Bookable
An Apollonaut travel guide
The place behind the detail.
A garden founded in 1891, a glasshouse of 1902 and an old-growth forest offer several ways into the story of the New York Botanical Garden.
On this page
The Brittons and Kew
Nathaniel Lord Britton and Elizabeth Gertrude Britton led the campaign for a botanical garden in New York, inspired by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. The garden was established in Bronx Park on 28 April 1891.
It was free to visit for more than a century before it began charging admission in 1994.
Glass, stone and books
The Enid A. Haupt Conservatory was completed in 1902 and became a city landmark in 1973. The LuEsther T. Mertz Library, founded in 1899, is housed in a Renaissance Revival building of 1897–1900 by Robert W. Gibson.
Beside the Bronx River, the Stone Mill was built in 1840 as the Lorillard Snuff Mill.
A protected landscape
The garden became a National Historic Landmark on 28 May 1967. Its Thain Family Forest has never been logged.
This history belongs to the place and the people who shaped it. The History page offers a longer introduction, and the timeline gives a short route through selected milestones.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.
