that the estate stretched up to 104th street is a piece of property labeled "Furniss" on what is now the middle of West End Avenue at 103rd street down to the Bloomingdale Road / Broadway.

Eventually the old Furniss mansion had become an artist’s colony of sorts.  A playwright by the name of Paul Kester lived in the house during its final years and would very often hold rehearsals in the big living room.  Gertrude Stein lived in the Furniss house from February to late spring 1903.  The Furniss house finally gave way to the ever growing city, apartment house construction and the old saying "the land is worth more than the house". The Old Colonial White House" was torn down in 1904.

Riverside Drive at looking south from 109th street - nothing lasts forever in this town.

The future, and temporary Riverside Avenue, as it will be quickly renamed Riverside Drive.  The Drive was under construction while lawsuits over land ownership and eminent domain abuse were litigated.  One guess who won.  This is looking south on September 30th 1870 from 109th Street.  Obviously much has changed but there is so much that is recognizable today. None of the houses are with us but the shape of the island of greenery (the tangled mess of bushes and trees) between the service road and the main drive is starting to look familiar.   The service road does not exist on the 1867 maps and neither do these houses.  There are houses that unfortunately do not appear in this photo but do appear, along with their drive ways, on the 1867 map.  What will become the service road is merely a suggestion at this point.  The hill leading down from 106th street to the intersection of the service road and 108th street where the shortest timed traffic light on the west side is placed is already evident.  Where the wagon with the big wheel in the middle of the drive is sitting is 108th street.  In such a short period of time, massive change will happen.

This is 108th street and Riverside Drive while the Drive was in it's second incarnation.  I believe that we are in the third incarnation at this point.  It was hoped that the Drive would rival Fifth Avenue and would become a thoroughfare of suburban type villas for the wealthy.  Although the contruction of several large private homes, ranging from houses such as this one to the largest private house ever built on this rock (The Schwab Mansion of 1906 at 73rd street and Riverside Drive), single family homes gave way to apartment house construction in the first few decades of the twentieth century.

Built in 1892 for Samuel Gamble Bayne (1844- 1924 ), the son of a prosperous merchant in the town Ramelton, Ireland.  At the age of  twenty-five Sam graduated from Queen's University Belfast and decided to travel to America.  While he was here Samuel G. Bayne accumulated enough wealth to join the billionaires club.  His wealth was based on gold prospecting in California, oil in Texas and banking; he was a founder of Seaboard National Bank, which ultimately after several mergers and acquisitions became what we all know and love today - Chase Manhattan Bank (now JP Morgan Chase).  Could that be the nearly 80 year old Bayne sitting on the steps?

If his house was here still, if you crazy enough to have a car on this island and in this neighborhood, you would probably spend some time waiting for a green light in front of it.  Not an unpleasant site to sit in front of.

Once there was a valley, Clendening Valley.

I love this print. Look how happy everyone appears to be; the mother with her parasol, the father in his best top hat strolling along holding his son's hand. The girl playing with a hoop and the couple promenading north on Second Avenue at 42nd Street in 1861 have an air of contentment. But the house up on that cliff looks precarious.  As soon as Europeans showed up on Manahatta, the task of taming the island began.  As the city grew in population and the boundary inched ever northward, more and more of the original landscape disappeared into oblivion in the name of progress. Forests felled, streams filled in, swamps drained and hills leveled.  And when we imposed a grid upon the island, all of those streets, all of those right angles were cut through making the streets level.  After all, it was a horse drawn world when the grid was being cut through those hills, and would it not be easier on the beasts if they had a level path.  This scene was all too common and those streets that were cut through were very often muddy gullies, not the idyllic scene with a house that could fall over any second presented here. This is a great record of a great city undergoing yet another transformation. However some hills could not be tamed, especially if the word "valley" is attached. Manhattan Valley, where the subway was forced to come out of the ground as it dropped, only to go back into a tunnel as it rose again; and Clendening Valley which centered on Columbus Avenue approximately between 104th street all the way to 94th street with 96th street the bottom of the valley.

This is the Clendening Mansion. This print from Valentine's Manual lists the location as 90th Street and 8th Avenue. This is incorect.  John "Lord" Clendening was a wealthy New Yorker who made his fortune  importing Irish textiles after the Revolution, at the end of the 18th century.  He built this lovely mansion, complete with widow's walk and waving American flag, around 1811.  It stood at what is now the southwest corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 103rd Street, in the northern fringes of the area known as Bloomingdale.  As the grew, so did the demand for a clean reliable water source.  Early New Yorkers were incredibly dumb when it came to clean drinking water. They were very adept at polluting their water sources. Finally someone put it together and figured that all the garbage strewn ponds and wells (some wells too close to cemeteries that contained the bodies of those who had died in cholera  epidemics) were killing them.  Long story short, and it is a long story, after building the Erie Canal system nothing seemed impossible.  So supervised by Chief Engineer John B Jervis (like in Port Jervis, who had served as one of the engineers of the Canal system)  an aqueduct system was designed to bring water from reservoirs in Westchester County all the way down to City Hall Park.  Bringing water by the force of gravity alone, New York City's first aqueduct system sent water 41 miles through stone aqueducts which for the most part were underground. Except in Clendening Valley.  Because of the dip in the landscape a plan had to be hatched.

This is a plan of the plan.  The streets that had been laid out in 1811 were to be accommodated by arches in a great stone wall carrying the brick conduit which was lined with iron.

This is what they were going to look like. However the "Whig" party had gained control of the state legislature. This party was against wasting taxpayer money on arches through an aqueduct as they were firm believers in less government and lower taxes.  They won their fight to scrap the idea of arches in favor of a solid wall of Manhattan Schist running the entire length of the valley. Realizing the obvious, an unbroken wall would be a barrier to development, in the first veto ever by a New York City mayor, Democrat Isaac Varian prevented the walling up of the valley .  A compromise was reached and the wall was to passable in three places - at 98th, 99th, and 100th streets.  The wall completely blocked the paths of the future 96th, 97th, and 101st Streets.

This bucolic pasture is between the future 98th and 99th streets. Unless we are facing west then this could be between 100th and 99th streets. The Aqueduct ran between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues closer to Columbus.

There are the arches on the map from 1868.  The streets and sidewalks of 98th, 99th, and 100th streets passed beneath those arches.  The Clendening estate stretched from the north side of 99th Street to the south side of 105th Street and from Central Park West to the Bloomingdale Road. The estate was lost in 1845 and the farm disappeared within 20 years.   By the 1870s, development demanded more water;  the above ground aqueduct section was buried underground into a pipe siphon and the solid wall blocking 96th, 97th, and 101st Streets–along with the arched 98th, 99th and 100th streets - was torn down.

Again, the map from 1868.  The name John Clendening appears on the map although Clendening had lost the land years earlier. The diagonal line from where the aqueduct crosses west 105th street south west to just south of 103rd street and then west was called Clendening lane. The lane ran over to the plot of land that was the site of the old Downes Boulevard Hotel on 103rd street and the Boulevard (now Broadway). There are remnants of the intersection of the lane and the aqueduct on the south side of 105th street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues just east of P.S. 145.  Best to observe it using bing or google maps.

This is looking northeast from just south of 101rst street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues.  The 104th Street 9th Avenue El station is in the distance and the remains of the aqueduct through Clendening Valley are in the left foreground.  This is quite possibly the remains of the arch-way at 101rst street. The original Croton Aqueduct, one of the most important pieces of what made New York City, opened June 22, 1842, taking 22 hours for gravity to move the water the 41 miles to  Manhattan. Almost immediately it was woefully inadequate. Construction on a new aqueduct began in 1885. The new aqueduct, buried much deeper than the old one, went into service in 1890, with three times the capacity of the Old Croton Aqueduct. 

 
Clendening lived on his rural estate for many years, but in 1836 he lost most of his money when President Andrew Jackson refused to renew the charter of the United States Bank, in which Clendening was a major stockholder. The estate was sold in 1845 as forty lots for a total of $4500. Although the mansion was torn down the area was known as Clendening Valley well into the post civil war 19th century New York.  On the site where Lord Clendening's house one stood, the Clendening Hotel rose in its place on the west side of Amsterdam Avenue at 103rd street.  The Hotel survived until 1965 when it was torn down for furthest west building of the Douglas Houses complex.