New Kingsbridge banners spotlight neighborhood’s role in American Revolution

Dozens of new banners in Kingsbridge are spotlighting the neighborhood’s role in the American Revolution, turning light poles into miniature history exhibits for passersby.

The Kingsbridge Business Improvement District and Kingsbridge Historical Society installed 62 banners featuring 14 designs throughout the commercial district, replacing the BID’s familiar navy blue promotional banners. The project coincides with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and marks the first collaboration between the two organizations.

For Peter Blier, a longtime Kingsbridge BID board member who helped spearhead the project, the banners offered a chance to connect the organization’s mission of improving the shopping district with the Revolutionary history that distinguishes Kingsbridge.

“I personally view it as an outdoor art and history exhibit,” Blier said. “It was a way of bringing the past to the present and having them occupy the same space at the same time.”

The BID has hung banners throughout Kingsbridge for at least 15 years, Blier said, typically encouraging people to shop, dine and spend time in the neighborhood. But when the existing banners began deteriorating, Kingsbridge BID Executive Director Katherine Broihier saw an opportunity to do something different.

Rather than simply replacing them, she proposed recognizing the nation’s 250th anniversary, before Blier suggested bringing in the Kingsbridge Historical Society.

“I just see too many young people and high school students, and they barely know what’s going on anywhere, much less here,” Broihier said. “We want people in the community to know that Kingsbridge was really important 250 years ago.”

Nick Dembowski, president of the historical society, helped select the stories and imagery and designed the banners around the BID’s existing deep-blue color scheme. He said the project offered an unusual way to reach residents who might never attend a historical lecture, walking tour or exhibit.

“Being able to reach people just on the street … just seemed like a very direct way to get a message across to people no matter where they’re from or how they get their information,” Dembowski said.

That meant keeping each history lesson brief enough to absorb while walking to a bus or heading into a store.

“You can’t give them a Ph.D. thesis,” Dembowski said. “So it was trying to think of what kinds of information could be quickly conveyed, but also be interesting at the same time.”

The banners feature just a sentence or two, paired with historical photographs, archival material and illustrations, to introduce people, places and events connected to Kingsbridge.

Among the featured local figures is Margaret Corbin, who took her husband’s place at a cannon after he was killed during fighting at Fort Washington and later became the first woman to receive a military pension from the United States for her service.

Another depicts a member of the Stockbridge Militia, Indigenous troops who fought for the Patriots in Kingsbridge in 1778. Others feature Robert Brown, a formerly enslaved multiracial man who lived in Riverdale and served in the militia, and a German soldier who fought for the British and recorded his experiences in Kingsbridge.

The collection also reaches further back, highlighting the crossing that gave the neighborhood its name. Built by Frederick Philipse in 1693 over Spuyten Duyvil Creek, the King’s Bridge became the first bridge linking Manhattan to the mainland.

Beside the historic reference is a 1776 observation from George Washington describing the area as “a pass of the utmost importance.” The King’s Bridge gave the neighborhood strategic significance during the Revolution. With British forces dominating the waterways surrounding Manhattan, Blier said, it provided an essential land route north as Washington’s forces retreated and regrouped.

Broihier said the project cost roughly $15,000, paid from BID savings. Printing the large, double-sided banners and installing them by cherry picker accounted for much of the expense. The banners are expected to remain up for four to five years.

Already, Broihier said, people have been stopping to look. At a small event outside the BID office at 3109 Kingsbridge Ave. on Aug. 19, she said, pedestrians gathered around banners displayed at eye level and began sharing their own stories about the neighborhood.

Dembowski hopes that curiosity extends to people who may know little about the streets they travel every day.

“It’s one thing to have a lecture or walking tour or whatever, but there’s only certain people that are paying attention to our emails and our website,” he said. “Hopefully, like a kid, a merchant, someone just passing through sees one of these banners, and it just piques their interest. Sometimes that’s all it takes.”