Please note: this text may be incomplete. For more information about this OCR, view
About OCR text.
REAL . ESTATE
AND
NEW YORK, DECEMBER 27, 1913
|lllilllillilH^^^^^^
I PLAN FOR RIVERSIDE DRIVE EXTENSION
Report of Arnold W. Brunner and Frederick Law Olmsted Consid¬
ered By Citizens — Treatment For Audubon Park Determined On.
TH.\T Riverside Drive w-ill, in time,
be extended at least to the northern¬
most point of Manhattan is not ques¬
tioned. It seems equally certain that
the city will eventually find it necessary
to acquire not only the land needed for
the drive proper—in addition to the
rights it now possesses in the former
Lafayette Boulevard—but the lands lying
between the line of the drive and the
shore front of the river. Until a proper
map has been adopted it will not be
possible to fix the lines of cross streets
intersecting the drive, or to permit the
owners of private property immediately
contiguous to the drive either to sell or
to develop it.
When Mr. Mc.\neny became Borough
President, on January 1, 1910, he found
not only that a plan for the extension
The report of the architects contained
an alternative plan for a part of the
route, and after hearing representatives
of the Washington Heights Taxpayers'
Association, Messrs, Brunner and Olm¬
sted and others, President McAneny an¬
nounced that the committee would
recommend to the Board of Estimate
the adoption of "Plan B."
No Outlay at Present.
The adoption of the plan will not
commit the city to the expenditure of
any moneys until its financial condition
may warrant such an outlay. The mat¬
ter of immediate importance is to con¬
firm the map and remove uncertainty
about the future of private property
throughout the district to be afTected by
the drive development.
The plan is divided for purposes of
also unlike the rest of Riverside Drive
it was laid out on such a crooked line
as to be excessively inconvenient and
somewhat dangerous. It has long been
recognized, says the report, that some
radical improvement must be secured,
and many plans have been prepared both
for the city and for interested private
individuals and associations. All of these
plans have contemplated the shifting of
the roadway far enough to the westward
to cross over ISSth street by a bridge
and to smooth out some or all of the
abrupt turns in the alignment of the
main driveway without changing the
location of the present easterly building
line of Riverside Drive.
The plans have been of two classes:
First, the more radical propositions,
which have contemplated an extension
of the drive existed, but that an appro¬
priation of $5,000,000 of corporate stoik
had been allowed to meet the expense of
the work. This was to cover construc¬
tion alone, and would have involved a
further enormous outlay for the acquisi¬
tion of land. The plan as it then stood
did not seem to him to be either ade¬
quate or economical. Upon his motion,
therefore, the Board of Estimate and
Apportionment cancelled the plan and
repealed the appropriation, allowing a
comparatively small sum to reimburse
contractors who had been engaged for
the starting of the work,
Messrs. Arnold W. Brunner and
Frederic Law Olmsted were thereupon
engaged to investigate the whole prob¬
lem, and to submit a new map based
upon a simpler and less expensive plan.
Their report was the subject of a hear¬
ing at City Hall on Monday before
President Mc.\neny, Comptroller Pren¬
dergast and Chief Engineer Nelson P.
Lewis.
explanation by
Messrs. Brunner and
Olmsted, in their re¬
port, into three principal
sections; the southern sec¬
tion extending from lS5th
street to 165th street, and including the
crossing of the 158th street valley; the
middle section from 16Sth street to a
point about 3,000 feet south of Dyckman
street; the northern section from the
last-mentioned point northward across
the Dyckman valley and along Inwood
Hill to the Borough of the Bron.x.
Southern Section.
Throughout the southern section there
is now a practicable roadway, largely
used by automobiles and occupying a
location nowhere less than 100 feet wide.
From 155th street, at the northern end
of the viaduct, over the railroad along
Trinity cemetery to 158th street, this
location was laid out as Riverside Drive,
from 158th street north it was
laid out as Boulevard Lafayette; in
both cases, unlike Riverside Drive
farther south, it was laid out as an or¬
dinary street through private property
with building frontage on the westerly
side cutting it off from the river, and
CROSS SECTIOX OF PROPOSED
RIVERSIDE DRIVE, SOUTH
OF IGIST STREET.
of the viaduct now existing south of
155th st«eet in a direct line across the
valley of 158th street entirely indepen¬
dent of the present location; second,
those which have proposed widening of
the high fill on which the present road¬
way is built so as to moderate to some
extent the abruptness of the two bends
between Trinity cemetery and 156th
street, and constructing a new causeway
or embankment from a point near the
third bend, between lS6th street and
157th street, across the valley to Boule¬
vard Lafayette, leaving an archway for
158th street to pass through. Typical
of this less radical class of plans was
one offered by the Washington Heights
Taxpayers' Association, dated 1906, and
one prepared by George C. Wheeler,
dated March 16, 1910. .A.Iso of this class
is the alternative plan submitted with
the report and marked "Plan B."
The plan offered by the taxpayers'
association places the new drive so far
to the eastward as barely to afford head¬
room over the existing surface of ISSth
street, thus preventing any improvement
in the excessive gradient of that street
(ten per cent.); and even Mr. Wheeler's
plan would interfere with improving that
grade as much as would be desirable.