Riverside Drive (Manhattan)

Riverside Drive (Manhattan)

Riverside Drive is a scenic north-south thoroughfare in the Manhattan borough of New York City. The boulevard runs on the west side of Manhattan, generally parallel to the Hudson River from 72nd Street to near the George Washington Bridge at 181st Street. At points Riverside Drive is a wide avenue; at other points it divides to provide a serpentine local street with access to the residential buildings. Some of the most coveted addresses in New York are located along its route.

Riverside Drive was designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted as part of his concept for Riverside Park. It passes through the Manhattan neighborhoods of the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights, over Manhattanville in West Harlem by way of the Riverside Drive Viaduct and through Washington Heights. Among the monuments, sights and institutions along its route are the Eleanor Roosevelt statue by Penelope Jencks, the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, Anna Hyatt Huntington's Joan of Arc, the Fireman's Memorial at 100th Street (a focus of spontaneous dedications of flowers and teddy bears after 9/11) Grant's Tomb, The Interchurch Center, Riverside Church, Sakura Park, Riverbank State Park, Trinity Church Cemetery, Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center and Fort Washington Park.

Only a few stretches of Riverside Drive were built along an older road; due to the hilly terrain, Riverside Drive passes over 96th Street, 125th Street and 158th Street on viaducts; at 125th and 158th Streets, an old alignment is present, also named Riverside Drive while the viaduct portion or main route is officially named (but not signed) "Riverside Drive West". At its north end, Riverside Drive used to merge with the northbound lanes of the Henry Hudson Parkway. However, in 2005, the retaining wall of Castle Village collapsed onto the roadway and on the northbound lanes of the Henry Hudson Parkway. The wall was repaired and the roadway reopened in March 2008.

Riverside Drive terminated at Grant's Tomb in a cul-de-sac, prior to the construction of the Manhattan Valley viaduct, spanning 125th Street, completed in 1900. North of 158th Street the right of way which currently carries the name Riverside Drive was known as Boulevard Lafayette, which led to Plaza Lafayette in Hudson Heights.

The section exiting the parkway at the Dyckman Street exit and ending at Broadway is still known as Riverside Drive.

The eastern side of Riverside Drive, once a series of luxuriously finished rowhouses interspersed with free-standing nineteenth century mansions set in large lawns, today is lined with luxury apartment buildings and some remaining town houses from the Drive's beginning to 118th street. The brick-faced Schwab House occupies the site of "Riverside", built for steel magnate Charles M. Schwab, formerly the grandest and most ambitious house ever built on the island of Manhattan. Among the more eye-catching apartment houses are the curved facades of The Colosseum and the Paterno and the Cliff-Dwellers Apartments at 96th Street, with mountain lions and buffalo skulls on its friezes. The Henry Codman Potter house at 89th Street is one of the few remaining mansions on Riverside Drive; it houses Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim. Across from it is the Soldiers and Sailors Monument (1902). At 99th Street is a memorial to Beaux-Arts architect John Merven Carrère by his partner Thomas Hastings. The Firefighters' Memorial at 100th Street was sculpted by Attilio Piccirilli.