Morningside Heights from the River (1908)
This hand-tinted photgraph shows some of the earliest buildings of
Columbia,
Barnard,
Teacher's College, and
Grant's
Tomb. If you look carefully at the water's edge, you
can see a train of boxcars on the old New York Central
tracks, which were not put in their present tunnel until
Riverside Park was extended over them in the 1930's.
There has been some discussion recently of building a new
footbridge
near this location over the Henry Hudson Parkway, which has replaced the
railroad as barrier to our waterfront. The City has already committed
to building a usable walkway along the Riverside Park shoreline,
cantilevered over the river where necessary. Our section will be called "Cherry Walk" after the cherry trees along the edge of the Hudson, and construction is scheduled to begin in 2000. Presently, there are in some
spots (mostly south of us) only a few feet between the edge of the highway and
the river itself.
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