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June 24, 2006

Wave Hill

I've been reminded, again, that New York City is rather large, and has many, many hidden spaces that I do not know about. For example, Wave Hill. Wave Hill has popped up in a friend's Flickr photostream many times in connection with photos of his kids running down a grassy hill. Because I am an ignorant and poorly-informed New Yorker, I filed Wave Hill away in my brain as the name of a grassy hill somewhere in the Bronx that looks vaguely like a wave.

Later, a co-worker of Derek's got a job at Wave Hill, so I surmised that it might involve a bit more than a grassy hill. In fact, it's a "public garden and cultural center" that has been open to the public for 30 years.

Derek and I went there after work one day last week (the aforementioned friend invited us for a sunset gathering) and discovered that it's a beautiful spot. A former family estate, it includes several buildings, a horticulture center, gardens, a beautiful expanse of green grass with adirondack-like chairs placed in twos and threes, and a terrace overlooking the Hudson and the Palisades beyond. The view is fantastic, especially when the sun is setting. It feels a bit like the Cloisters -- it's quiet, private, old, and there's so much greenery that it feels luxurious after you've spent a sweltering day looking at Manhattan concrete.

The grass seemed so inviting that I took off my shoes. On a walk from one building to another, we saw two rabbits. Not rats, not pidgeons, but actual wild brown rabbits. The first one we saw was directly in our path and didn't seem fazed by our approach. I thought it was a strategically-placed sculpture, but then it hopped away, and we noticed another one in the bushes. I'm still kind of amazed by that.

As we walked around, Wave Hill kept getting more complicated and impressive. One of the buildings houses art installations, and a beautiful and quite large knitted chandelier is currently on display. It was felted to resemble dark green vines and drooping pink flowers, and I highly recommend a visit for any crafty New York-based readers. Other exhibits explore how we experience our environment through smell, sustainability, and birdsong (the birdsong one was installed in the surrounding trees). A big old stone house at one end of the property has some gorgeous trees out front with big wide trunks. Apparently Mark Twain had a treehouse in one of them once. Here's a bit of history, with a photo of the view.

A downpour sent us into the conservatory (see photo, from Wave Hill website), where we found hundreds of plants. I am still upset about forgetting my camera -- there were so many unusual plants in there. We found cacti with leaves arranged like a rose bloom, plants with peach fuzz, and plants that looked nothing like plants at all. The herb garden out back included many familiar spice names (think Indian spices) that we'd never really thought about as living plants. (There's lots of information on the Wave Hill site about the various gardens and plants.)

Here's the visiting info. In June and July, you can have dinner and watch the sunset on "Sunset Wednesdays." We got lazy and drove there, but you can take MetroNorth (it's a $3 ticket or something like that) and easily walk from the train station. Too bad it's not closer to Brooklyn!

Posted by csageday at June 24, 2006 01:42 AM

Comments

Posted by: Tony at June 29, 2006 05:33 AM

Posted by: Cindy at June 29, 2006 11:10 AM

Posted by: Tony at July 12, 2006 08:32 PM

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