New York Botanical Garden
The New York Botanical Garden was established in 1891 as a living museum of both native and exotic plants arranged in landscapes and preserved in greenhouses. The prominent Lorillard family were the former owners of most of the land which is now the Garden.Spanning over 250 acres of Bronx Park, it includes many different types of topographies, such as forestry, river canyon, and wetlands. A main attraction is the 50 acres of original, old growth New York forest, never logged nor developed, a remainder of the original growth that covered what is now New York City before the arrival of the colonists, which is centered around the Bronx River, the only freshwater river in the city. Other highlights include the antique Haupt Conservatory, the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden, a rock garden, and a 37 acre conifer tree collection. The garden also offers extensive facilities for botanical research-an intricate plant propagation center, an extensive library of over 550,000 books, the Pfizer Plant Research Laboratory, and a herbarium of over seven million plant specimens dating back more than three centuries. It is a historical landmark website. The planting and construction of the garden brought the first significant wave of Irish immigrants to the Norwood neighborhood during the turn of the century, which coincided with the expansion of the subway into the Bronx, and they played an important role in turning Norwood from a rural farmland into a more settled community.
Lorillard Snuff Mill in 1906, a remnant of the former owners of the property, the Lorillard family, who made their fortune in tobacco. It is still present on the site today, as a National Historic Landmark. It is the oldest existing tobacco mill in the United States.
Source:
Dunlap, David W. “From Tobacco Leaves To Wedding Bouquets, 169 Years in the Bronx.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 08 Feb. 2009. Web. 12 May 2014.
“Mission and History | NYBG.” New York Botanical Garden. NYBG, n.d. Web. 12 May 2014.
