Libbey Castle during demolition, March 1931įurther south near West 185th Street and Riverside Drive-once called Boulevard Lafayette-was the neo-Gothic behemoth known as Paterno Castle. It was known as 'The Castle' and was built by its owner to imitate a castle he had seen in Austria." Owned by a succession of prominent figures that included William "Boss" Tweed, the famous residence was eventually razed for the initial development of Fort Tryon Park. It was built in the 1850s near what is today the cul-de-sac at Margaret Corbin Drive, and according to an 1895 "Gossip of Gotham" piece in the New York Times, it was "the only dwelling of its kind ever built in America. Woodcliff Castle, later and better known as Libbey Castle, was the crown jewel of northern Manhattan's landscape. Washington Heights had already been attracting ambitious and evocative architecture since the mid-nineteenth century, when wealthy New Yorkers began to see the rocky hills and high river views as an enticing location for their "country" estates. Today, visitors can observe the difference in stone color and texture on the lower sections of The Cloisters, contrasted against the tower and main structure that serve as evidence of the two distinct aspects of its design: the fortress and the European monastery. Rockefeller had felt since childhood that the rough and scrubby "North Hill" would make an ideal park, and decades later, when he acquired the property and helped to create Fort Tryon Park (where The Cloisters is located), he favored elements reminiscent of when the property housed a military fort during the Revolutionary War the stonework on the Park walls and Museum ramparts reflects this rougher evocation. Rockefeller Jr.'s boyhood fascination with the ruins of Kenilworth Castle in England, but it was ultimately decided that a monastic plan would better suit The Metropolitan Museum of Art's newly acquired collection of medieval art and architecture. Initial designs for The Cloisters were, in fact, inspired by benefactor John D. The Cloisters, of course, is not a castle, though parents may at times describe it as such to their young children who are excited about visiting with dragons and unicorns. Postcard of Paterno Castle, as seen from Riverside Drive and West 181st Street, undated However, despite its once-impenetrable terrain, or maybe because of it, Washington Heights is a place where some of the wildest and most romantic medieval-architecture fantasies in New York City have been realized for over 150 years. From a distance, blocks of apartment buildings appear like castellated European villages. Concrete staircases and creaky subway elevators connect different sections of the neighborhood, and buildings stand tall on stilts driven deep into Manhattan schist.
Keysmith in washington heights series#
Washington Heights-the neighborhood in northern Manhattan that houses The Cloisters museum and gardens-is built upon a series of bluffs and cliffs.
0 kommentar(er)
