Lewis Mumford on Fort Tryon Park.

Lewis Mumford was a leading American intellectual during the 1930s and 1940s. He was particularly well known for his column in The New Yorker called "The Sky Line". This review is an excerpt of his November 9, 1935 review of Fort Tryon Park.

A park with a view

The best thing about Fort Tryon Park, which has just been opened, is the site. And to say this is not being unkind to the planners, the Olmsted Brothers, who have done, in the main, a pretty commendable job. But the point is that this site gives one of the most magnificent views in the world, with the Palisades on the opposite shore swerving northward to the bend facing Yonkers, and the George Washington Bridge curving against the sky to the south. I know no landscape near a big city that takes the breath away more completely. Edinburgh from Castle Hill or Arthur's Seat, the Havelsee from the heights above it in Berlin, and the Thames Valley from Richmond are fine; but this one view from Washington Heights freezes the heart, rips out the gizzard, adn curdles the backbone -- that is, if landscapes ever have that effect on you.

The first test of a landscape architect's competence is whether he has made the most of these sweeps and views; here Fort Tryon Park comes off well. There is a main entrance from Fort Washington Avenue, flanked by heavy buffs of the native schist, and a broad promenade leads to the two terraces at the highest point, from the bigger of which one views the Hudson, from the smaller of which one looks eastward at the panic of bad building that has defaced the slopes and surrounding areas of Fort George. The benches along the promenade are above the level of the pedestrians, and the elms are planted only on the east side of the path, while the slope that falls toward the Hudson is treated as a naturalistic garden, covered with a profusion of low-lying plants. So you see the designers knew there was a view.

The observation terraces are surrounded by a low rampart of stone, and again the benches are elevated on successive levels to keep the view clear. Don't ask me why the designers used sand to cover the surface of this windy upland. That seems to me a major error, for the dust blows into the eyes and nullifies all the careful provisions for an unrestricted view. Cobblestones with grass growning between, such as those which now grace Fifth Avenue along Central Park, would have been preferable. The architectural elements in this design are sincere but somewhat commonplace: if they do not spoil the view, they do not add to it. The refreshment house, with its high-gabled slate roof, seems to me definitely out of the picture; the old-fashioned masonry and the old-fashioned windows missed the opportunity for giving the people inside something to see. There is no poetry in the stone and no freshness in the architect's feeling for it. Had a man like Frank Lloyd Wright been given this great butte to play with, that would have been another story.

Still, the planting has been very pleasantly and intelligently handled, in a sort of orderly naturalism which did not hesitate to use the Japanese yew and the English ivy as well as the native fern -- and, as I said, the view has been studiously respected. That is something; indeed, it is a great deal.

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