Riverside Park

Riverside Park, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is a four mile, scenic strip of public park land situated between the Hudson River and Riverside Drive and runs north from 72nd Street to 125th Street. Frederick Law Olmsted who designed Central Park, created the design and construction of the park in the early 1870s. The majority of construction was completed by about 1910.

In the 1930s, the "Westside Improvement Project" greatly improved the park, which had become a haven for squatters. The project called for covering the New York Central rail line which had up until then ran the length of the park and created a barrier between the park and the Hudson River. That rail track now runs quietly underneath a honey-locust lined esplanade.

With the addition of Riverside Park South and Hudson River Park, created between Battery Park and 59th Street as part of the 1990s West Side Highway improvement, a continuous right-of-way for pedestrians and bicyclists now stretches the length of Manhattan's west side.