A dramatic view from 1916 of the cliffside mansions of Riverside Drive

What would it have been like to live on Riverside Drive in 1916? Based on this aerial image taken that year between about 73rd and 78th Streets, the Drive was all about man-made luxury set against natural incredible beauty.

High above the Hudson River is a spectacular chateau-like mansion taking up an entire block. This is the 86-room Schwab mansion, built in 1906 for steel magnate Charles Schwab. North of the Schwab mansion are dozens of Queen Anne and Beaux-Arts townhouses, separate homes joined together to form a palace—or a fortress.

But nothing ever stays the same in New York. Within a generation, the Riverside Drive born in the Gilded Age and meant to be the city’s new “millionaire colony” would mostly be torn down and replaced by the line of tall apartment buildings still standing today.

In the 1930s, the railroad tracks between Riverside Park and the Hudson River would be sunk underground. Landfill would double the park’s size, changing it from a pastoral English-style park with a bridle path to the kind of playground-packed accessible green space in favor today.

Today’s Riverside Drive is still dramatic and lovely. But this image shows us a moment in time in the early, more exclusive life of Riverside Drive—more than a century old and lost to the ages.

Learn more about the history of Riverside Drive by joining Ephemeral New York on a walking tour of the Drive! Space is still available for the tour on Sunday, August 6 and a second tour on Sunday, August 20.

[Image: Library of Congress]