Tag: Exploring the Island of Manhattan

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

The history of the park

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.

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 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

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.

The Met Breuer (Currently Closed-The Frick Collection 945 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10021

The Met Breuer-Metropolitan Museum of Art (Currently closed-The Frick Collection)

945 Madison Avenue

New York, NY 10021

(212) 535-7710

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

https://www.metmuseum.org/visit/audio-guide/the-met-breuer

https://www.florabarnyc.com/

Open: Sunday 10:00am-5:30pm/Monday Closed/Tuesday-Thursday 10:00am-5:30pm/Friday & Saturday 10:00am-9:00pm

Fee: Adults $25.00/Seniors $17.00/Students $12.00/Members and Patrons Free/Children under 12 Free

My review on TripAdvisor:

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g60763-d10062261-Reviews-The_Met_Breuer-New_York_City_New_York.html?m=19905

The Met Breuer is an interesting museum. When it was opened, the museum wanted to have more of focus in recent contemporary artists. The Metropolitan Museum of Art had been known for emphasis in the classical and ancient arts and its collections of art that covered the centuries. Even though it has a very impressive Contemporary Art Collection in the main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue, it was not one of their stronger collections. The Museum of Modern Art had been known more for that. The opening of the Met Breuer was going to change that by showing more of the permanent collection and traveling shows with cutting edge artists of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century.

I have been to the museum several time for private Member’s Nights and most recently in March 2020 for the Gerhard Richter exhibition “Gerhard Richter: Painting After All” (the exhibition just opened as the New York City closed down for the viral outbreak).

Artist Gerhard Richter

https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/

https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/art

The artist who was born in Germany and raised during the outbreak of World War II began his career as an artist in the 1960’s. He was accepted into the Academy of Arts in the 1950’s and his career has spanned many different mediums and concepts of art as shown in the exhibition.

The abstract works of artist Gerhard Richter

Artist Gerhard Richter in his studio

The Membership was able to walk four of the floors of the artists work and join in discussions with the curators and docents on duty. Each floor that evening was dedicated to a different concept of the artist’s work.

The exhibition has only opened to the membership before the museum shut down due to the virus outbreak.

On the bottom floor basement area of the museum is the restaurant, Florence, named after Florence Whitney, a patron of the museum after which was named after her family. The restaurant which has a very contemporary and expensive menu was packed that night. The restaurant offers nice views of neighborhood street level and has a very nice bar.

Florence Restaurant & Bar

https://www.florabarnyc.com/

On the main floor of the museum is a small gift shop.

The lobby of the Met Breuer

The History of The Met Breuer:

The Met Breuer was the brainchild of philanthropist Leonard Lauder in 2008 when it was announced that the Whitney Museum was moving to a new building downtown. The agreement was signed between the Met and the Whitney for the new museum in 2011.

Gerhard Richter’s work on the third floor of the museum

The Met Breuer opened in March of 2016 in the building that was formerly occupied by the Whitney Museum of American Art. The building was designed by architect Marcel Breuer and completed in 1966. The building was updated by architects Beyer, Blinder Belle in 2014 for the Met.The works of the Met Breuer come from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection and are both monographic and thematic exhibitions.

In 2018, the Met announced that it would be leaving the building in 2020 and that the Frick Collection would be moving in on a temporary basis for the renovation of their building starting in 2020.

(This information was provided by both the Met Breuer History and Wiki)

The Met Breuer on March 2020

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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