Tag: Exploring New York City by Foot

Fort Tryon Park Riverside Drive to Broadway New York, NY 10040

Fort Tyron Park

Riverside Drive to Broadway

New York, NY 10040

https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/fort-tryon-park

https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/fort-tryon-park/history

Open: Sunday-Saturday 6:00am-1:00am

My review on TripAdvisor:

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g60763-d2305249-Reviews-Fort_Tryon_Park-New_York_City_New_York.html?m=19905

The Front of Fort Tyron Park

The entrance of the park

I love Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan. It is one of the most beautiful parks in New York City. It is a park of rolling hills, stone paths that hug the hills, interesting garden that are ablaze when in season, shady tree sitting areas and is home to many playgrounds and the Cloisters Museum which is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It has so much to offer a visitor coming into Manhattan from exploring the woods that line the path to looking at interesting art at the museum. This 67 acre park is one of the interesting and complex in New York City.

A city view of the beauty of the park by the Hudson River

The view from The Cloisters by the Hudson River

When you enter the park from Inwood by Broadway, you enter through Ann Loftus Park which is named after a local community leader and is one of the popular parks with kids and families in the area. In the summer months, the fountains and water fixtures are going strong and the kids run around them while the parents lie under shade trees talking to one another.

Ann Loftus Playground

https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/fort-tryon-park/highlights/11234

When taking the path from Ann Loftus Park and winding up the hills of woods and rock formations is the Hudson River looming in the distance with spectacular views of the Palisades and the large cliffs of Fort Lee, NJ on the other side.

The bathrooms in Ann Loftus Playground

Anne Susan Cahill Loftus biography:

At the top of hill like a crown jewel is the Medieval Galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Cloisters Museum. Filled with all the Met’s collections of Religious and Medieval art set into themes of old churches, stained glass windows, flowered courtyards and vistas of the river, it is the perfect place to wonder around.

The Met-Cloisters Museum

Don’t miss the “Hunt of the Unicorn” tapestries.

The Hunt of the Unicorn Tapestry

The Cloisters:

https://www.metmuseum.org/visit/plan-your-visit/met-cloisters

My review on TripAdvisor:

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g60763-d106609-Reviews-The_Met_Cloisters-New_York_City_New_York.html?m=19905

As you pass the Cloisters and walk further in to the park, there is still so much more to see and do. The Linden Terrace overlooks the Hudson River with its large shade trees over head and its stone benches to sit and just look in the distance or read a book. This was the site of the original Fort Tryon and is the highest location in the park.

Linden Terrace is a nice place to relax and read a book

The flowers by the Linden Terrace

Further down in the other entrance of the park is Heather Garden, a large path of flowers , bushes and trees with benches lining it. The garden was the Olmstead Brothers when the park was taking shape and is a beautiful place to walk in the Spring and Summer months when the park is in full bloom.

The stairs leading to the Linden Terrace

The plaque for Fort Tryon

The anniversary plaque

The Stan Michels Promenade

The Heather Garden in the front

The Heather Garden was recently remodeled to follow the original design by the Olmstead Brothers.

The Heather Gardens

The Heather Gardens in full bloom

The Gardens facing the George Washington Bridge

The Gardens in full view

There is even a terrace restaurant in the middle of the park, the New Leaf Cafe (See review on TripAdvisor-Closed in 2018) which sits off to the side of the Corbin Circle on the other side of the park. The food is over-rated and very expensive. The last time I ate there the menu was pretty standard. It is a great to take out of towners who want a view of something. It is not worth the trip. The views are nice and in the summer months it is pretty but the food and service are standard. Inside the park in 2026, a new restaurant has replaced the former New Leaf Cafe, Le Bonnefont, a Modern French restaurant.

The Bonnefont Restaurant replaced the New Leaf Cafe

https://thebonnefont.com

https://www.facebook.com/groups/432657521042383/posts/1318136805827779

My review on TripAdvisor:

The New Leaf Cafe in Fort Tyron Park (Closed in 2018)

My review on TripAdvisor:

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g60763-d478282-Reviews-New_Leaf_Restaurant_Bar-New_York_City_New_York.html?m=19905

The new Bonnefont Restaurant is open for lunch and brunch

The restaurant was closed that afternoon but I was able to look at the menu online and it is an interesting menu. The cuisine is a mixture of French and Contemporary cooking.

The park has so much to offer in all months of the year especially in the Spring and Summer.

The entrance to Fort Tryon Park

Cabrini Woods Nature Sanctuary in the front of the park

The Cabrini Sanctuary in the Spring 2024

History of Fort Tryon Park:

The area was known by the local Lenape Indians as Chquaesgeck and by the Dutch settlers as Lange Bergh (Long Hill). During the Revolutionary War, the Battle of Fort Washington was fought on this site. The park is built on a high formation of Manhattan schist with igneous intrusions and glacial striations from the last Ice Age (Wiki).

The gardens in the Fort Tryon Park

John D. Rockefeller Jr. bought up most the land in 1917, which by that point had been old estates, to create Fort Tryon Park. He hired the Olmstead Brothers firm, under the direction of Fredrick Law Olmstead Jr., the son of the designer of Central Park, to design the park and James W. Dawson to create a planting plan. Mr. Rockefeller also bought the collection of Medieval art from sculptor George Gray Barnard and it was the cornerstone of The Cloisters Museum which was built in 1939 (Wiki).

The Fort Tryon gardens in full bloom

The stairs in the park

Through the years the park has seen its ups and downs especially in the 1970’s and 80’s with the decline of finances in New York City. There were extensive renovations when finances got better in the late 90’s and parts of the park were fully renovated. The Fort Tyron Park Trust, a non-profit organization was founded in 1998 to help maintain the park (Wiki).

The Scandinavian Orchestra played in June 2024

Video on the show:

IMG_5869 Download

Today it is just an amazing park!

The Jacob Javits Playground is really popular

The Javits Playground was very popular

https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/fort-tryon-park/highlights/8724

On the recent Great Saunter walk in 2025:

When I walked through the park on the recent Great Saunter walk in 2025, they rerouted us through the park when the Riverwalk was closed for renovation. The park was in full bloom and it was the most spectacular day for a visit.

The entrance of the park on that sunny afternoon

The beautiful colorful tulips at the entrance of the park

The colorful gardens were in full bloom

Everyone was routed through the park on the way to Inwood Park for our rest stop. What I found strange was that the park was so beautiful in full bloom and people were not stopping to relax and just enjoy the views. The gardens were amazing and so colorful.

I stopped to look at the beautiful rock garden

The entrance to Heather Garden in the Spring of 2026:

The pathways through the Heather Gardens

Walking through the Heather Garden

The gardens

Walking through The Heather Garden

Walking through the Heather Garden

The other side to Heather Park

Walking through the Gardens

Walking through the pathways of the gardens

Walking around the gardens

Walking back through the gardens to the Fort Tryon location

Walking to the Fort Tryon site

The Fort Tryon site

Walking through Fort Tryon Park during the Great Saunter in 2025:

Welcome to Upstate Manhattan!

I thought this was so clever. One of the volunteers made this sign up which was so funny!

We walked through the park on our way through the park on the way to Inwood Park.

Bronx Museum of the Arts 1040 Grand Concourse The Bronx, NY 10456

The Bronx Museum of the Arts

1040 Grand Concourse

The Bronx, NY 10456

(718) 681-600

http://www.bronxmuseum.org/

Open: Sunday 11:00am-6:00pm/Monday & Tuesday Closed/Wednesday-Saturday 11:00am-6:00pm

Fee: Free

My review on Tripadvisor:

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g47369-d312012-Reviews-Bronx_Museum_of_the_Arts-Bronx_New_York.html?m=19905

I recently had some time to visit the Bronx Museum of the Arts when I was visiting Yankee Stadium recently for a football game. The museum is right down the road on the Grand Concourse. It is an impressive little museum.

I had wanted to see the exhibit “Art Versus Transit: 1977-1987” by artist Henry Chalfant who had recorded the graffiti art on the subway cars during the late 70’s into the early 1980’s. This is before the subway investing in the new subway cars that could be cleaned by hosing them off.

“Art versus Transit: 1977-1987”

The art was interesting as it was an expression of the times just when Hip-Hop was becoming popular and the City was going through the financial crisis. The artist did a good job capturing the times. Not only do we see the art but the music and dance as well of the time.

Subway Art

The other exhibition that I saw was “The Life and Times of Alvin Baltrop” which displayed the artist’s interpreted that Gay Community and the beginnings of the AIDS crisis. It was an another interesting perspective of the times of New York City.

Mission and Background:

The Bronx Museum of the Arts is a contemporary art museum that connects diverse audience to the urban experience through its permanent collection, special exhibitions and education programs. Reflecting the borough’s dynamic communities. The Museum is the crossroad where artists, local residents, national and international visitors meet.

Today an internationally recognized cultural destination. The Bronx Museum of the Arts is committed to presenting new ideas and voices in a global context and making contemporary art a vital, relevant experience. For the past four decades, the Bronx Museum has presented hundreds of changing exhibitions featuring works by culturally diverse and under-represented artists from a spectrum of levels. Exhibition have investigated themes of special interest to the Bronx community while exploring the interplay between contemporary art and popular culture.

A permanent collection of over 2000 artworks in all visual media preserves and documents artists who are not typically represented within traditional museum collections by showcasing work by artists of African, Asian and Latin American ancestry, as well as artists for who the Bronx has been critical to their development. The Museum provides direct support to artists through Artist in the Marketplace, which nurtures the work of 35 emerging artists each year and providers professional development seminars culminating in a multi-site biennial exhibition and catalog.

The Museum’s education department empowers students from grades K-12 by offering a variety of programs that inspire academic proficiency visual literacy and critical thinking. Through the Group Visits Program, students are exposed to the Museum’s works during single-session tours lead by teaching artists. Through In-School Partnerships. Museum educators work with school teachers to encourage scholastic excellence through the application of arts education techniques in addition, the Museum’s Teen Council Program helps Bronx high-school students build applied arts and media skills as they create a variety of visual and text-based materials.

(Bronx Museum of the Arts Mission-Website)

History:

The Museum opened on May 11, 1971, in a partnership between the Bronx Council on the Arts, which was founded in 1961 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The opening coincided with a borough-wide “Bronx Day” event. The first exhibit consisted of 28 paintings from the Met’s collection. The Museum was first housed in the first floor rotunda of the Bronx County Courthouse. Additional galleries were located in the Bronx’s Co-op City, Bedford Park and Allerton neighborhoods. In its first 12 years of operation, the museum held over 350 exhibitions.

In 1982, the city purchased a vacant synagogue at 165th Street and the Grand Concourse as a new location for the museum. The new location opened to the public in May 1983 in conjunction with “Bronx Week”, which succeeded “Bronx Day”. The new space was inaugurated with an exhibition of twentieth artwork. It consisted of paintings, photographs and prints borrowed from the Met.

In February 2004, construction began on a $19 million expansion project that doubled the museum’s size 33.000 square feet. The expansion opened in October 2006. In 2008, a arts center was added to accommodate educational programs for local schoolchildren and their families. The Museum no longer charges fees since 2012.

The Bronx Museum of Art and its additions

The original design was by Simon B. Zelnick in 1961 and the extensions were designed by Castro-Blanco, Piscioneri & Feder in 1988 and a second addition in 2006 by Arquitectonica.

(The Bronx Museum WIKI)

Day One Hundred and Twenty Eight-The Victorian Christmas Walking Tour of the Ladies Shopping Mile with the Cornell Club December 15th, 2018

To all of you history buffs and readers who like architecture, take this Victorian Walking Tour I took last Christmas. It really shows how the City keeps changing.

Ladies Shopping Mile in it’s heyday

The Ladies Shopping Mile today

The beauty of the architecture of these stores. This is the Adams Dry Goods store.

mywalkinmanhattan

On Saturday, December 15th, I met with other members of the Cornell Club to travel back to the Victorian Era and learn about the traditions of the Christmas past. We explored the Gramercy Park, Union Square and lower Sixth Avenue sections of the City to visit where a New York Victorian Christmas would be celebrated and honored.

We would be walking the old “Ladies Shopping Mile” that had been built up right after the Civil War when the disposable income for Middle and Upper Middle Class residents had increased after the Civil War and people wanted to spend their money at the newly built department stores, shops and restaurants. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing and shopping had changed with the development of the department store.

The tour took us past brownstones, parks, restaurants and old department stores that line the streets of Manhattan between East and West 21st Street…

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Institute for the Study of the Ancient World/ New York University 15 East 84th Street New York, NY 10028

Institute for the Study of the Ancient World/New York University

15 East 84th Street

New York, NY 10028

(212) 992-7800/Fax (212) 992-7809

http://www.isaw.nyc.edu

My review on TripAdvisor:

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g60763-d1572637-Reviews-Institute_for_the_Study_of_the_Ancient_World-New_York_City_New_York.html?m=19905

I just happened to stumble across this museum on the way back from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and saw that they were having an exhibition entitled “A Wonder to Behold: Craftsmanship and the Creation of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate”. The exhibition is on the craftsman who created the ‘Ishtar Gate’ and the ‘Processional Way’ in the Ancient City of Babylon.

Glazed brick art from the ‘Processional Way’

The small exhibition contains many examples of clay bricks that were used to build the decorative walls and pathways, artwork from the ‘Processional Way’ were displayed as well as smaller decorative art pieces from the time period.

Some of the works in the exhibition

The exhibition also showed tablets from the time period, information on the digs on the site of Babylon and some of the recorded history of the civilization.

There are interesting tablets on display

For two small rooms of gallery space, the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World covers a lot of information on the time period. One nice thing about the museum is that you can see the whole exhibit in less than an hour and they do have a very nice gift shop.

The History of the Museum:

The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World is a center for advanced scholarly research and graduate education, which aims to encourage particularly the study of the economic, religious, political and cultural connections between ancient civilizations. It offers both doctoral and postdoctoral programs with the aim of training a new generation of scholars who will enter the global academic community and become intellectual leaders.

In effort to embrace a truly inclusive geographical scope while maintaining continuity and coherence, the Institute focuses on the shared and overlapping periods in the development of cultures and civilizations around the Mediterranean basin and across central Asia to the Pacific Ocean. The approaches of anthropology, archaeology, geography, geology, history, economics, sociology, art history, digital humanities and the history of science and technology are as integral to the enterprise as the study of texts, philosophy and the analysis of artifacts. The Institute’s Director and permanent faculty determine particular directions of research but both historical connections and patterns as well as socially illuminating comparisons will always be central to its mission.

The public presence matches its vision, engaging both the public and scholars worldwide in the work and findings of its scholarly community. Exhibitions, public lectures, publications, digital resources and other programs reflect the Institute’s ideal of study that bridges disciplines and ancient peoples.

The creation of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University has its roots in the passion that Shelby White and Leon Levy had for the art and history of the ancient world, which led them to envision an Institute that would offer an unshuttered view of antiquity across vast stretches of time and place. It was founded in 2006 with funding from the Leon Levy Foundation.

Areas of specialty among the museum’s faculty include the Greco-Roman world, the Ancient Near East, Egypt, Central Asia and the Silk Road, East Asian art and archaeology, Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, ancient science and digital humanities.

Disclaimer: This information was taken from the museum’s website and I give them full credit for it.

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