Spuyten Duyvil

The precise meaning of “Spuyten Duyvil” is a little murky, though if, as some suggest, it means “spouting devil” or “spitting devil” it would make sense as a name for a place where one body of water empties into another. In the southwesternmost Bronx, Spuyten Duyvil looks out over the confluence of the Harlem River and the mighty Hudson, and up and across the Hudson to a majestic prospect of the Palisades on the other side of the river. Few bits of the 315 miles of the Hudson River are better than this. And it’s no surprise that developers have populated the riverfront with high-rise apartments that take maximum advantage of the finest views in New York. But Spuyten Duyvil is more than just modern high-rise apartment buildings (though there certainly are a lot of those). There is an older Spuyten Duyvil, a lovely bucolic village that we’ll try to conjure on this walk.