A short history of Murray Hill & Kips Bay

Lenapehoking — this is, and has always been, Lenape land

Long before any grid, any avenue, any "Murray Hill," this stretch of Manhattan was part of Lenapehoking, the homeland of the Munsee Lenape. Manhattan itself — *Manahatta*, "the hilly island" — was shaped by Lenape fishing camps, planting fields, and footpaths. The shoreline came almost up to where Second Avenue runs today, and the trail that became Broadway was a Lenape path long before it was a street.

The Lenape were forcibly displaced through 17th-century Dutch and English colonization, disease, and treaty fraud — but they were not erased. Lenape nations today include the Stockbridge-Munsee Community (Wisconsin), the Delaware Tribe of Indians and Delaware Nation (Oklahoma), and Munsee communities in Ontario. The [Lenape Center](https://thelenapecenter.com) continues Lenape arts, language, and seed-keeping work *in* Manahatta. The [National Museum of the American Indian](https://americanindian.si.edu/visit/newyork) at Bowling Green is a short ferry/bus ride south. A land acknowledgment is a starting point, not a substitute — support Lenape-led work directly.

What came after: the colonial farms

Dutch colonists arrived in the 17th century and parceled Lenape land into farms. Jacobus Hendrickson Kip built a stone farmhouse here in 1655 on what became known as Kips Bay — a real bay that cut into Manhattan around present-day 32nd–37th Streets and 1st Avenue, later landfilled. When you walk east on 34th today, you are walking over water that was taken from Lenape fishing grounds.

Robert Murray's farm

In the 1760s the Quaker merchant Robert Murray bought a farm here and called his home "Inclenberg," perched on the hill the neighborhood is still named after.

September 15, 1776 — the Battle of Kip’s Bay

Also called the Landing at Kip’s Bay, this Revolutionary War battle took place along the East River shore near today’s East 32nd–38th Streets — close to the neighborhood we call home. After a naval bombardment, British and Hessian troops crossed from Long Island and landed on Manhattan. The Connecticut militia defending the shoreline broke and retreated; George Washington was unable to rally them. American forces withdrew north, and the British took control of lower Manhattan. British occupation of New York City lasted until November 25, 1783.

The following day’s Battle of Harlem Heights was a separate engagement farther uptown, not another name for Kip’s Bay. The Mount Vernon Digital Encyclopedia’s account of the Battle of Kip’s Bay and New York State’s Landing at Kip’s Bay history explain the landing and retreat.

Mary Murray — history and neighborhood legend

Local tradition credits Mary Lindley Murray with entertaining British officers at Inclenberg and delaying their advance while American troops escaped north. Her hospitality is recorded, but the claim that tea and cakes saved the army is disputed; it should not be treated as an established cause of the retreat’s success. Read the Murray Hill myth account alongside the battle history.

These Revolutionary War stories are one layer of the neighborhood’s past, not its beginning: the shoreline was part of Lenapehoking long before colonial armies fought over it.

Brownstones, hospitals, and the tunnel

By the late 19th century, the neighborhood filled in with the brick and brownstone rowhouses that still define its side streets. Bellevue Hospital — the oldest public hospital in the country, founded 1736 — anchored the southern edge. NYU Langone grew north of it. The Queens-Midtown Tunnel opened in 1940, threading under the East River and giving the neighborhood the constant hum of through-traffic it still has.

Why it matters

Every time you cross 1st Avenue or hear a siren outside Bellevue, you are standing in a layer cake — Lenape first, then colonial, Revolutionary, Gilded Age, industrial, modern. The neighborhood looks quiet because it is residential. It is not.