{"id":287975,"date":"2026-07-06T12:58:05","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T12:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/287975\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T12:58:05","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T12:58:05","slug":"surrounded-by-concrete-and-apartment-houses-the-last-farm-in-manhattan-was-a-citywide-curiosity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/287975\/","title":{"rendered":"Surrounded by concrete and apartment houses, the last farm in Manhattan was a citywide curiosity"},"content":{"rendered":"

In colonial times, almost all of Manhattan was farmland. These farms\u2014with hundreds of acres of vegetables, fruit orchards, and livestock, anchored by a clapboard farmhouse\u2014were slowly given over to the development of the asphalt city.<\/p>\n

\"Historical<\/a><\/p>\n

One unusual farm is considered the last holdout. The Benedetto Farm (sometimes spelled Benedeto), founded by an Italian immigrant family in Inwood, gets that honor, with the last tilling of the soil around 1940.<\/p>\n

But the story of the Benedetto Farm doesn\u2019t follow the narrative of a longtime farm family selling their land and developing it themselves, or getting squeezed out by rapacious speculators amid the northward march of urbanization.<\/p>\n

For starters, the Benedetto Farm only began operating in 1924. Vincenzo Benedetto apparently wasn\u2019t making enough money from his job delivering ice to apartment buildings from a horse-drawn wagon. <\/p>\n

\"Historic<\/a><\/p>\n

So Vincenzo and his wife, Mary, with help from their nine children, became farmers. For $30 a month they rented a two-acre parcel between Broadway, Tenth Avenue, 213th, and 214th Street, states Fran Leadon<\/a>, author of Broadway: A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey grew tomatoes, corn, string beans, carrots, beets, broccoli, radishes, and lettuce; peaches, cherries, pears, pumpkins, and squash; and raised chickens that laid both brown and white eggs priced at fifteen cents a dozen,\u201d wrote Leadon.<\/p>\n

The crops and eggs were sold at a farmstand, recalled the youngest Benedetto daughter in a 1987 oral history referenced in a 2009 post on myinwood.net<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a very big farm\u2014only a city block,\u201d stated Josephene Benedetto. \u201cFor me it was just a place to live. We moved there in 1924, when I was three. My father was an ice man until the Frigidaires came in and that went kaput.\u201d<\/p>\n

The family lived in a two-story brick house beneath the IRT elevated. \u201cOur house didn\u2019t have electricity or gas or anything,\u201d said Josephene. \u201cWe had to bring everything in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keep in mind that by the 1920s, much of Inwood had been transformed into concrete blocks of modern apartment houses and commercial spaces. <\/p>\n

That made the Benedetto Farm something of an anomaly, a curiosity often featured in newspapers and magazines\u2014which angered Vincenzo.<\/p>\n

\"Newspaper<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cVincenzo di Benedetto, who enjoys a fame of sorts because he is the only farmer left in Manhattan, has his troubles,\u201d reported one newspaper<\/a>. \u201cOne is publicity. Contrary to the average run of Manhattanites, he doesn\u2019t care for that. Nevertheless, reporters are always coming around and wasting his time by asking him questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Annoying reporters were one thing. The Depression, however, put a major dent in profits. In 1930, Mary told Time<\/a> that \u201cthings have not been very good for the farmer this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rumors started that the owner of the property was planning to sell. Reporters came around asking questions about the farm\u2019s demise. \u201cI don\u2019t know anything about it,\u201d Vincenzo barked to the New York Times in 1936. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe newspapers always publish a lot of lies about me. Now we\u2019re going to bed. You better get out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Aerial<\/a><\/p>\n

By 1940, \u201cVincenzo and Mary had sublet part of their farm to a used car lot and converted another section into a parking lot, leaving only one-third of the block for farming,\u201d wrote Leadon. \u201cThat year, the farm sold only about $50 worth of produce.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1943, Vincenzo died at age 58. The land was sold in 1954, stated Leadon. In place of the corn and pumpkins and chickens rose a New York Telephone Company building that still exists today\u2014repurposed for a variety of smaller businesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet the last farm in Manhattan vanish under steel and brick,\u201d eulogized the Brooklyn Eagle<\/a>. \u201cThis is the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Top photo: Office of Work-Life at Columbia University<\/a>; second and third photos: NYPL Digital Collections<\/a>; fourth image: New York Times headline, 1936; fifth image, MCNY, X2010.12.145<\/a>] <\/p>\n

Tags: Benedetto Farm Inwood Broadway<\/a>, Last farm in Manhattan<\/a>, Last farm Inwood Benedetto farm<\/a>, Last working farm in New York City<\/a>, Manhattan’s Last Farm<\/a>, Upper Manhattan in the 1920s<\/a>, Vegetable Farm Upper Manhattan 1930s<\/a>, Vincenzo Benedetto Last Farmer Manhattan<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

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