The acre 27 ha park is situated on a ridge in Upper Manhattan , close to the Hudson River to the west. It extends mostly from nd Street in the south to Riverside Drive in the north, and from Broadway in the east to the Henry Hudson Parkway in the west.
The area remained sparsely populated during the 19th century, but by the turn of the 20th century, it was the location of large country estates. Beginning in January , philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. Billings and several others to create Fort Tryon Park. He engaged the Olmsted Brothers firm to design the park and hired James W.
Dawson to create the planting plan. Rockefeller gave the land to the city in , after two prior attempts to do so were unsuccessful, and the park was completed in Rockefeller also bought sculptor George Gray Barnard 's collection of medieval art and gave it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art , which from to built the Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park to house the collection. The park is built on a high formation of Manhattan schist with igneous intrusions and glacial striations from the last ice age.
The park's design included extensive plantings of various flora in the park's many gardens, including the Heather Garden, which was restored in the s. Besides the gardens and the Cloisters, the park has extensive walking paths and meadows, with views of the Hudson and Harlem Rivers. Fort Tryon Park covers It is bounded on the west by the Henry Hudson Parkway , on the north by Riverside Drive , on the east by Broadway and Bennett Avenue, and on the south by the alignment of nd Street.
A small section at the park's southwestern corner is located between Cabrini Boulevard to the east and Henry Hudson Parkway to the west, and is bounded to the south by th Street. The park is built on a formation of Manhattan schist and contains examples of igneous intrusions and of glacial striations from the last ice age.
