After “Riverside Avenue” officially opened in 1880, it was billed as Manhattan’s new elite thoroughfare, soon to rival Fifth Avenue as a street of Gilded Age mansions.
On Riverside, “‘any ordinary millionaire’ could afford to construct what the Record & Guide considered a proper millionaire’s home; ‘a fashionable edifice surrounded by grounds and having such approaches in the way of lawns and walks that will heighten the architectural ensemble,'” quoted Peter Salwen in his 1989 book, Upper West Side Story.
Though Riverside Drive (the name was officially changed in 1908) never replaced Fifth Avenue in wealth and luxury, it came close—attracting monied Manhattanites who paid builders and architects big bucks to construct elaborate mansions overlooking Riverside Park with Hudson River views.
But despite the high-class dwelling houses going up on this avenue of gentle curving carriage drives, many parts of the Drive still reflected a much poorer area, one where residents lived in flimsy wood houses that could be described as shacks or shanties.
Who lived in them? Probably longtime residents who were eclipsed by the Gilded Age economy. Before the late 19th century, this stretch of what became the Upper West Side was dotted with farms and industry from the Hudson River, and there were no developers interested in getting their hands on what eventually became expensive land.
One resident was a man known as “Uncle Jim” Miller. He made headlines when he died in his shack “on fashionable Riverside Drive opposite 170th Street,” as The New York Age put it in a 1922 story.
Miller, a laborer, made the paper because he was the “last squatter” on Riverside Drive, dying in his “one-room board shack” strengthened by “sheets of tin” after 22 years living there. He was 73.
Riverside Drive opened in sections, with the Viaduct bringing the Drive to 135th Street by the turn of the century. What did the Drive’s wealthy residents think of their struggling neighbors, who they must have seen on strolls or bicycles, or from their motor cars?
Of course, the presence of rundown shacks in close proximity to multi-story mansions really wasn’t all that unusual at the time. Even Upper Fifth Avenue had its shanties and sad wood houses, such as this one on today’s 89th Street.
Riverside Drive is one of New York’s most historic (and beautiful!) streets. Join Ephemeral New York on a walking tour of the Drive from 83rd to 107th Streets on October 17 or October 24 that takes a look at the mansions and monuments of this legendary thoroughfare.
[Top photo: New-York Historical Society; second photo: MCNY X2012.61.22.13; third photo: The New York Age; fourth photo: New-York Historical Society; fifth photo: New-York Historical Society]
Ephemeral New York 