It looked like an elegant streetlight: a slender pole of bronze standing on a granite base 18 feet high over a circular sitting area that’s part of Riverside Park.
Planted into a bed of flowers and shrubbery at 72nd Street and the beginning of Riverside Drive, the globe-topped monument consisted of inscriptions and bas reliefs inspired by Henry Hudson, whose namesake river ran just to the west.
You won’t find the monument there anymore; it’s long since been carted away.
So how did a memorial to Henry Hudson end up on Riverside Drive, opposite the Drive’s row house mansions and free-standing palaces, including the 75-room, Chateau-like Schwab Mansion (at right)—and why was this remnant of early 1900s Gotham removed?
The idea for the Hudson monument goes back to the turn of the century city. That’s when New York began planning the Hudson-Fulton celebration—a massive two-week event commemorating the 300th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s exploration of the river that bears his name, as well as the 100th anniversary of Robert Fulton’s Clermont paddlewheel steamboat.
The celebration would run from September 25 to October 9, 1909. Festivities in the works were unlike anything the city had ever seen, at least since the Washington Centennial in 1889.
To honor these maritime pioneers, officials scheduled a (above) flotilla of naval ships (with replicas of the Clermont and Hudson’s Half-Moon), fireworks, two parades, signal fires from Governor’s Island to Spuyten Duyvil, and the nighttime lighting of bridges, statues, and city buildings with thousands of incandescent bulbs.
Amid the excitement of all these plans, the Colonial Dames of America decided to build the bronze monument to Hudson. It was unveiled on September 29, 1909, in then middle of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration, to a crowd of Americans and Dutch dignitaries.
“There was a great fanfare of trumpets, a little woman in a pongee suit pulled a cord and ran from under, the Stars and Stripes came down, the Dutch colors followed, and the tall bronze and granite shaft . . . stood revealed,” wrote the New-York Tribune.
For the next five decades, the Hudson Memorial remained on Riverside Drive. And it might be there today if it wasn’t “toppled by a truck in the 1950s” as NYC Parks put it.
Evidently it was too damaged to repair, or perhaps the popularity of the monument had run its course—especially in a city that honored Hudson with an eponymous river, a northern Manhattan bridge, and a parkway.
But there is a memorial at this circular spot once again: a sculpture of Eleanor Roosevelt. Dedicated in 1996, “this piece depicts Roosevelt in heroic scale half-seated against a boulder with her hand on her chin in contemplation,” notes NYC Parks.
Surrounded again by greenery, the circle is a gathering spot for strollers and loungers. Instead of the magnificent Schwab mansion, the memorial stands in the shadow of Schwab House, the red-brick co-op that replaced the chateau in 1950.
It’s a fitting tribute to a New York City-born First Lady, and like the sculpture of Joan of Arc 21 blocks north at Riverside Drive and 93rd Street, it’s one of the few statues in a city park that honors a woman who actually lived—not a mythological or fictional female.
Riverside Drive is lined with fascinating memorials from the early 1900s, from recognizable figures like Joan of Arc to dramatic monuments honoring fallen firefighters and Civil War veterans. Find out their backstories by signing up for Ephemeral New York’s Riverside Drive Mansions & Monuments walking tour. Sunday, June 16 still has openings—click here for more info!
[Top image: LOC, 1910; second image, 1912: MCNY, X2010.11.3083; third image, 1909: MCNY, F2011.33.560]
Ephemeral New York 