Fort Tryon Park is a public park located in the Washington Heights and Inwood neighborhoods of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The park is situated on a ridge in Upper Manhattan, close to the Hudson River to the west. It extends mostly from 192nd Street in the south to Riverside Drive 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 local Lenape tribe as Chquaesgeck and by Dutch settlers as Lange Bergh (Long Hill). During the American Revolutionary War, the Battle of Fort Washington was fought at the site of the park on November 16, 1776. The area remained sparsely populated during the 19th century, but by the turn of the 20th century, it was the location of large country estates.
Beginning in January 1917, philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. bought up the Tryon Hall estate of Chicago industrialist C. K. G. Billings and several others to create Fort Tryon Park. He engaged the Olmsted Brothers firm to design the park and hired James W. Dawson to create the planting plan. Rockefeller gave the land to the city in 1931, after two prior attempts to do so were unsuccessful, and the park was completed in 1935. Rockefeller also bought sculptor George Gray Barnard's collection of medieval art and gave it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which from 1935 to 1939 built the Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park to house the collection.
The park is built on a high formation of Manhattan schist with igneous intrusions and glacial striations from the last ice age. The park's design included extensive plantings of various flora in the park's many gardens, including the Heather Garden, which was restored in the 1980s. Besides the gardens and the Cloisters, the park has extensive walking paths and meadows, with views of the Hudson and Harlem Rivers. Fort Tryon Park was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 19, 1978, and was designated a New York City scenic landmark in 1983.
Geography and geology Fort Tryon Park covers . It is bounded on the west by the Henry Hudson Parkway, on the north by Riverside Drive, on the east by Broadway and Bennett Avenue, and on the south by the alignment of 192nd Street. A small section at the park's southwestern corner is located between Cabrini Boulevard to the east and Henry Hudson Parkway to the west, and is bounded to the south by 190th Street. The park is adjacent to Inwood Hill Park to the north and Fort Washington Park and Riverside Park to the south; all are part of the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway. The park offers views of the Hudson River, the George Washington Bridge, and the New Jersey Palisades, to the west; Washington Heights to the south; Inwood and the Bronx to the north; and the Harlem River to the east. The north–south Henry Hudson Parkway and Amtrak's Empire Connection run alongside the western edge of the park.
The park is built on a formation of Manhattan schist and contains examples of igneous intrusions and of glacial striations from the last ice age. The lower lying regions to the east and north of the park are built on Inwood marble.Kuhn, Jonathan. "Fort Tryon Park" in Outcroppings of gneiss and schist can be seen interlaid with the marble, as seen in the outcroppings at the park's edges. Fort Tryon Park also contains a large glacial pothole.
The northern boundary of the park is formed by the seismologically active Dyckman Street Fault. The fault creates a valley separating Fort Tryon Park from Inwood Hill Park to the north. In precolonial times, a Native American road ran within this valley from the present-day intersection of Broadway and Dyckman Street to a settlement on the Hudson River. The valley formerly contained an inlet named Little Sand Bay, which flowed into the Hudson River to the west. As recently as 1989, activity of this fault caused a magnitude 2 earthquake.
Another valley separated Fort Washington from a hill to the east, which hosted Fort George. This valley contained a stream, which was known as the Hessian Spring. The stream emptied into Half Creek (later Sherman Creek), which in turn led to the Harlem River to the east.
History Site The northern portion of Manhattan was first known to be inhabited by the Wecquaesgeek tribe of Lenape Native Americans, who referred to the area around Fort Tryon Park as Chquaesgeck. When Dutch settlers inhabited the lower Hudson Valley in the early 17th century, they attempted to force the Native Americans out, and some of the Wecquaesgeeks continued to occupy the area. The tribe had moved out by 1669, but continued to hold onto their land claims until 1715. The Dutch referred to the park site as Lange Bergh (Long Hill), a name first given by Dutch settler Joost van Oblienus in 1691. At the time, Long Hill was a heavily wooded area that was part of the town of Harlem. As late as the 17th century, wild animals could be hunted on the northern portion of the hill, within the park's present site. In 1711, Harlem's political leaders decreed that a road be built through the area. When Harlem was subdivided the following year, the hill was split into multiple smaller lots.
During the American Revolutionary War, the trees were cleared to make way for fortifications. At the time, Long Hill had been known as Mount Washington, while an outcropping in the center of the site was called Forest Hill. The latter was part of a series of fortifications that lined the steep cliff within the park site, which was known by the Americans as Fort Washington. The actual site of Fort Washington is less than a mile south at Bennett Park. The park was an ancillary site of the Battle of Fort Washington, fought on November 16, 1776, between 2,900 American soldiers and 8,000 invading Hessian troops hired by Great Britain. Despite the American Continental Army's strategic position at the top of Long Hill, they were defeated after holding out for two hours. American soldier Margaret Corbin became the first woman to fight in the war and was injured during the battle; the southern entrance to the park bears her name. After the British victory, the outpost on Forest Hill was named after William Tryon, the last British Governor of the Province of New York (1771–1777). The British made improvements to Fort Tryon, using it as Upper Manhattan's primary defensive post, before peacefully withdrawing from Manhattan in 1783. The Tryon name persisted even after the British withdrawal, even as many other colonial place names were being expunged of their British influence.
As New York City expanded and prospered following the end of the Revolutionary War, the land comprising the park remained undeveloped, except for a few country estates. The first of these was created by Dr. Samuel Watkins, founder of Watkins Glen, who took ownership of multiple plots in 1818. Ownership of the Watkins estate passed to Lucius Chittenden, a merchant originally from New Orleans, in 1844. The Chittenden family owned the land until 1871. Part of the estate was sold in 1855 to August C. Richards, who built a Gothic-style stone castle called "Woodcliff", designed by Alexander Jackson Davis. Woodcliff was subsequently used as a summer home by General Daniel Butterfield, Boss Tweed, Alexander Turney Stewart, and William Libbey, whereupon it became known as "Libby Castle". Another portion of the Chittenden site was developed by William C. Muschenheim, later an operator of the Hotel Astor, who built an estate called "Fort Tryon Terrace". In contrast with the elaborate estates at the top of Fort Tryon, the plateau to the east was known as "Poverty Hollow" by 1851.
Between 1901 and 1905, C. K. G. Billings combined Chittenden's, Muschenheim's, and Libbey's properties into a single estate. On the site, he built "Tryon Hall", a Châteauesque-style mansion with a swimming pool, horse stables, a formal garden, pergolas, and a winding driveway leading from Riverside Drive. The mansion also contained boat docks on the Hudson River and a garage to house his collection of 13 automobiles. Billings lived at Tryon Hall until 1915. Immediately to the north were Abbey Inn, a summer residence built on land that Willam Henry Hays had purchased in 1842, and another estate that Walter S. Sheafer, the state geologist of Pennsylvania, had bought in 1891.
Acquisition and planning
The philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. had held an interest in Fort Tryon since childhood, when he and his father had taken walks in Fort Tryon. In January 1917, Rockefeller anonymously purchased the that collectively comprised the Hays and Sheafer tracts, Shortly afterward, a New York Times article publicized the sale, and Rockefeller acquired the Billings estate for $35,000 an acre.Renner, James (2007) Washington Heights, Inwood, and Marble Hill. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Arcadia Publishing. p.20
In June 1917, Rockefeller announced that Fort Tryon Park would be given to the city on the conditions that it be joined to the existing Fort Washington and Riverside Parks, and that the city maintain the park. Rockefeller also donated land on the opposite bank of the Hudson to the Palisades Interstate Park in 1933; that land would be taken over by the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, which had operated the Palisades Interstate Park in New Jersey since 1900. According to the Palisades Interstate Park Commission's website, there is an often-repeated claim that the land in New Jersey was bought to preserve views from Fort Tryon Park; however, the Palisades land was purchased years before Fort Tryon Park was opened to the public. In any case, Rockefeller planned to run a ferry service across the Hudson River between Fort Tryon and the Palisades on the river's western bank. Mayor John Purroy Mitchel was positioned to accept Rockefeller's offer. However, his successor John Francis Hylan ultimately did not accept the land, saying that the site had not been "improved". Moreover, the city had failed to propose a law that would have deeded the parkland to the Palisades Interstate Park Commission. In 1925, Hylan told one of Rockefeller's advisors that the city would consider another proposal to take the land and use it as a park. Following this, Rockefeller again offered the land to the city in 1926, though without success.
In preparation for converting the land into a city park, Rockefeller hired the Olmsted Brothers firm, particularly Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., son of the designer of Central Park. Olmsted's design capitalized on the topography to reveal sweeping vistas of the Hudson River and the Palisades. Olmsted Jr. was guided by the four principles of park design that his father had established in creating Central Park: the beautiful, as seen in small open lawns; the picturesque, as shown in wooded slopes; the sublime, represented in the vistas of the Hudson River; and the gardenesque, exemplified by the park's Heather and Alpine Gardens. Olmsted Jr. had a preliminary report in 1927 and conducted a more exhaustive study in 1928–1930. In addition, James W. Dawson was hired to create a park-planting plan.