A Quixotic Journey to Audubon Terrace

Nestled between 155th and 156th streets on Broadway in Washington Heights, the stately museum complex at Audubon Terrace just doesn’t seem to fit with its surroundings. Amid the rows of Dominican storefronts and tenement blocks, the museums’ Beaux Arts facades present a sudden and puzzling contrast.

In a city chock-full of cultural destinations, it is easy to miss many of New York’s smaller and less frequented sites. And though the Cloisters or the Museum of Modern Art may still linger tantalizingly on your to-do list, the little-known museum complex of Audubon Terrace offers an experience that, while perhaps less picturesque, is by far more quirky and unexpected.

From the 1 train kiosk at 157th Street, Audubon Terrace lies just to the south, beside the leaf-laden Trinity Cemetery and a stone-paved ramp leading west toward Riverside Drive. The site was once the dominion of naturalist John James Audubon, for whom the complex is named. Far beyond the bustle of the city, his home stood on land that, at turn of the century, was a peaceful, bucolic retreat. Though development has spread far past this part of town, the site retains a sense of respite and distance.

Erected under the patronage of Archer M. Huntington at the beginning of the 20th century, Audubon Terrace originally housed a distinguished assembly of museums and academies. These included the Hispanic Society of America, the Museum of the American Indian, the American Numismatic Society (coins and metals), the American Geographical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Unfortunately, for all those who jumped at the prospect of seeing one of America’s great coin collections, only the Hispanic Society remains consistently open to the public. The Geographical and Numismatic societies are long gone, while the Museum of the American Indian, citing a dearth of visitors in a location that was, until recently, rather dodgy, relocated downtown in 1980.

Through the main gates off Broadway, the terrace is bound by the former buildings of the Geographical Society (today’s Boricua College) and the Museum of the American Indian. While they themselves possess a rather traditional Beaux Arts design, each has bronze doorway panels that are something to behold. The Museum of the American Indian in particular—its doorframe crowned by a stone engraving of a buffalo—presents a visual overload of romanticized Native American imagery.

Up the steps and through the iron gates, a brick-paved expanse of sculpture and classical edifices rewards the bold adventurer. The crown jewel of the complex, resting in front of the Hispanic Society’s north building, is undoubtedly the massive equestrian statue of 11th-century Spanish knight (and Moor dominator) El Cid. Surrounded by what appear to be two hulking, half-naked warriors, three deer, and a cannon, El Cid raises his Castilian spear flag in defiance of his Muslim adversaries, and furrows his brow to show he’s not kidding around. In stone relief on the building behind him rests Don Quixote, looking in anguish to the sky atop Rocinante, and Boabdil, the last Moorish king of Granada. Bears, boars, lions, and vultures abound.

Inside the main Hispanic Society building, a hodgepodge of Spanish artifacts from prehistoric times through the 18th century lines a two-story gallery space. While the collection may not compete with those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Cloisters, the triptychs, sarcophagi, and earthenware scattered throughout the Society’s baroque interior have a definite charm. Indeed, what it is immediately apparent about the place, aside from its total emptiness, is that despite Spanish being a lingua franca in Washington Heights, the society retains a far greater connection with—and patronage from—Spain. Some of the museum’s other highlights include a couple of works by El Greco and Goya, as well as a recently opened exhibit of 20th-century Spanish paintings in the north gallery (behind El Cid).

Beyond the Hispanic Society buildings, the smallish enclave of the Academy of Arts and Letters and the former American Numismatic society leads west to the end of the complex, where a wall of gray tenements truncates the site. The end comes rather suddenly, and without much warning, as if the site’s procession of buildings had originally wanted to extend to the river, but was caught off-guard by a pair of tenement bullies.

In 2005, the Hispanic Society, the last bastion of Audubon Terrace, expressed its intention to depart for a location further downtown in the near future. With the society’s humble galleries hollowed and empty, El Cid, Don Quixote, and Boabdil will certainly strike passersby as a rather strange and unexpected sight. I would like to go back then, to Audubon Terrace, and imagine what might have been had the city’s center continued to move uptown, and Washington Heights rested amid towering glass skyscrapers. What would we think of this place then? Would postcards bear the stern expression of El Cid, or would the city have destroyed and forgotten all this in speculative rampage long ago? Either way, I find it appropriate to conclude with an excerpt from the inscription below the sculpture of El Cid:

From shadowed hours they gazed upon the sun,
The burning fields of visions dared to tread,
And laurelled courage hath achieved its lot.
O Masters, needs we serve ye one by one;
As moving torches are the flaming dead
To light the path for souls that are forgot.

Take the 1 train to 157th Street to get to Audubon Terrace. The hours for the Hispanic Society are as follows: Tuesday-Saturday: 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Sunday: 1-4 p.m.