Fort Tryon Park
Fort Tryon Park is a public park located in the Hudson Heights, Washington Heights and Inwood neighborhoods of the borough ofManhattan in New York City. The 67 acres (27 ha) park is situated on a ridge in Upper Manhattan, with a commanding view of the Hudson River, the George Washington Bridge, the New Jersey Palisades and the Harlem River. It extends from West 190th Street in the south to Riverside Drive at Dyckman Street in the north, and from Broadway in the east to the Henry Hudson Parkway in the west. The main entrance to the park is at Margaret Corbin Circle, at the intersection of Fort Washington Avenue and Cabrini Boulevard.
The area was known by the name Chquaesgeck by the local Lenape tribe, and was called Lange Bergh (Long Hill) by Dutch settlers until late in the 17th century.It was the location where the Battle of Fort Washington was fought in the American Revolutionary War, but it was, and remained, sparsely populated. By the turn of the 20th century, it was the location of large country estates.
The park was the creation of philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who bought up several of the estates beginning in 1917 in order to create it. He engaged the Olmsted Brothers firm – formed by the sons of Frederick Law Olmsted, step-brothers John Charles Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. – to design the park, and gave it to the city in 1931; James W. Dawson created the planting plan.The park was completed in 1935.
Rockefeller also bought sculptor George Gray Barnard’s collection of medieval art and gave to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which from 1934 to 1939 built The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park to house it. The Cloisters, which was designed by Charles Collens, incorporates several medieval buildings that were purchased in Europe, brought to the United States, and reassembled, often stone by stone. It is home to the Unicorn Tapestries.
Fort Tryon Park was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 and was designated a New York City Scenic Landmark in 1983.
The Cloisters
The Cloisters is a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art which houses the museum’s extensive collection of medieval European art and artifacts, including the noted Unicorn Tapestries. The museum’s buildings are a combination of medieval structures bought in Europe and reconstructed on-site stone-by-stone, and new buildings in the medieval style designed by Charles Collens. The museum owes its existence to philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who purchased the medieval art collection of George Grey Barnard, and gave it to the Met along with his own collection. The Met then had the Cloisters built in Rockefeller’s newly created Fort Tryon Park with endowment money from Rockefeller.
The Cloisters collection contains approximately five thousand European medieval works of art, with a particular emphasis on pieces dating from the 12th through the 15th centuries. Notable works of architecture include the Sant Miquel de Cuixà cloister, with an adjacent Chapter House; and the Fuentidueña Apse from a chapel in the province of Segovia (Castilla y León, Spain). The collection includes several ivory c 1300 Gothic Madonna ivory statuette, mostly French, with some English examples.
The museum contains the Flemish tapestries depicting The Hunt of the Unicorn,Robert Campin’s Mérode Altarpiece, and the Romanesque altar cross known as the Cloisters Cross, acquired under the curatorship of Thomas Hoving. The Cloisters holds a number of medieval illuminated books, including the Limbourg brothers’ Les Belles Heures du Duc de Berry and Jean Pucelle’s Psalter of Bonne de Luxembourg. It holds the Cloisters set of fifty-two playing cards, the only complete set of ordinary playing cards from the fifteenth century.
Together, the park and the Cloisters are listed as an historic district on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. The Cloisters had been designated a New York City landmark in 1974, with Fort Tryon Park designed a scenic landmark in 1983.
Fort Washington Park
Fort Washington Park is located in the Washington Heights section of Upper Manhattan, New York City , along the banks of the Hudson River next to Riverside Drive from West 155th Street to Dyckman Street. The George Washington Bridge crosses above the park, and below the bridge is the small point of land also called Jeffrey’s Hook, which is the site of the Little Red Lighthouse.
The 160-acre park features river-side views of the New Jersey Palisades and the George Washington Bridge. Amenities include pedestrian and green-way paths, baseball fields, basketball courts, tennis courts, volleyball courts, a soccer field and a playground.
The park references the nearby site of Fort Washington, a fortified position that was the site of the 1776 Battle of Fort Washington during the American Revolutionary War. The fort’s actual location is located and commemorated in Bennett Park.
Bennet Park
Bennett Park, also known as James Gordon Bennett Park, is a public park in New York City, named for James Gordon Bennett, Sr.,the newspaper publisher who launched the New York Herald in 1835. It is located between Pinehurst and Fort Washington Avenues and West 183rd and 185th Streets in the Hudson Heights neighborhood of Washington Heights in northern Manhattan, on land purchased by Bennett in 1871, the year before his death. It sits opposite the northern Fort Washington Avenue entrance to the 181st Street subway station on the IND Eighth Avenue Line, serviced by the A trains.
The park, which opened in 1929, was built on the site of Fort Washington, from which the Continental Army delayed the advance of British troops in 1776. The commemorative marble, bronze and granite stele, with sculpture by Charles R. Lamb, is located on the eastern perimeter wall of the park, and was dedicated in 1901. In 1932, in commemoration of the bicentennial of the birth of George Washington, the Washington Heights Honor Grove Association planted an American elm tree, which is indicated with a marker. Other memorials in the park include the Emilio Barbosa Memorial, given in 1996 by Joseph Barbosa to honor his father, who died in the attack on Pearl Harbor,
On the west side of the park lies an outcropping of Manhattan schist which is the highest natural point in Manhattan – 265 feet (81 m) above sea level – with a square stone marker attesting to the fact.The schist is part of the bedrock foundation of New York City, which allows the construction of skyscrapers where it lies close to the surface.
The park’s playground was constructed in the 1940s, and service buildings were added in 1964. Bennett Park hosts a variety of events, such as the Revolutionary War Reenactment, which Redcoats and George Washington’s army actors converge and fight in the park, reenacting the battle of Fort Washington. An annual Harvest Festival is held in the park’s field.
