Fort Tryon Park    

Fort Tryon Park is the only park in northern Manhattan designed by the Olmstead Brothers (Frederick Law Jr. and John Charles) firm. The 66.6-acre park rests on some of the highest public land in Manhattan.

Fort Tryon Park is rich in history and culture. The Wiechquaesgeck Indians, a tribal group of the Lenape (or Delaware) Indian Confederacy, had inhabited the park until the late Seventeenth Century when the Dutch colonists succeeded in removing them from the area. This group had last occupied the Fort Tryon Park area in 1669 but did not relinquish their claims to the land until 1715, when they were offered goods delivered in exchange for land by Colonel Stephen Van Cortlandt.

During the American Revolution, the Continental Army lost Fort Tryon to the Royalist Forces on November 16, 1776. Fort Tryon was a northern defense for Fort Washington located on 183rd Street and Fort Washington Avenue. During the battle, this outpost held its position by Colonial forces for 4 hours against the Hessians.

Margaret Corbin Drive and Circle are named for the heroine of the battle and wife of John Corbin, who was an artilleryman in the First Pennsylvania Militia. Corbin was killed by a musketball while he was loading a cannon. Margaret stepped into his place and continued to load and fire the cannon. At the end of the fighting, Margaret was wounded by grapeshot and was found unconscious next to her husband. She was cared for by the British and was part of a prisoner exchange.

A plaque at Margaret Corbin Circle pays homage to this first woman patriot and soldier from Pennsylvania who fought for freedom in Washington Heights. During the British occupation of the area, the fort in the park was named for the last British Governor of the Province of New York, Major General Sir William Tryon.

During the Nineteenth Century, the land in Fort Tryon Park passed through various ownerships. Such owners were Augustus C. Richards, William Marcy Tweed, William Libbey, and C.K.G.Billings. The Richards mansion was known as Woodcliff Manor and the Billings home was Tryon Hall.

The Billings mansion was located at the terraces on the north end of the heather garden. Billings purchased 25 acres of land between 1901 and 1905 to build his home and spent $2 million for construction. Remnants of the estate can still be seen in the park today. These are the scenic overlook and the driveway that connected with the Henry Hudson Parkway. Tryon Hall burned down in 1925.

Another estate in Fort Tryon Park was the home of William Henry Hayes. In 1850 Hayes purchased a small plot of land and erected a home and stable. In time the property was sold and it became the Abbey Inn. The stable became an auto garage. The Inn was located approximately 800 feet north of the Billings mansion. At the entrance of the Inn were bombs from the Mexican War purportedly donated by James Gordon Bennett Jr., publisher of the New York Herald.

In 1917 John D. Rockefeller purchased the land for an ungodly sum of $35,000 per acre. After landscaping the property at a cost of $3,600,000, Rockefeller donated the land to New York City for use as a public park. The Olmstead Brothers designed the original plans for the park. There had been a rumor circulating that the elder Olmstead brother was the better architect and the younger got a better commission for his work. Fort Tryon Park was designated parkland in 1931 and was opened in October 1935.

In May 1938, the Cloisters opened with the help of funds from Rockefeller and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is a collection of parts of medieval cloisters and the collection of George Grey Barnard. The Barnard collection had been in its own building on Fort Washington Avenue and 190th Street from 1914 to 1937.

The park’s Heather Garden with panoramic views of the Hudson River and the Palisades has, for years, interested and inspired many visitors who have come to see its scenic beauty. Many of the park’s overlooks are connected with five miles of pedestrian pathways. In 1983 the park was given landmark status.

The New Leaf Cafe operated by the New York Restoration Project has been a haven to visitors in the park. Area residents and frequent visitors remember the cafe by its previous names: Tryon’s, Fort Tryon Park Cafe, the Unicorn, and the Maple Leaf. The building was erected in the 1930s on the site of the Billings auto garage.

The Medieval Festival has become a part of the annual events in Fort Tryon Park. The Festival started in the 1970s under the auspices of the Cloisters. Eventually the Medieval Festival guild and then the Washington Heights-Inwood Development Corporation have coordinated in running the annual event.

The Festival draws visitors from the greater metropolitan area, and it depicts life in a village dating from the 11th to the 13th centuries. Puppetry, medieval art, pageantry, jousting, storytelling, falconry and medieval food are enjoyed by all who attend. Many of the participants dress in period outfits that embellish the flavor of the day.

At the northeast corner of the park is the Anne Loftus Playground. This playground was named in honor of Ms. Loftus, who was District Manager of Community Board 12 from October 1980 to September 1989, after a resolution was unanimously passed on June 21, 1990. In 1995 the playground underwent reconstruction with monies funded by City Council member Stanley E. Michels. It is the only playground that was originally designed by the Olmstead Brothers, and the reconstruction evokes the original plan.

For almost two decades, a local organization called Friends of Fort Tryon Park has helped to maintain the park. In October 1985 the group was instrumental in organizing a celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the park’s opening to the citizens of New York. City officials and local residents were on hand for the event. Among the invited guests were descendants of British Governor William Tryon and a resident who was a child when she attended the opening ceremony in 1935. Friends of Fort Tryon Park is involved with clean-ups, gardening and other events in the park. The group is also involved with publishing a quarterly calendar of events at the Cloisters.

For further information, visit the following Web sites: Friends of Fort Tryon Park, Washington Heights and Inwood Development Corporation, The Cloisters, New Leaf Cafe.

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Readers’ Comments

I was born in Washington Heights in 1950, at a time when the neighborhood was a haven for German Jews, like my parents, who had escaped the Holocaust. As a small boy living in this twilight of Old World and New, Europe and America, German and English, Fort Tryon Park played a special role. My paternal grandmother lived with us on 183rd Street, just down the block from Fort Washington Avenue, and took care of me while both of my parents were at work. She was frequently visited by her friends, Gustav and Minnie Plaut, who lived on 172nd Street, in the apartment building where I had spent the first six months of my life. Onkel Gustav and Tante Minnie would walk the half mile to our house, then trek up five flights of stairs to my grandmother and me. Then the four of us would take a walk up Fort Washington Avenue (past P.S. 187, the elementary school I would attend when I was older) to Fort Tryon Park. As a little boy, I would sometimes be tired and cranky by the time we arrived so we would rest at one of the recessed benches that had been carved into the rock overlooking the beautiful flower garden. When we were ready, we would stroll through the garden which was, for me, one of the most beautiful places in New York City. The treat for me would then be a visit to the cafeteria in the park. We would have tea and eat Drake’s pound cake as my grandmother and her friends continued to talk. In the winter, on the weekends, when my father was home, Fort Tryon Park took on a different character. We would take my American Flyer to “suicide hill,” so named because a boy had purportedly sledded down it, through the park exit and on to the street where he was killed by a motorist. My childhood recollection is of a hill that was steep and very lomg. The sled ride down it was fast and scary; it took quite a while for my father to convince me to attempt a “solo” and I suspect he was disappointed when I finally did because it meant from then on that he would not enjoy the pleasure of sledding himself. As a child, the Cloisters were a place of mystery to me. Walking up the ramp from the roadway to its entrance made me feel as if I were entering a world of the past. And, even as a young adult, I would return to the museum there and continue to be fascinated by its remarkable collection of medieval art. The walk home from Fort Tryon Park was always a melancholy one for me. I was leaving a place of beauty and respite to re-enter the world of the mundane. To me, it symbolizes in many ways the European nature of the Washington Heights neighborhood in which I grew up. It was a gathering place (as was the much smaller Bennett Park, on 183rd to 184th Street between Fort Washington and Pinehurst Avenues) for people who had shared a common terror and who had lost so much but found a new home and new hope in America. Never a day passed on our trips to Fort Tryon without meeting old friends, stopping for a chat in German and rejoicing in the new life they had found in this “Frankfurt on the Hudson.” (Posted by Peter Freitag on September 14, 2003 08:13 AM.)

Peter, You had mentioned the term Frankfort on the Hudson.” Did you know that there is a book by that same name by Steven M. Lowenstein. I own a copy and found it interesting reading as well a s an excellent reference whenever I have to give a talk on the subject. James Renner Community District 12 Historian (Posted by James Renner on September 17, 2003 12:55 PM.)

i too have read that book [“frankfurt on the hudson”, and want to add to your comments, james, that although it is written by a professional - i believe loewenstein is a professor of history - and has all the high-fallutin’ verbiage of a professional text, it is also eminently readable and filled with personal anecdotes and the names of people and institutions in the “yekke” community of washington heights. i just wish someone had written a similar book on the german-jewish refugee community of the bronx, of which i was a part. apparently the bronx does not inspire the kind of interest [other than negative interest] that manhattan inspires :-) (Posted by inge on October 25, 2003 11:33 AM.)

Peter…I have similar memories of life in Washington Heights and times in Fort Tryon Park, the Cloisters, and sledding down Suicide Hill (I never knew the story behind it…thanks for the info!) I , too, was born in 1950 and went to PS 187. Were you in the “graduating class” of 1962 as I was? Did we have any of the same teachers…Mrs. Taylor (I hae her for 1st and 2nd grade), Mrs. Karetsky, Mrs. Green, Mrs. Stand or Mrs. Buono? Peggy Nast Hayes (Posted by Peggy Nast Hayes on January 14, 2004 01:18 AM.)

I’m very interested…where is Suicide Hill? My daughter loves sledding in the park, and would like it even more if she could tell her friends she went down Suicide Hill. (Posted by Scott on January 25, 2004 09:40 PM.)

I too remember Mrs. Buono as a teacher in 1959 or 1960. I was one of those students—probably as a result of the exploding baby boom population—who got transferred to PS 187 after attending PS 173 and then after 6th grade being shunted off to JHS 52. I also remember wasting lots of time at a pizza parlor around the corner from the school. (Posted by Mati Kuuskmae on May 3, 2004 05:56 PM.)

I lived on Dongan Place and went to Our Lady Queen of Martyrs and have nothing but great, fond memories of Fort Tryon Park. I, too, used to sled down suicide hill and find old indian arrowheads near the cave in the park. I left Manhattan when I was 11 in 1988. I still miss the summer air and the bellydancers in the park. (Posted by Erik M. on May 29, 2004 10:06 PM.)

Peter, it was a trip back to the past for me as I read your story about Ft. Tryon Park. I was born in the Bronx, but my parents moved to Washington Heights in 1940, when I was one year old. (185th Street & St. Nicholas Ave.) In my pre-teens and teens, I had probably spent hundreds of hours walking through the park, and roaming through the cloisters. Do you remember the fruit (lemons & limes) that used to grow in the pots inside the atriums? I have also spent many hours sleighing down ‘suicide hill’, although I never knew it was called that. Perhaps it was named that later on. If there was a good covering of snow, we used to walk up Ft. Washington Ave., and start at the garden by the main entrance. There was a path on the far right side that you could sleigh down which went down another hill on the right side of a gazebo. At one point, the pathway went under a tunnel, and we had to stop and drag the sled to the other side. The final part of the ride was the hill that you mentioned. By the way, I went to P.S. 189 on Amsterdam Ave. I have a novel being published in the near future that, although fiction, describes much of the old neighborhood. One scene actually takes place in Ft. Tryon Park. (Posted by Karl J. Eckstein on June 17, 2004 07:17 PM.)

I GREW UP ON BROADWAY TERRACE.FORT TRYON WAS MY BACK YARD.THERE IS A CAVE IN THE PARK CALLED SPLITROCK CAVE.DOWN ON THE THE BENNET PARK ENTRANCE WE AS KIDS WE .COULD BEARLY FIT IN THE ENTRANCE.THERE ARE ALSO STAIRS ALL OVER THE PARK CALLED INDIAN STAIRS.ON ONE HILSIDE THERE IS INDIAN CLAY WHAT I WOULD IMAGINE THE INDIANS USED AT ONE TIME.WE HAD A ROPE SWING IN THE PARK.ONE DAY WHILE SWINGING ON A ROPE MY FREIND FOUND A CANNON BALL FROM THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR.SUICIDE HILL WAS ALWAYS FUN BUT THE LONG WALE HOME WAS ALWAYS TOUGH.I (Posted by JOHN HORAN on September 26, 2004 05:23 PM.)

I remember discovering that cave in Fort Tryon Park (didn’t know it was called Splitrock) with my brother and pal Victor around 1962, when I was 11 or 12. I recall the narrow entrance, and how the interior of the cave sloped UPHILL for about forty feet, before it tapered and ended. We would bring candles and flashlights into it, and imagine ourselves in a Jules Verne adventure. It was just a huge glacial rock that had never quite settled, thus the cave. It’s even bigger than the Indian caves in Inwood Hill Park, near which in 1963 I found two Revolutionary War musket balls. It’s great hearing that others have also found relics from the war in the neighborhood, and that the old archeologists didn’t find all of them! (Posted by Gary Zaboly on October 8, 2004 03:19 PM.)

OMG this is so wonderful. I was born and raised in Washington Heights and never knew such history of my neighborhood. I was born in 1979 and remember in my early childhood all the times i would play around the cafe never knowing its history behind it. Now am so eigher for summer to come so i can go and admire all its beauty and history. About that cave i wonder if its still there and if i would be able to find any Indian artifacts. Thank you so much for all your loving memories about Cabrini Park. Now its an honor for me to have been born in Washington Heights. (Posted by Jen on January 26, 2005 01:29 PM.)

Interesting article on our old neightborhood (Posted by James O'Keefe on February 21, 2005 11:25 AM.)

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