The Historic Harlem Fire Watchtower
Built in the mid-1850s, the Mount Morris Fire Watchtower in Harlem is the last of a network of such structures that were erected throughout Manhattan during the 18th and 19th centuries. Despite being decommissioned in the 1870s, the picturesque location of the Watchtower at the top of a rocky outcrop in Mount Morris Park (known today at Marcus Garvey Park) helped cement the structure as a prominent neighborhood fixture and social space. The Mount Morris Fire Watchtower was designated a New York City Landmark in 1967 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
The cast-iron tower's more recent history is a bit more turbulent. Due to extensive decay, exterior metal bracing was added to the Watchtower to stabilize its deteriorating structure in 1994. By the early 2010s, the bracing system was no longer enough to prevent the tower's collapse. Faced with the prospect of its loss, an ongoing campaign to save, stabilize, and restore the Fire Watchtower galvanized the Harlem community.
We were first introduced to the Mount Morris Fire Watchtower by Angel Ayon, a dedicated preservation architect who took on the cause of preserving the Watchtower about twenty years ago. In 2012, we photographed the existing conditions to help Angel and the community groups he was working with draw attention to the dire state of the structure. We were thrilled to have the opportunity to return to photograph the newly restored structure and its redesigned setting in late 2019.
Congratulations to all involved on a spectacular project!
Photographed Summer 2012 and Fall 2019.
The Watchtower's condition in 2012,
two years before the tower was dismantled for repair.
The Watchtower, restored November 2019.
Visitng the Watchtower in 2012.
I love the built environment. My photographic practice is anchored by my fascination with design, urbanity and the tactile experience of our surroundings. I believe that our built environment is in tension between intentionality and circumstance, the whole made more powerful by the nature of its duality. My passion is creating photographic representations at the intersection of design, implementation, and context.
I believe in telling stories. Great photography creates narrative strings that enhance our understanding of the built environment. I use my experience to highlight, finesse, contextualize the ideas embedded in each project. My goal is to explore implementations of great design, distilling and connecting photographic vignettes that offer insight into the ideas that shape our world.
I began my career as an architectural designer and refined my focus to the representation of architecture. My interest is in built work - the physical manifestation of design. Through scouting, planning, photographing and all the steps that come after, I refine the representation of each project to best reflect the goals of my clients.
I hold a Bachelor of the Arts in Architecture from Columbia University and a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from the School of Visual Arts. I am based in Manhattan and available for assignments worldwide.
You can reach me at info@alexanderseverin.com