Run to the Hall Fame for Great Americans, the Bronx... via the Brooklyn Bridge, Hudson River paths, and the three Heights

To best view the slideshow, click on the black border first, then the blue play button. If you click the green play button or the photo first, you will be redirected to my Picasa page. It's a bug I hope Google fixes soon.

The Hall of Fame for Great Americans is on the campus of Bronx Community College, which may be the grandest community college you'll ever see. Until the early 1970s, the campus belonged to New York University. The three main buildings—Gould Memorial Library, Philosophy Hall and Language Hall—were designed by Stanford White. (If you read Ragtime, you'll recall White as the architect who was murdered by Harry K. Thaw.) Gould Library, in particular, is considered one of White's greatest works. It sits on the crest of the highest point in the city.

Wrapped around the back of Gould is a colonnade, which became the Hall of Fame. This was the first and, for a time, most famous "Hall of Fame" in America. It was inspired by similar tributes to national cultural and political heroes in Europe: The Pantheon in Paris, Westminster Abbey in London, and Munich's Ruhmeshalle. Since the '70s, the Hall has fallen into obscurity, and it no longer elects new honorees. Here's how the New York Times described it last year:

On a leafy hilltop, dozens of busts of once-famous men stare mournfully at an empty walkway, their unfamiliar names chiseled in grand letters, their feats now obscure.

Josiah W. Gibbs? Augustus Saint-Gaudens? Welcome to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, a lonely outpost in the University Heights section of the Bronx.

...

Today, the colonnaded hall sits high above the city as an awkward appendage to the campus of Bronx Community College. To history buffs, it is a forgotten gem; to nearly everyone else, it is just forgotten.

While the college faculty has sought to integrate the Hall of Fame into the school’s curriculum, the disconnect between the honorees and the student body has grown only wider, leaving even the hall’s few defenders to acknowledge that it is in desperate need of a face-lift. More than half of the college’s students are Hispanic; the Hall of Fame, however, honors few women and even fewer minorities.

The Hall of Fame is definitely a forgotten, obscure, bit of New York, but the story overdoes the idea that the honorees are themselves forgotten and obscure (and somehow completely irrelevant to anyone whose parents speak Spanish.) Harriet Beecher Stowe? Abraham Lincoln? Mark Twain? FDR? These are obscure? Anyway, I have to agree that it would be great to see this overlooked city landmark revived and updated, not to mention diversified.

I couldn't take as many pictures here as I wanted. It was a holiday, so the campus was technically closed (although the gate was wide open.) The security guards who stopped me on the quad were unhappy about me taking pictures of the buildings. They were nice enough about it--they let me go to the Hall of Fame and take pictures there. But the rest of the campus apparently can't be photographed. Seems like a crazy rule to me, even post 9-11. Then again, the jogger with a camera probably seemed just as crazy to them.

On the way to the Bronx, I crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and ran along the Hudson until I got to Morningside Heights. From there I went to Hamilton Heights and the gorgeous campus of CCNY, one of my favorite spots in the city. (This run turned out to have a collegiate theme.) Next came the eastern end of Washington Heights and the University Heights Bridge over the Harlem River. After leaving BCC, I ran another mile or so in University Heights to the subway. All told, I ran a bit over 19 miles.