85th Anniversary Year Celebration 85th Anniversary Memory Book

Fort Tryon Park Memory Book

Fort Tryon Park is playing a vital role during this pandemic. Throughout its 85 years, the park has served as a place for solace, comfort, unity, and creativity. What has it meant to you? Share your photos and memories made in Fort Tryon Park by emailing [email protected]. Thank you to everyone who has already shared with us to help tell the story of Fort Tryon Park in honor of its 85th Anniversary Year in 2020!

To celebrate the park’s opening on October 12, 1935, the Fort Tryon Park Trust will offer history and special programs (tours, lectures, and more), a celebratory event in the fall, and information about how the impact of the Trust and the involvement of the park’s surrounding community continues to keep the 67-acre park maintained and thriving. Sign up for our e-newsletter for the most recent news! For updates, view our Calendar of Events, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @forttryonparktrust.

Park Memory: Vivian Berger/1940s

“This is me at age about three during the great snow of 1947. My father used to take me out sledding. He would pull me and I would say, ‘Faster, Daddy!'” I grew up at 105 Arden Street, just across the street from the lower entrance to the park. I played all the time in the playground that was about at the level of Dyckman Street. I spent a lot of time in the Cloisters, too. I loved Fort Tryon Park and will always have great memories of it.”

Park Memory: Stan Friedmann/1950s

“I was born in 1953 and lived in the Fort Tryon Apartments until 1982. This picture of my dad, Heinrich Friedmann, and I was taken in the lower park on a stroll we took together. My Dad was a refugee from Vienna and a Holocaust Survivor. Our walks in the park were happy and hopeful times for us both. When he died in 1971 I mourned on the lawn in the upper park on that overlooks the Hudson when you enter the main entrance on Fort Washington Avenue. There was an area of Pine Trees there that provided solace and comfort to a grieving son. I will never forget it. Ten years later I was pushing my son Paul in his stroller all around the park that I grew to know and love so well as a boy and young man. I am 67 now and live in Bergen County but I visit often and recently took Paul’s young daughters to the park and The Met Cloisters for the first time. Another generation of the Friedmann family now shares the love of this magical home away from home.”

Park Memory: Lilian Mercado/1950s and 1970s

“As long as I can remember my family and I have been going to this park on all occasions especially on Easter Sunday. I always loved looking at the garden flowers and early blooms. These pictures bring back so many memories when we used to visit the park.  The following photo was taken during one Easter Sunday back in the 1950s and the other is Mom and me walking along the garden path during the 1970s.” -Lil

Park Memory: Margaret O'Neill-Janosik/1960s

We are on Devil’s Hill (Dongan Lawn) where everyone went sledding. It was my Confirmation day from OLQM, my sister is with me in her Dutch boy cap.

Two sisters on Easter Sunday at the Linden Terrace/Abby’s Lawn Archway.

Park Memory: The Sun House/1970s

Fort Tryon Park’s gazebo during the 1970s when the park began falling into disrepair due to the country’s economic crisis and the decrease in funding of New York City parks.

Park Memory: Linden Terrace Graffiti/1980s

A graffiti-covered Linden Terrace Archway in 1984 during the economic downturn when the park fell into disrepair, before the Friends Committee and the Fort Tryon Park Trust were formed to protect the park.

Park Memory: Marcia Garibaldi/1990s

Former park gardener, Marcia Garibaldi, in 1999 with local middle school students at a Horticulture Society’s “Appleseeds” program tour.

 

Park Memory: Susan Kalev/2000

A remembrance of the beautiful beech tree on the Cloisters Lawn that was destroyed by vandalism, which was common in the park throughout the 1990s.

Park Memory: Fort Tryon Park's 75th Anniversary/2010

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg (right) and former NYC Parks Commissioner, Adrian Benepe (left), unveil a dedication plaque in honor of David Rockefeller (center left) at Fort Tryon Park’s 75th Anniversary Gala. The ceremony was followed by celebratory fireworks viewed from the Linden Terrace. 

Park Memory: Leslie Day/2010s

Author, guide, former science teacher, and ardent Fort Tryon Park supporter, Leslie Day, with her two-year-old granddaughter discovering the Heather Garden, July 2016.

Park Memory: Nereida Delgado & Frederick McKinnon/2010s

“Fort Tryon Park has been an important part of my life for the many years that I lived at 100 Overlook Terrace. But it became even more important when I was able to share its beauty (and other activities) with a woman I loved. The attached photo and description of its significance pertains to my dedicating a bench. Dedicating the very first bench on the southeast corner of the Cloisters Lawn was a 2016 Christmas present for Nereida Delgado, my loving partner. Nereida, who had been fighting pancreatic cancer for the past seven years, and I often enjoyed the pleasures of the park and we continued to do so until the love of my life passed away 10 months later.”
The Kissing Bench
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye.”  -Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Nereida & Freddy were here.

Park Memory: Arturo Padilla & Jonathan Tichler/2020

“We are very happy to have found the sign that told us of the effort to collect the pictures of our collective lives and memories in Fort Tryon Park. My partner Jonathan Tichler and I, Arturo Padilla, moved to Hudson View Gardens in 2015, and since then the park has become a place of solace, a wonderful way to get the day started, and lovely spot to watch the sun set. I spent practically every morning during 2017 walking around the Heather Garden on my way to take the subway. I photographed nature bursting in spring and fading in the fall; then I put my photos together in a little book called “Blossoms of Wonder” that I printed so that can I give it to my special loved ones and share the joy. It has now been 5 years since we arrived in this unique neighborhood of Manhattan, unlike any other in the rest of the island, we have found ourselves wandering through the park in these days of social distancing, and finding calm and togetherness along the many paths. We are grateful to be a part of it with our neighbors.”

Linden Terrace Archway, March 2020.

Park Memory: Marcia Annenberg/2020

“As this pandemic cloisters us within our homes, I am blessed to have the Heather Garden one block away. Many are the hours I have spent there waiting to see what blooms next. This spring did not disappoint. The crocus, lenten roses, and daffodils announced a new vibrant season of beauty.”   -Marcia Annenberg

You are invited to a Toast to Fort Tryon Park