Mendelssohn on the Hudson Inwood Art Works

181st & Fort Washington Ave, Northeast Corner near Fort Washington Collegiate ChurchWhat would you do if your country forced you out, to leave behind everything you loved? Where would you go?"Mendelssohn on the Hudson" is a historical musical walking tour about the refugees from Nazi Germany, who fled fascism, persecution, and violence in Europe to create new lives in Washington Heights - and transformed a neighborhood.Our tour takes you on a journey through the past by walking through the present. You can go at your own pace. You'll hear more about composer, artist, and conductor Felix Mendelssohn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Mendelssohn), as well as ten true stories set to his music, taken from oral histories of local residents who lived in "Frankfurt on the Hudson." Plus, you’ll discover other local history, geography, and architecture unique to Northern Manhattan.

183rd St. and Fort Washington Ave, Southwest CornerNotice the pre-war Art Deco (http://www.artdeco.org/) design of this six-story apartment building at 495 Fort Washington Ave. Throughout the 1930s and corresponding with the arrival of the German Jewish refugees, prominent architects designed buildings like this one to accommodate the area’s growing population.In 1933, the first year of their anti-Jewish decrees (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/antisemitic-legislation-1933-1939), the Nazis banned Mendelssohn’s music and that of all Jewish-born German composers, toppled Mendelssohn’s statues and destroyed all his other legacies to erase any traces of his existence.Here, in their adopted country, the German Jews kept Mendelssohn alive. His short piano solos, Songs without Words, or Lieder ohne Worte, were wildly popular; copies of this sheet music were ubiquitous on American German Jewish pianos.Mendelssohn was present in this building when Eddie, a telephone repairman, realized that Rose, an indigent German Jewish woman, couldn’t pay for her phone repair.

Western entrance to Bennett Park, east of Pinehurst Avenue between 183rd and 185th StreetWe are at Bennett Park (https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/bennett-park/), which was the site of Fort Washington during the Revolutionary War. A plaque on that large rock outcropping also marks the highest point in Manhattan. If you look west on Pinehurst Avenue, you’ll see Hudson View Gardens (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_View_Gardens). Completed in 1925, this lovely Tudor-style complex is on the National Register of Historic Places. For decades, Jews and other minority groups were discouraged from buying homes here.On November 9, 1938, in Germany, antisemitism reached a new height on what would become known as Kristallnacht (https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/kristallnacht), or the “Night of Broken Glass” - as the Gestapo smashed German Jewish-owned store windows, burned centuries-old synagogues, and arrested Jewish men.One afternoon, while sitting here in Bennett Park, a neighbor shared her memories of that world-shattering night.

East side of Bennett Park near the steps to Fort Washington Avenue at 184th StreetWe see the Art Deco A-train subway entrance designed by Squire J. Vickers (https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/03/arts/design/03subw.html) across the street. Our Austrian neighbor Rivke, whose story this episode follows, lived on Bennett Avenue near this subway entrance’s lower level.It is also within this episode that the neighborhood’s German Jewish and Dominican immigrant stories intersect. After Kristallnacht, most Jews in Nazi-occupied countries tried to leave for any place that would take them, any way they could. The Dominican Republic, under President-Dictator Rafael Trujillo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Trujillo), was the only country that initially proposed to allow an unlimited number of Jews to emigrate there. The son of Trujillo made a promise to Rivke’s husband that will surprise you.

Northwest corner of 185th St. at 551 Fort Washington AvenueWe are outside the current home of the Hebrew Tabernacle of Washington Heights (https://hebrewtabernacle.org/) congregation. It owns a copy of the Gedenkbuch (https://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/source_view.php?SourceId=30920), the Book of Remembrance, which memorializes the 150,000 Jews lost within German borders between 1933 and 1945. For the religious, synagogues remained an important part of their lives here.Lillian, a member of this congregation, tells a story illustrating the close calls that made the difference between emigrating and not being able to leave Europe at all.

187th Street stairs, just off Fort Washington AvenueWe’re standing near the 187th Street stairs, one of New York’s 102 step streets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Step_street) maintained by the Department of Transportation. Down these steps, west of Broadway, the population was, and still is, largely Orthodox, with several Orthodox synagogues in the area.The bank next door was the original home of Gideon’s bakery, which became kosher under new ownership by the early 1940s. The supermarket next door used to be a Daitch Shopwell, owned by the Ratners, who were German Jews.Richie, who grew up across the street from here at 567 Fort Washington, also worked as a soda jerk at Goody’s at #811 on 187th St. in the late 1940’s through the early 1950’s. His first and only love was Wendie June, a Jewish girl who lived up the block. He, like many other neighborhood kids, often hung out at the stairs with his friends and had great stories to tell.