Wednesday was a cold but bright and blessedly windless day. Two work friends and I decided to explore Fort Tryon Park. I went armed with my camera and wasn't disappointed.
Fort Tryon Park is 67 acres situated on the ridge of Upper Manhattan. The main entrance to the park is Margaret Corbin Circle. Margaret Corbin was the first American woman to fight in a war. She was wounded during the American Revolutionary War Battle of Fort Washington.
On November 16, 1776, 2000 American soldiers skirmished with 8000 invading Hessian troops that had been hired by Great Britain. The British side with Hessian troops won that battle. The outpost was named after Sir William Tryon, the last British governor of the Province of New York. Fort Washington is only less than a mile away to the south at Bennet Park.
In the years before WWI the park's name was also used for the neighborhood to the south as far as West 179th St. In the 1940s the area was nicknamed "Frankfurt-on-the-Hudson." In the 1990s it was known as Hudson Heights.
Between 1970 and 1980, due to hard economic times, the park "fell into disuse and disrepair". In the 1980s funds became available for serious restoration.
As New York City expanded after the Revolutionary War period, this area was part of a country estate. The owners of this estate have included Dr. Samuel Watkins, General Daniel Butterfield, Boss Tweed and C.K.G. Billings. In 1917 John D. Rockefeller purchased the estate from Billings.
Rockefeller hired the Olmstead Brothers firm to build a park he was intending to donate to the City. Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr., a member of the firm, was the son of the designer of Central Park. Olmstead strove to give sweeping vistas of the Hudson River. The park has gardens, extensive walking paths, meadows, exquisite views of the Hudson and Harlem Rivers and is the location of the Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It has an extensive collection of medieval European art and houses the famous Unicorn tapestries.
The buildings of this museum are a combination of structures of Medieval Europe. In fact, philanthropist Rockefeller bought the standing buildings in Europe and had them reconstructed on this site, stone by stone! Rockefeller purchased the medieval art collection of George Gray Barnard and gave it to the Met along with his own collection.
Fort Tryon Park was constructed during the Great Depression. It provided many jobs. It was completed in 1935. Upper Manhattan was gifted with a beautiful open green (and red/orange right now) space.
We had intended to divide up the afternoon between walking the grounds and visiting the Cloisters, but nature was so compelling we continued to explore. The pictures of a rougher, thicker, woodsier setting are from nearby Inwood Park.
Can you tell I just can't get enough shots of glorious trees? Nice to take a break from the concrete canyons farther south.
The historial information on Fort Tryon Park came from Wikipedia.
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