This image from the 1870s of a sparse, country-like Riverside Drive is older than the Drive itself
Riverside Drive didn’t officially open until 1880. But the planning of what was then called Riverside Avenue began in the mid-1860s, when a scenic boulevard was proposed alongside a new public park yet to be built beside the Hudson River.
That park—today’s Riverside Park—began opening in the 1870s. By September 1879, the beginning of Riverside Avenue at 72nd Street was laid out, paved, and graded—and an unknown photographer decided to take a photograph.
It’s not the clearest scene, and it helps to click into the image and enlarge it. On the right is a sidewalk, a nice addition for the pedestrians expected to enjoy the Drive as a place for parade-watching and promenading.
A white picket fence surrounds the house on the corner, which looks like a simple wood frame dwelling similar to the other wood houses that dotted the West Side in the early Gilded Age. The posh Beaux-Arts townhouses on this corner today wouldn’t come for another two decades, when the Drive rivaled Fifth Avenue as Manhattan’s millionaire mile.
On the left is a low curved stone wall, likely marking the entrance to Riverside Park; it’s similar to the stone wall on the site today. Trees flank both sides of the Drive, and what seems like part of a wagon wheel can be seen on the far left, peeking into the frame.
The figure in the middle appears to be a man with a photography tripod. But it’s actually supervising engineer William J. McAlpine, a New York-born civil engineer who oversaw the “Riverside Contract,” per an 1878 New York Times article.
The photo, dated 1879 and part of the Digital Collections of the New York Public Library, is a rare visual record of Riverside Drive on the cusp of becoming one of the Gilded Age city’s most sought-after residential addresses—before the mansions, townhouses, statues, and memorials.
That Riverside Drive, seen in a 1934 NYPL photo (second image) looking down the Drive to 72nd Street, is the one most of us know today, though mansions and townhouses gave way to apartment buildings.
In the 1870s it was still an unfinished street cutting through what was once farmland and estate grounds—overlooking a sliver of a park that held promise and possibilities. (Above, an image of the built-up Drive from 74th street in 1910)
Curious about Riverside Drive’s early days and its development into one of New York’s most beautiful streets? Join Ephemeral New York on a Gilded Age-themed walking tour of the Drive from 83rd to 107th Streets on Sunday, June 29 or Sunday, July 20 that takes a look at the mansions and monuments of this legendary thoroughfare.
[Third image: History101.nyc]
