Inwood Library Demolished, Making Room For 14-Story Building

INWOOD, NY — Four years after the city announced the Inwood Library would be demolished, the building and neighborhood gathering spot came crashing down on Monday behind the push of bulldozers and construction workers.

A 14-story building will replace the rubble and dust at 4790 Broadway with 175 apartments and a new three-level library branch on the bottom floors.

All 175 apartments in the new development — named "The Eliza" after Eliza Hamilton (Alexander Hamilton's wife) — will be offered with rents below the market rate.

The units will be eligible for individuals earning between $20,040 and $40,080 per year and families earning between $25,770 and $51,540 per year, city officials said. Twenty percent of the units will be reserved for families of up to three earning less than $26,000 per year, and an additional number of apartments will be reserved for formerly homeless residents, city officials said.

The new 14-story building will be much bigger than the two-story property that previously housed the Inwood Library. The soon arriving space will also be the largest building in the surrounding area.

The library's redevelopment is part of the city's estimated $500 million Inwood rezoning plan that it says will bring 2,600 new affordable housing units to the neighborhood.

A group of Inwood residents called Save Inwood Library have been outspoken critics of the city's plan since it was first announced in January of 2017. The group's members have warned against turning over the library's land to private developers and criticized the city's selection of the Inwood Library for redevelopment.

The city handed over the Inwood library branch on Broadway between Dyckman and Academy streets in 2018 to a development team composed of the Community League of the Heights (CLOTH), Ranger Properties, Alembic, and the Children's Village, the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development announced at the time.

There is not an announced date for when the new building and library will be completed, but in the meantime, a temporary Inwood Library location has been open since February at 4857 Broadway. The address is just one block away from the original library site.

The temporary library will remain open until the new one is finished.

Reactions To The Demolition

The demolition of the Inwood Library dominated Upper Manhattan Facebook groups on Monday afternoon and Monday morning. Even with the knowledge that a new library would be rebuilt at the address, emotions ran high at the sight of such an important community-building crumbled to the ground.

"What a loss for the neighborhood. A public library is so much more than shelves with books," one community member wrote on Facebook. "So sad to see it destroyed."

"I have fond memories of the Inwood Library. My mom used to take me there after school at P.S. 98 and I could choose four books to borrow," a different community member wrote in a Facebook group. "I moved away when I was in fourth grade, but this library always held a special place in my heart."

The most common reactions centered around words such as "sad," "depressing," and "why?"

Read More:

• Inwood Library Temporary Site Chosen
• Inwood Library Temporary Site Set To Open: What To Know