Finding an Old Growth Forest in Manhattan

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history of new york city, inwood hill park, manhattan, new york city, nyc parks, photography

The best thing about moving to a new neighborhood is exploring. A few weeks ago, I dove into the depths of Inwood Hill Park, a 200-acre park at the northwestern tip of Manhattan, about ten blocks north of my apartment. I’d heard, “Be careful, it’s lightly traveled, be alert.” But I finally got fed up with being worried about what might or might not happened if I went for a walk. So who did I meet? Dog walkers, some joggers, couples on romantic strolls and a dad taking his toddler for a walk. Not so fearsome after all!

Best of all, I discovered a fantastic new place.

This is a thickly forested park, hilly and rocky, and contains the last old growth forest in Manhattan. It’s full of birds and small mammals, secluded and beautiful. Just the place to take a walk to clear your head.

Inwood Hill Park is shaped like a big comma. Here it is seen from the north, with the Hudson River on the right (west) and the Harlem River at the bottom of the photo (north). Henry Hudson Bridge is in the foreground, connecting Manhattan to the Bronx. The rest of Manhattan stretches south into the distance. The area where the two rivers join is home to the last saltwater marsh in Manhattan, which attracts diverse bird life.

Although the Henry Hudson Parkway runs right through the park, you wouldn’t know it. It’s separated from the rest of the park by a cliff, which muffles the sound if you’re in the valley to the east. A few ballfields and meadows are the only landscaped areas in the park. As you can see, it’s almost completely forested. This photo shows how unexpectedly green Upper Manhattan is!

Here’s a short video I shot of the old growth forest, with a few details of its history.

There’s a long legacy of Native American tribes in this area. As legend has it, the agreement that passed Manhattan from the Lenape Indians to the Dutch (in exchange for trade goods valued at 60 guilders) was made here in 1626. The Lenape, an Algonquin tribe, are the original New Yorkers, and lived here for about 10,000 years before the Europeans showed up and ruined everything for them. “Manhattan” is derived from the Lenape “Mannahatta,” which means, “Island of Many Hills.”

Here’s a look at the “Indian Caves,” in the valley that’s now called The Clove. The Indian Caves aren’t really caves, they’ve more like overhangs, and were probably used for resting, not living. Bits of pottery and detritus from hunting have been found here.

The topography is a result of shifting glaciers.

There are at least three freshwater springs in the park, and the high canopy, dense underbrush, extensive shelter and lack of predators make it ideal for wildlife. This is a prime birding spot in Manhattan, especially during migration, since the thick forest is perfect for resting and foraging. Over 200 species either live here or pass through annually. Small mammals love it here, too. Skunks, raccoons, bats, groundhogs and lots of squirrels and other small rodents are common. I’m still hoping to see a rabbit. The forest is lightly traveled by people, and dogs are not allowed off the leash.

Here’s a link to the NYC Audubon site if you’d like to know more about birding in this park.

Even under the Henry Hudson Bridge, it’s beautiful. Some paths are cut into the cliffs and take you high above the rivers.

Kids in the Bronx jump off this cliff into the Harlem river. The C is for Columbia University, which has a campus nearby. This is the point where the Hudson and Harlem rivers meet.

As I began exploring Inwood Hill Park, I started reading a fantastic book that helped me learn about Manhattan’s ecological history, “Mannahatta” by Eric W. Sanderson. It’s an amazing resource, investigating the biological diversity that flourished here before the city developed.

The best part about Inwood Hill Park is that it’s simply here, that this forest actually survived. It’s great to know that if I need a break from the city, I can wander through the woods for a little while and experience a whole different kind of Manhattan.

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Meandering Around Munich

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germany, munich, photography, travel

Last week, Tom and I were in Germany to attend my youngest cousin Christina’s wedding, which took place just outside of Munich. We spent a week in the city, wandering all around, Tom sampling wurst for the first time, me chowing down on as many pretzels as possible.

Here we are in Marienplatz.

I love the dragon that’s climbing up the side of the building. What’s he doing there?

We visited a few churches.

And admired the beautiful details on the exteriors of buildings.

We stopped for lunch one day in this oh-so-Bavarian spot

and on another day, visited one of my favorite museums, Lehnbachhaus, full of phenomenal work by German Expressionists.

I liked the details I found as we wandered around the city.

 

And had a sudden urge to jump on a bike.

We saw so many beautiful doors. This one had leather inserts.

These two belonged to a church.

One afternoon, we went out to the Olympic Stadium.

And finally, the wedding! Notice the Lederhosen sported by the band. Fun was had by all!

And then it was time to go home again. A short but sweet trip!

Are You Where You Think You Are?

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fort tryon park, hudson heights, manhattan, new york city, photography, travel, washington heights

Where do you live? Do you feel that you know your town or city well? Really well? Can you find your way through the short cuts, do you know the nooks and crannies? I thought I knew where I lived. But did I?

Here’s a place I discovered this year. Where do you think we are? This beautiful overlook faces a long, wide river.

This winding path is perfect for an afternoon walk.

Look how lush it is here, even in the fall.

Where is this forest?

And this street, flanked by a tall wall of rock?

Hmm, what’s this I see? It seems to be a subway entrance punched into the rock.

Yep, we’re in Manhattan.

This is my new neighborhood, Hudson Heights, and we just took a stroll through Fort Tryon Park, which is right outside my front door. Here’s a post I wrote last spring, on my first recon mission to the neighborhood to check it out as a possible place to live.

When most of us think of New York City, we think of skyscrapers and crowds of people and concrete and noise. What I didn’t discover until recently is that New York City has a flip side: 38,000 acres of parkland, leading the country in parkland as a percentage of city area at 19.5% of the city’s land.

Northern Manhattan, where I’m now living, has more than 500 acres of parkland between 155th Street and 220th Street, made up of 5 major parks and 9 miles of shoreline, including Manhattan’s last stand of virgin forest and the last remnant of the tidal marshes that once surrounded the island. Last Saturday morning as I woke up, I heard a red-tailed hawk screeching. I looked out the window and there he was, circling my apartment building with a friend.

It’s fun to be surprised.

Just One Shot

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central park, new york city, photography, travel

Since I just moved and am still digging my way out of an avalanche of boxes, my post this week will be succinct.

Central Park, looking north. The view from the terrace of the apartment I’m working in this week. We eat lunch here if it’s not too cold out. Sweet!

Farewell, Sweet Little Gardens

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alphabet city, art, east village, gardening, gardens, maps, new york city, photography, sketchbook

I finally closed on my new apartment, so I’ll be heading uptown later this week and moving in. One thing I’ll miss in the East Village is the plethora of community gardens. I thought it would be fun to sing a farewell love song to Alphabet City, an ode to the gorgeous oases that dot its streets. (If you don’t know where this area is, here’s a little help.)

I drew a map of the neighborhood’s community gardens. Look at them all. Amazing! Each is named. Some are over 35 years old.

When I first started wandering around the hood on my morning walks, I was surprised by the number of gardens. I’d never seen so many gardens in one area before, a number of them mature and substantial. After all, NYC real estate is valuable, and I wondered how these patches of community-supported soil had managed to stave off man’s irrepressible impulse to claim and build, not to mention the city’s ability to use “eminent domain” to seize any patch of earth it chooses.

The story of the development of these gardens is long and rich. In the 1960s and 70s, this part of the city was deeply neglected, falling prey to crime and slumlords. A number of buildings were destroyed by arsonists. The city razed these buildings, leaving open land, and since the neighborhood was dangerous and destitute, there was no interest in rebuilding.

In 1973, Liz Christy, an artist and activist, founded an environmental group called the Green Guerillas. They began by throwing “seed bombs” over the fences surrounding the lots, packed with seeds, fertilizer and water. She caught the attention of the city’s Parks Department, who leased her an empty lot on the corner of Bowery and Houston Streets for $1 a month. This became the Bowery Houston Community Farm and Garden, the first community garden in the city. It eventually contained 60 vegetable beds and inspired a horticultural revolution.

In 1978, the GreenThumb program was born, which encouraged neighborhood groups to lease land parcels for sometimes as little as a dollar a year. This program was intended to encourage grassroots neighborhood revitalization and was wildly successful. The catch? The gardens created were considered temporary and the city still retained rights over the land. This concept hummed along nicely until the 1990s, when the city decided it wanted to sell some of the gardens to developers to shore up the budget. By this point, the gardens had become such an integral part of their neighborhoods that the prospect of losing them was unthinkable. This being New York, all hell broke loose.

The Attorney General had to step in to broker a deal. One of the key players in that deal was Bette Midler, who, appalled at the lack of community green space in the city, had founded the New York Restoration Project a few years earlier. Her group bought 52 of the gardens outright. Of the 520 gardens in the city at that time, 400 were saved, many becoming permanent as part of the Parks Department.

Today, NYC has about 640 community gardens scattered among the five boroughs, with about 60 clustered in the East Village and Lower East Side. The gardens boast 20,000 members; the gardens themselves make up about 32 acres. Wow! is all I can say. Each garden hosts events and workshops and all are open to the public.

The garden below is a tiny sliver of land, yet it explodes with greenery.

Each garden has its own sign.

A bonus of the gardens is that lucky apartment dwellers can look out their windows and instead of seeing other buildings, they see trees.

Mural and garden and comfy bench! Does it get any better?

Some gardens contain sculptures, decorative nicknacks, or someone’s latest creative installation.

These lots once represented the detritus of a neighborhood under siege. It’s amazing to see how the concentrated work of determined visionaries was able to utterly turn around this devastation and from it, create not just a sense of community, but a vital part of the local culture that brings people together with a sense of purpose and joy.

Today, it’s thrilling to walk in Alphabet City and stumble on these lush pockets of green, welcoming anyone to sit down and take a deep breath. I’ll miss them on my morning walks, but I’ll be back often to wander among them again.

Summer Slips Away

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amagansett, beach, black and white, landscape, long island, ocean, photography

Last Sunday, we went to Atlantic Beach in Amagansett. It was chilly, a sharp wind coming off the water. My favorite season is heading this way.

Lazy Days of Summer

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beach, black and white, landscape, long island, ny, photography, summer

From Horses to Houses

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black and white photography, carriage house, history of new york city, horses, manhattan, new york city, photography

Once upon a time, Manhattan was powered by horses. They hauled carts loaded with food and fuel, they pulled carriages full of people, and the city was alive with the stables needed to house these hard working animals. About 75 carriage houses still survive in Manhattan, most of them clustered on the Upper East Side.

On East 73rd Street between Third Avenue and Lexington, nine have remained together, and when you stroll down the sidewalk, it’s easy to imagine the clip clopping of hooves on this pretty street. But who did these stables belong to? Why are they here in this spot?

This is another story of how Manhattan’s wealthy shaped the city’s architecture. Back in the 1800s, before apartment houses came into vogue and Fifth Avenue was still lined with single family homes, wealthy families had private horses and carriages. But it wouldn’t do to stink up the living room by keeping the horses next door, so carriage houses were built to accommodate the carriages, horses, groomsmen and stable boys. They had to be far enough away to keep the smells and sounds from disturbing the homeowners, but close enough for quick access. In Manhattan, this meant about three blocks east of Fifth Avenue.

These carriage houses weren’t just slapped together. They’re beautiful buildings, some designed by famous architects of the day, like Richard Morris Hunt, who designed the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They’re architecturally eclectic, with styles ranging from neo-Flemish Renaissance to Queen Anne, Beaux Arts and neo-Georgian. Many lush with  architectural detail, carriage houses are easy to identify by their giant doors and squat profiles.

Carriage houses are usually massive two- to three-story buildings, traditionally 25 feet wide and 100 feet deep, built full to the lot without a garden and with windows only at the front and back. (Townhouses, on the other hand, start at 18 feet wide and usually contain a garden in the rear.) Ceilings are often 13 or 14 feet high. Since they were built to support horses and carriages, most don’t have basements. The carriages were kept on the ground floor next to the horse stalls and tack room while the groomsmen and stable boys slept in the rooms above. The bigger and fancier the carriage house, the wealthier the homeowner.

Some houses feature details that reveal their original use. This horse head appears above an entry door. On the same building, the little horse heads repeat in the stone above the windows. Love that!

The giant carriage house below is now a single family home, renovated a few years ago. The exterior was sheathed in stucco for years, but when the new owners did their homework and discovered that the original brick lay beneath, they stripped the stucco away to reveal this beautiful facade. I live in the neighborhood and walked by this house often as it was being restored. It was thrilling to see the pristine original surface emerge.

Look at the brick detail and those amazing doors!

Most of the homes that first stood on this bock of 73rd Street were built in the 1860s. They were torn down between 1880 and 1900 when these carriage houses came on the scene. Two of the original houses remain. Below is one of them. Unlike the carriage houses, this little brick beauty is set back from the street to allow for a tiny front garden, which contains two big trees.

Over on 75th Street, also between Third Avenue and Lexington, stands a short row of carriage houses on the south side of the street.

Here’s a close up of one of the less ornate buildings. The brickwork is pretty nifty.

The last one is unusual, at 5 stories high.

I don’t know who lives in this house, but something tells me that the gargoyles above the doors aren’t original!

The two gorgeous, ornate buildings below are at 77th Street and Park Avenue. Both are now private residences. Look at those details in the stonework.

Most of the city’s carriage houses were destroyed to make way for apartment buildings and commercial structures. Some large commercial stables were converted to parking garages. At first, some of the carriage houses owned by the wealthy were also adapted to house cars and chauffeurs, but eventually they passed into other hands and now serve as private homes, fancy shops, art galleries and restaurants. These buildings rarely come on the market and are coveted for their scarcity.

It’s always a thrill to wander down a street and suddenly recognize a carriage house. I always wonder about the history of the building and the other stables that might have stood nearby.

A Quick Trip to Toronto

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architecture, black and white, bricks, canada, cn tower, ontario, photography, toronto, travel

Last Christmas, Tom gave me a gift of a long weekend in Toronto, Ontario, and last weekend, we made the trip.

On Friday, we hopped on our flight out of Newark, NJ at 10:30 a.m. and touched down in Toronto before noon. A quick drop off of the luggage at our hotel, and we were walking toward Little Italy in no time, the perfect place to be on Good Friday. As we ate our lunch, we watched the crowds gather for the annual Easter Parade, while the parade’s Grand Marshall enjoyed his pasta across the room.

The audience is gathering on College Avenue.

On Saturday, we jumped onto a streetcar for a ride downtown from our hotel on West Queen Street West. The route we took, the 501, is almost 25 km of track from start to finish. The streetcars, nicknamed Red Rockets, are gorgeous! I like the complicated wires they create overhead. (This was shot on Sunday, on Spadina Avenue looking south.)

We were headed toward the Distillery District. As we entered the District, we were greeted by these two sculptures. They remind me of the creatures that came to life in Guillermo del Toro’s movie “Pan’s Labyrinth.” I wouldn’t want to meet either in a dark alley.

The Distillery District is a group of 47 Victorian industrial buildings, once known as the Gooderham & Worts Distillery. The buildings were carefully restored a decade ago using 19th century materials merged with modern materials and green technologies. Today, the District is a wildly popular cultural center, housing theaters, design shops, art galleries, and restaurants. It’s beautiful!

Did you notice that the buildings are made of brick?

Because Toronto is built on a former lake bed (it’s perched on the edge of Lake Ontario), brick has always been cheap and plentiful. Don Valley Brick Works, which is now closed, provided bricks for thousands of commercial, industrial and residential structures in the city. Today, brick is still the most popular choice for residential construction.

We noticed the brickwork right away. On the street, these two beauties caught my eye.

Although brick is a simple, humble material, masons use it with great skill to create architectural interest with clever use of pattern, direction, texture and color.

Look at this! Bricks in a circle, bricks stepping down, arching over a door, playing horizontal movement against vertical, you name it.

The same techniques used on simple houses are used on fancy ones. An equal opportunity material! On this modest home, notice the way the teeth of the pattern wrap around the side of the house, how altering the brick’s direction creates architectural interest over the windows and how base of the house lifts up by using lighter bricks below.

On this grand house, some of the same methods are used but with more detail, along with horizontal bands and playful patterns below the edge of the roof.

It looks like these neighbors couldn’t agree on the preferred design.

We stayed in the Art and Design District, formerly a derelict part of the city, resuscitated  by artists 25 years ago. Today, it houses the largest concentration of art galleries in the city, along with a slew of little shops, bar, clubs, restaurants, and the Musuem of Contemporary Canadian Art.

I liked the murals that were scattered along the streets and alleyways.

One of the things that we noticed about Toronto is that much of its original architecture is in place. Although there are plenty of shiny new high rises, many of its industrial buildings have been restored for commercial and residential use, while the hundreds of three-story mixed use buildings that line the avenues have been neglected instead of replaced. It makes for a dynamic combination of old and new.

This former industrial buildings is now full of residential lofts.

The warmth and history of the neighborhoods are preserved with the survival of these quietly worn little store fronts (notice the brick!)

On Sunday, we enjoyed a tasty brunch before heading over to Kensington Market. Kensington Market is a living history of Toronto’s reputation as one of the most multicultural cities in the world. The market is a dynamic mish mash of spice stores, fruit and vegetable stands, clothing and vintage shops, restaurants and cafes. Unfortunately, on Easter Sunday morning, it was quiet as a mouse, so back on the streetcar we went, making our way toward the CN Tower, which looms over the downtown core.

At 1,814 feet, the Tower is the fifth largest freestanding structures in the world. Originally conceived as a telecommunications tower, somebody woke up and smelled the money and realized it would be a great tourist destination. Thus modified, it now attracts millions of visitors a year. No big surprise, since the views are incredible.

Looking to the northeast, straight into the downtown center.

Looking west, that’s Lake Ontario.

Then it was time to head back home. Even though we saw only small slices of this city, the biggest in Canada, we loved its warmth, friendliness, diversity, great transit system and good food. We’ll be back.

An Excursion to Upper Manhattan

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cityscape, hudson heights, landscape, new york city, photography, travel, washington heights

When some people think of Manhattan, they think of Times Square or Central Park or the Theater District or the Financial District or some other popular spot. But near the very top of Manhattan Island is a beautiful little neighborhood called Hudson Heights.

Hudson Heights, also called Fort Tryon and Fort George, is the northernmost part of Washington Heights, a long stretch of the city between 155th Street and about 190th Street, bound by the Harlem River on the east and the Hudson River on the west. As you can see from the map below, the east side of Manhattan disappears above 142nd Street, as the Harlem River veers west in its quest to join up with the Hudson.

I live on the Upper East Side (bottom red X). As the crow flies, Hudson Heights is about 6 miles northwest (top red X). But if I walk across Central Park and catch the A train on Central Park West, I can be there in about 35 minutes.

Upper Manhattan has two gorgeous parks. Fort Tryon Park, which starts at 190th Street, is 67 acres and houses a branch of the Metropolitan Museum called the Cloisters, a building reconstructed from five French cloisters, exhibiting 3,000 medieval European artworks.  Inwood Hill Park, at almost 200 acres, sits between 200th and 218th Street, making it the northernmost park in Manhattan. It has caves which were used by the Lenape Indians through the 17th century. It also contains the largest original forested land on the island and one of the only salt marshes. Both are high above the Hudson River with beautiful views in all directions.

In fact, the topography in Hudson Heights is so stark that the neighborhood is divided into The Hill and The Valley. Here we are on Bennett Avenue in the valley, looking up toward the hill. Look at the support under those apartment buildings!

If you want to get to the top of the hill, let’s hope you have a car, because if not, up the stairs you go. The highest natural point in Manhattan, 265 feet above sea level, is near the top of these stairs.

What’s not to love about the hill? Who wouldn’t like a spot perched on the river, looking at the beautiful George Washington Bridge?

Hudson Heights is a fairly new name for the area; it was once called Frankfurt-on-the-Hudson for its dense population of Germans and Austrians. Many of the buildings are Art Deco, completely preserved, with dramatic lobbies and original details.

Here’s where I’d like to live, hovering above the Hudson River, in this picturesque series of 1920s-era apartment buildings with their beautiful lead paned windows and Tudor design. So charming.

What’s not to love about a front entryway like this?

Just a few blocks further north is the entrance to Fort Tryon Park. In keeping with the rest of the area, it’s built on many levels, with stairs running up and down in all directions. I ate my lunch here, overlooking the water.

The Cloisters is a short walk away in the northern end of the Park. The building is peeking through the trees.

Everyone you walk, there seems to be another level. It’s like a big three-dimensional puzzle. Notice the street lamp high above the pathway.

This is the Henry Hudson Parkway, the highway that hugs Manhattan along the river. The structure on the right supports the overlook of the park built upon it. It’s possible to get all the way down to the water, but I don’t know where the path is.

A final view, looking south towards the Bridge. Just around the bend is the rest of Manhattan.

I love it up here. It feels so different from the rest of the city, with the wind blowing off the water, the beautiful old buildings and the dense trees creating a buffer between the land and the river. But if I hop on the super-speedy A train, in 20 minutes I’m smack on 59th Street and Central Park West, in the thick of things again. The best of both worlds.