Coogan's Bluff

Coogan's Bluff is a promontory near the western shore of the Harlem River in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan in New York City. Its boundaries extend approximately from 155th Street to 160th Street, and from Edgecombe Avenue to the river. A deep escarpment descends 175 feet from Edgecombe Avenue to the river, creating a sheltered area between the bluff and river known as Coogan's Hollow. For 83 years, the hollow was home to the legendary Polo Grounds sports stadium.

The promontory is named for James J. Coogan (1845–1915), a real estate developer and one-term Manhattan Borough President, who owned the land during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The earliest known published reference to "Coogan's Bluff" appeared in The New York Times in 1893.

From 1880 until 1963, the bluff overlooked the Polo Grounds, a professional sports venue that served as home field for Major League Baseball's New York Giants from 1891 until the franchise's move to San Francisco at the end of the 1957 season. Sportwriters commonly used Coogan's Bluff as a sobriquet for the Polo Grounds—as Chavez Ravine now refers to Dodger Stadium and China Basin to AT&T Park— although the ballpark was actually situated in Coogan's Hollow, the bottomland between the bluff and the river.

The Bushman Steps, located just west of Coogan's Bluff in Sugar Hill/Hamilton Heights, led from the 155th Street subway station to the Polo Grounds ticket booths; the John T. Brush Stairway, on West 157th Street between St Nicholas Avenue and Edgecombe Avenue, then carried fans the rest of the way down to the stadium. The two stairways are the only intact structures that remain from the Polo Grounds era. The Brush Stairway was named in honor of the owner of the Giants franchise from 1890 until his death in 1912. The identity of the Bushman Steps' namesake has apparently been lost.

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