YET another neighborhood I haven’t been in lately, but with the magic of Google Street View, I can visit anyway. Spuyten Duyvil is the very hilly corner of the Bronx north of the Harlem River and the north end of Manhattan Island. I seem to average a visit every six years or so, thus I am overdue. Spuyten Duyvil has been known as Speight den Duyvil, Spike & Devil, Spitting Devil, Spilling Devil, Spiten Debill and Spouting Devil, among other spellings. In Dutch, “spuyten duyvil,” the mostly-accepted spelling these days, can be pronounced two ways; one pronunciation means “devil’s whirlpool” and the other means “spite the devil.” The creek separating northern Manhattan from the mainland was eliminated in 1916 when the Harlem River was punched through by engineers to make the waterway navigable for heavy shipping. In Washington Irving’s Knickerbocker History, a Dutch bugler vows to swim the turbulent waters of (then) Spuyten Duyvil Creek where it meets the Hudson during the British attack on New Amsterdam in the 1660s “en spijt den Duyvil,” or in “spite of the devil.”
Bradley Terrace is unloved by the Department of Transportation. Though officially mapped, it is just a set of unmarked steps, located between Palisade and Independence Avenues and Edsall Avenue, a street that is its own beginning and end. Other than other streets around town called “Circle,” Edsall begins and ends at Palisade Avenue. One of the most inaccessible transit stations in the city, Metro North Spuyten Duyvil, has its exit on Edsall and it’s a steep climb up a hill to the rtest of the neighborhood. Or, you can take the Bradley Terrace steps.
In History in Asphalt, the late Bronx Historian John McNamara is stumped as to which Bradley the steps are named for, but does say they were named (if not built) in 1927. Currently the steps are illiminated by cutoff octagonal poles with post top lights usually found in NYC parks.
And that’s -30- for yet another year in Forgotten NY.
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12/31/25