Grant's Tomb, New York
The narrow and elevated northern prolongation of Manhattan is the picturesque district of Washington Heights. Here is the attractive Trinity Church Cemetery, laid out on the battlefield of Harlem Heights, a hotly contested Revolutionary conflict, fought on September 16, 1776, and some distance northward, on the highest point of the island, elevated two hundred and sixty feet above the Hudson River, there are still seen the remains of Fort Washington, which was bravely but unsuccessfully defended against British attacks in the following November, and had to be abandoned. Across the Harlem River is the ancient suburb of Morrisania. Here was Washington's headquarters during those conflicts, and here lived Lewis Morris, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and his half-brother, Gouverneur Morris, a noted New York statesman, who bore a striking resemblance to General Washington. The historic old house at Morrisania was afterwards acquired by Madame Jumel, and when Aaron Burr, in his old age and poverty, met this wealthy widow, he courted and married her in 1833, he being then seventy-eight years old. Here they lived for a brief period "during the days of his octogenarian love," as the annalist has it, but soon quarrelled and separated. The house is now preserved as a Revolutionary Museum. Not far away was the Grange, the home of Alexander Hamilton, who planted there a group of thirteen trees named after the thirteen original States of the Union, in which all flourished, as we are credibly informed, excepting the "South Carolina tree," which persisted in growing up very crooked. Upon the top of Washington Heights and the precipitous slopes of the Spuyten Duyvel and Harlem there are many fine villas, and down in the bottom of the gorge the New York Central Railroad seeks its route out to the Hudson River bank. The historic old King's Bridge spans the Harlem, deep down in the valley, while all along the river is the fine new drive, the "Speedway," upon which the New Yorkers display the qualities of their fastest horses.
The splendid Washington Bridge, built of steel at a cost of $2,700,000, carries one of the Boulevards across the Harlem at a height of one hundred and fifty feet; but the great landmark is the High Bridge which brings the Croton Aqueduct over, its tall granite piers and graceful arches displaying singular beauty from every point of view. This aqueduct is forty miles long, and has been well described as "a structure worthy of the Roman Empire." It originally cost $12,500,000, subsequent improvements absorbing millions more. The Croton River, coming down through Westchester County, falls into the Hudson about twenty-five miles above the city, and its headwaters are dammed, making artificial lakes gathering the supply. The Aqueduct was finished in 1842, and, going through tunnels and rock-cuttings, has a cross-section of about fifty-four feet and an inclination of one foot to the mile, or thirty-three feet in the distance to the Harlem River. About one hundred and fifteen millions of gallons go through it daily, moving at the rate of a mile and a half per hour. Three huge pipes carry the water across the High Bridge at one hundred and sixteen feet elevation. There are eight arches in the river crossing, their openings being eighty feet wide and one hundred feet high, to allow the passage of vessels, and seven narrower arches of fifty feet span on the banks. At the New York end of this picturesque bridge is the tall tower, rising two hundred and sixty-five feet, which has water pumped into its surmounting tank to supply the highest parts of the island. New York, however, long since outgrew the capacity of this famous aqueduct, so that a new one of much greater size was tunnelled underground and finished in 1890, which is fourteen feet high, and bored at an average depth of one hundred and fifty feet below the surface, and is carried three hundred feet under the Harlem River bed, its estimated daily capacity being three hundred millions of gallons. The receiving reservoirs in Central Park hold over a thousand millions of gallons. An imposing gate-house at One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street admits this supply into the northern city mains. The great Quaker Bridge dam across the Croton is two hundred and seventy-seven feet high and thirteen hundred and fifty feet long, making the most enormous artificial reservoir in the world, holding forty thousand millions of gallons. It has cost New York over $70,000,000 to thus insure an ample water supply, free of all risk from drought.
THE BRONX AND THE NEW PARKS.
Across Harlem River, to the north and east, is the attractive region of the Bronx, much of the surface being yet in its primitive condition as maintained in the old estates that have come down from the early days of the Knickerbockers. Here are being laid out several new and large parks. Van Cortlandt Park, near the Hudson, about four miles north of the High Bridge, covers about eleven hundred acres, Pelham Bay Park, on the shore of Long Island Sound, nine miles from the Harlem, seventeen hundred and fifty acres, and the Bronx Park, between them, six hundred and fifty acres. These three great pleasure-grounds are being gradually developed, and the plan is to connect them with magnificent tree-lined avenues six hundred feet wide. The western verge of Van Cortlandt Park finely overlooks the Hudson, and it is intended largely for military uses, with parade-grounds and rifle-ranges. It has an attractive lake; and the quaint old mansion where lived the Van Cortlandts, whose successive generations owned the estate, built in 1748, is preserved as a Museum of Colonial Relics. To the eastward, a shallow and almost aimless little stream, flowing from above White Plains down to Long Island Sound, with many pools and rapids, and occasionally broadening into mirror-like lakes, was long the eastern boundary of New York City. This is the Bronx River, coming through a green, well-watered and shaded valley, a half to three-quarters of a mile wide, and a considerable part of this bewitching region makes the Bronx Park,
"Where gentle Bronx, clear, winding, flows
The shadowy banks between;
Where blossomed bell or wilding rose
Adorns the brightest green."
The wildness and seclusion of this place, its natural charms and romantic character, make one almost believe that New York cannot possibly be near such an attractive wilderness. Nature seems to have especially designed it for a park, and art cannot improve it. Huge rocks and giant trees flourish here, among them the Delancey pine, one hundred and fifty feet high and straight as an arrow, standing in a prominent position and having a huge branch reaching upward upon one side, with interlacing boughs, making it appear not unlike a gigantic harp. The Delanceys once owned the place. A "balanced boulder" is nearby, weighing hundreds of tons, yet very easily rocked. The Bronx in one portion flows deep down between high, rocky walls, where the thin-armed white birches wave their slender limbs a hundred feet above the water. Here was an early home of the Lorillards, now a Museum and large Botanical Garden. Here are also the grounds of the New York Zoological Society, the animals roaming in extensive enclosures, where they are placed, as far as possible, in their native surroundings.