Columbia Yacht Club

 This photo is from 1916. Most of the apartment buildings in the background are still standing on Riverside Drive. That is a steam engine hauling a freight train. Although there had been a ban on steam trains going into Grand Central station prior to 1916, this freight train seems to be an exception to the rule or the rule did not apply to freight trains running above ground in the shores of the west side. The train is heading south, probably to the massive yard between 72nd and 60th streets, now the home to Riverside Park South and other Trump related structures. The photo was taken from the Columbia Yacht Club at 90th street on the river.

 This is the Columbia Yacht Club

 Again with the Columbia Yacht Club

 Change is coming to the waterfront.  Given the truck on the right, the boats waiting to be put into the water will not be stored here for too many more winters.

 Looking North. The large apartment building just left of center is 230 Riverside Drive at 95th Street.

 The club in it's glory.  What looks like what could be a train platform is probably not. There was at one time a station along this line at 96th street but passenger service ended long before this picture was taken.

Now gone, replaced by the West Side Improvement Project. During the great depression, Robert Moses, then the parks commissioner, received a great deal of WPA money to build the Riverside Park and The Henry Hudson / West Side Highway we all know and love today.

Audubon Park

 This is just north of 155th street on Riverside Drive. The original route of Riverside Drive turned here and headed east, then north. A viaduct was put in (it is also called Riverside Drive) and then the Henry Hudson Parkway, obliterating this last bit of the old Audubon estate, "Minnies Land". Purchased in 1841, the estate was a rural retreat in an ever changing island. The population that doubled every 20 years during the 19th century, eben James Audubon knew that this would not last forever.

 This is detail from the picture below. The Victorian house in the lower left corner, the Wheelcock mansion was there until the mid 1930's.

 More detail from the first photo.

 A map of the area, probably just before the Civil War.

 This is a map of the same area from 1873. The estate of James Audubon started selling off the land as you can see. The Wheelcock house and property are marked on this map.

 This is a map of the same area from 1916. This map clearly shows some familiar buildings, such as the Grinnell. The Wheelcock house is still there but upon further examination the Depot Hotel is not.

 This is the last days of the Wheelcock mansion.

 What is interesting about this map is, while it is only a map, you can get an idea of the topography of the land. Those squiggly lines running through "Minnies Land" are streams. In contemporary descriptions, it is mentioned that the streams emptied, by way of waterfalls, into the Hudson.
The railroad seems to be on an embankment on the river, which left a body of water between the shore and the tracks. It did not take all that long for the shore to be landfilled out to the tracks, thus obliterating the natural shoreline of Manhattan. This is obvious in the photos as well as the later (chronologically) maps I posted.
Also in this map, it is noted that there is a station at 152nd street as well as the Hudson River Railroad Hotel. These tracks, which are obviously still there, once carried passenger trains as well as freight.

 This is the Audubon Cottage around 1925. It will not be here too much longer. The house at this point is not even 100 years old. Amazing how fast Manhattan changed. The Apartment building just above the "cottage" is building next to The Riviera Apartments on 155th and Riverside.

 Opening by the late 1920's, this is the viaduct that obliterated what was left of Audubon park.  The main purpose of this new viaduct was to move traffic directly to the new George Washington Bridge, seen under construction in the background.  It is also called Riverside Drive which is why there are two Riverside Drives at this point. The old Riverside Drive snakes around towards the east, around the old property lines of Audubon Park. The New York side tower of the George Washington Bridge is in the background. The bridge would open in 1931. 

The tracks here are gone, all but two. The two on the right are still used today by Amtrak. This is looking north from 143rd street and Riverside. The little house on the right is still there, without a roof however. It looks as though it could have been a station house for the railroad but it is, according to the Parks Department, a gardener's tool shed from the late 1870's. This yard is now occupied by the bike path and the sewage treatment plant.

West 72nd Street

 This is looking north from the Dakota (1 West 72nd Street) just after it opened in 1884. Designed by Henry Hardenbergh, this New York City landmark is one of the earliest high rise luxury apartment buildings that is still standing. It may not be so much a high rise at this point but it is still high end. iThe building in the middle of the picture is the original, and still standing, wing of the Museum of Natural History designed by Calvert Vaux, half of the design team that gave us Central Park.

 This is looking south from the Dakota, taken at the same time as the previous picture.  The Dakota gets it's name from the Dakota Territories.  When this building was being constructed in 1883, it was considered to be so far uptown and inconveniently located that one might as well be going to the Dakotas, as those territories were considered to be the "wild west" as was the area in which Edward Clark built this landmark.

 This is the Hudson River looking north from 72nd.

 This is the Central Park West end of 72nd Street with the Dakota rising above. The south west corner, where the picket fence is, was occupied eventually buy the beautiful Majestic Hotel. Now the site is occupied by the tribute to art deco Majestic Apartments.

 This is the Hudson river end of 72nd street.  The boat in the center is a replica of Christopher Columbus' boat the Santa Maria.  This picture was taken in 1909 celebrating the 400th anniversary of Columbus sailing the ocean blue.
 

This is the Saint Andrew Hotel on the north west corner of 72nd and Broadway. This hotel did not last much after this picture was taken. After the hotel was demolished the site was home to a bank and The Embassy 72. The site is now occupied by a high rise with an Urban Outfitters in the large retail space

The Riviera Theatre

 The Riviera, behind the orchestra section.

 The screen is lit quite possibly by footlights. I have often wondered if they were original.  The red curtains cover the damage done by the removal of the boxes. The Riverside had some sort of lighting on the stage at this point as evidenced in the pictures below, not the case with the Riviera. Both houses underwent renovations in the 1950's. It was at this time that the Skouras Brothers owned the theaters.
The brothers Skouras started in St. Louis in distribution and exhibition and eventually went into production. Spyros Skouras became prsident of 20th Century Fox in 1942 and was instrumental in introducing Cinemascope. With this new wide screen process came the removal of boxes in many theaters across the country. Somewhere there is a pile of old discarded boxes.

 The Skouras brothers were notorious "modernizers". As you can see in these photos, there are not only no more boxes but no more orchestra pits as well. Very often orchestra pits were covered over to add an extra row or two of seats. In some cases, the Mighty Wurlitzer (or similar organ) would be left on it's lift, at the basement level, covered over by concrete slabs. Although there were multiple organ (Wurlitzer and Morton) installations at both the Riverside and Riviera, I am not sure what happened to them or where they ended up.  I do know that the organ up in the Japanese Gardens was abandoned and vandalized.

 This is the mural on the sound board above the proscenium arch. Due to the terrible lighting it is hard to make out what it represents in this picture.
I read a story written by the man who took these photos. His real quest that day was to not only photograph these two theaters but also to photograph the Japanese Gardens above the Riviera.  The two elevators that went up there were had been out of commission for years. The stair case that went up to the Gardens from the elevator lobby had been sealed off long ago. According to the floor plans for the Riviera Building, there were no connections between the theaters and the office building. The only way they found to get into the Japanese Gardens was through 5 floors of Riviera dressing rooms, described as dark, dank and musty.

 This is a digitally enhanced picture. Obviously, demolition has begun. The lighting in this case is mostly natural light. The mural on the sound board appears to be one of those life at Versailles pastoral images. Very Rococo. This mural, along with the murals in the Riverside, were probably not saved. This was in the pre-Urban Archeology days and nothing was saved or recycled.

 I digitally enhanced this picture as well. Once I scanned these pictures into my iPhoto, I became convinced that there was more to the pictures than what I was seeing.
Demolition on the Riviera began close to ten years after the collapse of the Riverside. The site, which almost played host to Gimbel's West, was a garden for many years. When the building that eventually went up on the site was built, the displaced garden moved to Riverside Park as is called the Community Garden.

 This is the un - enhanced, original version of the above picture. The theaters were photographed as discussion about their demise was bandied about. Alexanders had expressed a great deal of interest in the site for a new store, apartment tower and new single screen theater. Gimbel's had offered pretty much the same deal. However, neighborhood opposition to creating an overwhelmingly commercial area, at 96th and Broadway, scaled back the development to a 30 story tower of studios and one bedrooms (to meet the need of an ever growing swinging singles segment of society since the city was attracting a younger, less family oriented population and families were moving to the suburbs - or so the developer believed). However, there were a few cries about preservation, maybe 4.

 The wood frame structure on the stage was probably for the movie screen. The speaker horns are clearly visible behind the wooden frame. Again this is an enhanced picture.

 This is a digitally enhanced view of the stage. I do not believe that these photos were taken by the photographer of the "before" pictures. He was just an enthusiastic amateur theater historian, as far as I can tell, and the condition of the Riviera looks precarious.

 In an earlier post, I cryptically stated that after the Riverside collapsed and emergency personnel had dug through the debris for days, that no bodies were found - at that time. The two theaters were built a year apart, the Riverside (which had a longer construction period) in opening in 1912 and The Riviera in 1913, and were entirely separate buildings. There were connections made in the basement years later and it was during the demolition of the Riviera that,according to local legend and lore, two bodies were found in what was left of a connector passage between the still standing Riviera and the no longer with us Riverside.

The last of the Riviera. "We will be judged not by what we have built, but by what we have destroyed" said the New York Times in an editorial about the destruction of the old Pennsylvania Station. How sad and true. The site, now the home to one of the least attractive buildings on the upper west side, was once an elegant entertainment complex that could seat almost 5000 at any given moment was certainly a gift. The entire complex was designed by Thomas Lamb, who also designed the Eltinge.

Looking towards house left at the stage from the house right balcony.  The curtains on the side are there to hide the damage done by the removal of the boxes. Not an uncommon situation in theaters of this type and age. The boxes often got in the way of wide screen presentations.

 House right from stage right. again in the Riverside.

 The Dome over the Riverside auditorium. Probably not the original chandelier.

 Detail from the ceiling of the Riverside Theatre. It appears to be Christopher Columbus asking for financing for his voyage west. The mural above the proscenium appears to be Columbus discovering America (maybe New York - how "urbocentric").

 Soundboard above the proscenium detail.  Looks to me like he is discovering something.

Proscenium arch detail, Riverside Theater.

 This is the south wall of the Riviera Theater, Japanese Gardens and the Riviera Building after the collapse and demolition of the Riverside Theater. I remember thinking, as a small child, that the balcony for the Riviera must be incredibly high, not knowing that there was a long closed theater up there.

 When it announced that a developer was going to tear down the theaters and put up a 30 story apartment tower (consisting of only studios and one bedrooms) I was devastated. They only managed to knock a hole in the side of the Riverside before running out of money. It was almost shocking to see the red velvet curtain hanging in shreds behind the now battered proscenium arch. The enormous balcony was collapsing. Then the whole thing collapsed out onto 96th street (several parked cars were crushed) and inward. The fire and police departments searched and dug for days, looking for crushed junkies that supposedly lived in the shell of the Riverside. I remember seeing a hysterical woman on the news screaming that her daughter with a drug problem was in there. No bodies were found, at that time anyway.

Outer lobby of the Riverside.

Japanese Gardens

 Interior picture of the Japanese Gardens just after seat replacement work had been completed.

This is looking north west from the east side of Broadway between 95th and 96th streets. The large stain glass windows visible in the Japanese Gardens picture below are clearly visible in this picture. These windows were boarded over by the time I started going to the pictures.