Love Travelling Blog

Morningside Heights

Our day began with a subway journey to Morningside Heights, a district located between Upper West Side and Harlem. It’s the home of Columbia University which was founded in 1754 and an affluent neighbourhood with some architectural gems.

Columbia University

We explored the beautiful university campus with its grand old buildings standing proud overlooking manicured lawns. The campus is designed in the Beaux-Arts style and occupies six blocks of the district. Columbia is a private, Ivy League research university being the oldest higher education institution in New York and the fifth oldest in the United States. Its alumni include seven of the founding fathers of The U.S. and four of its presidents.

College Walk is home to several of its most notable buildings including that of Hamilton Hall which was constructed in neo-classical style and named after Alexander Hamilton who attended King’s College (Columbia’s original name). The hall is currently the location of the College’s administrative office. Our attention was also drawn to three further buildings, the first being Low Memorial Library, constructed between 1895-1897 as the university’s central library. Functioning as a library until 1934 when a much larger building was required, it is now also utilised as administrative offices.

Taking its place as the main university library was the much larger Butler Library, known originally as South Hall then renamed the Butler Library in 1946 in honour of Nicholas Butler, the president of Columbia between 1902 and 1945. The library is one of the largest buildings on campus having a classical facade featuring a row of columns. We also admired Earl Hall which is home to Columbia’s religious and community service activities.

Riverside Church

Located close to the university and overlooking the Hudson River stands the tallest church building in the entire United States. Designed in 13th century Gothic architectural style influenced from churches in Spain and France, construction began in 1927 with the church being 100 ft wide with a 20 storey tower. Even more interesting, on top of the tower lays a 20 ton bell which is reputed to be the largest turned bell worldwide. The interior is said to be magnificent too, but was closed to visitors on the day of our visit.

General Grant National Memorial

The General Grant National Memorial is a domed mausoleum serving as the final resting place of Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th President Of The United States, and his wife Julia. The memorial is maintained by the National Parks Service and is free to visit, located in a beautiful riverside setting close to Columbia University.

Grant’s tomb is listed on the National Register of Historic Places with its facade and interior designated New York landmarks. The mausoleum’s base is shaped like a rectangle with colonnades on three sides with a portico facing south. The elaborate interior contains a crypt in the rotunda.

Adjacent to the Memorial visitors can explore the visitor centre where we viewed a 10 minute film documenting General Grant’s achievements. He ended the bloodiest conflict in American history as Commanding General of the Union Army and then, as President of the United States strove to heal a nation after a civil war and make rights for all citizens a reality.

St. Patrick’s Day Parade

Leaving there, we hopped back on the subway to Central Park then strolled along to Grand Army Plaza so that we could watch some of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade which was taking place. As the parade had already started, large crowds were gathered along its route but after standing behind a group of people for around 10 minutes, they moved away enabling us to enjoy an uninterrupted view of the procession.

The parade is held annually on 17th March but as in 2024 this fell on a Sunday, the parade took place a day earlier. It’s thought to be the world’s largest St. Patrick’s Day parade with a constant stream of American Irish bands, dancers, performers and other groups celebrating their strong Irish heritage. The parade goes up Fifth Avenue beginning at East 44th Street and ending at 79th Street between 11.00 a.m. and 4.30 p.m.

Huge crowds, estimated at around 2 million had travelled from far and wide to join in the festivities. Waving Irish flags, wearing green attire and sporting shamrock style hats, Irish or not, everyone seemed to be joining in the celebrations listening to the likes of ‘Danny Boy’ and ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling’.

We watched the parade for almost two hours and felt so lucky that even though we don’t have any connections to Ireland, we had by chance managed to time our holiday to coincide with it.

Before heading back to the airport the following afternoon we had an opportunity to watch part of the New York Half Marathon which conveniently was passing close to our hotel. Standing amid the bright lights of Times Square which appeared so different with its absence of traffic we watched some of the competitors whizz past on their 13.1 mile tour of the city, heading to the finish line in Central Park.

After enjoying a final lunch at Shake Shack, we popped back to the hotel to collect our luggage before returning to JFK airport for our British Airways flight home to Manchester. What a week we’d had, I can’t admit to seeing all that New York City had to offer but we certainly enjoyed a big slice of the Big Apple!

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Our stay was supported by NYC Tourism and CityPASS and as always all views and opinions are entirely my own.