A view of the West 83rd Street entrance to Riverside Park from Riverside Drive and 83rd street.
On Tuesday, October 11th I went people-watching. It was four in the afternoon and seventy degrees and sunny. Smoothie in hand, earbuds playing music, I sat on a bench in Riverside Park across from the park’s West 83rd Street entrance. This entrance is an unnamed hill that leads people from Manhattan’s Upper West Side (UWS) Riverside Drive to luscious greenery. While I sat on this bench, I watched Upper West Siders traverse this hill in various ways. I saw a handful of millenials walking their dogs, seven bikers, dozens of children either being pushed in strollers, running in circles, or scootering down the hill (one toddler waddled her way up the hill backward), and one brave soul who ran up the hill. I also saw plenty of people walking up and down this hill too: elders pushing walkers, couples holding hands, and single people smiling at the obnoxiously loud kids in the neighboring playground. No matter their age, race, or gender, residents of the UWS use this hill as their desired entrance into Riverside Park. This hill, “is an extension of every building” that surrounds it, shares Gary, an Upper West Sider.
The West 83rd Street entrance to Riverside Park from my seat on a bench inside the park. The brick structure on the right of the picture is part of the entrance to River Run Playground.
Riverside Park is a “sliver of green”⸺a park that’s 6.7 miles long and only one-quarter of a mile wide that sits on the east bank of the Hudson River. Riverside Park was designed in 1872 by Frederick Law Olmsted, one of the 19th century’s great landscape architects, who also designed Central Park, Prospect Park, and Van Cortlandt Park. Before the park was constructed, the land was home to the Hudson River Railroad. It was Parks Commissioner William R. Martin who, in 1865, proposed to convert the area into a park. The idea was approved in 1866, and construction took place along the UWS from 72nd to 125th street between 1875 and 1910. In 1937, as the Parks Commissioner at the time, Robert Moses expanded the park North from 191 acres to 323. Moses built a “middle level” of the park, a flat promenade that is made up of concrete pathways surrounded by greenery and a view of the Hudson, by covering the tracks of the New York Central Railroad. In 1980, Riverside Park was designated a scenic New York City landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Today, anyone can enjoy the park’s beauty by walking along its three levels from 72nd to 158th street.
An aerial map of the UWS, the neighborhood west of Central Park between 59th and 110th street, including Riverside Park and the Hudson River. The red circle marks the location of the 83rd street hill.
This middle level of the park has sections of flat lawn, parallel paths for walkers, runners, and bikers, ventilation shafts you can stand on to hear the bellowing subway, and a dog park hidden among the trees on the right of this photo.
Nick, a new resident of the USW, admires the options the hill provides and how this area of the park “gets more interesting more quickly” than other entrances to Riverside Park. Nick said that the 83rd street hill is the filter between the hustle and bustle of the city and the “little world” full of trees, flowers, and a view of the river that seems almost never-ending. At the base of the hill, there is a fork in the road. If one turns left (assuming their back is to Riverside Drive) they will find a collection of colossal rocks and a path that eventually leads back out of the park to 79th and Riverside Drive. In the winter, this particular area of the park is filled with rebellious sledders of every age. Directly at the bottom of the hill is River Run Playground: one of 13 playgrounds in Riverside Park. If one follows the path straight ahead, avoiding the playground, they will end up walking through two pigeon-frenzied tunnels down toward the Hudson River, through a large granite and fieldstone open rotunda. The most popular option is the right. This path leads people to the promenade. I saw bikers, runners, and walkers on the promenade on my people-watching excursion. There is, however, a fourth route. A little-known path on the far right side of the hill is hidden among overgrown trees and bushes. This path leads to Mount Tom, a patch of rocks overlooking the Hudson, and is rumored to be Edgar Allen Poe’s favorite place, who lived just up the street. Locals, Amy and Gary, emphasized the convenience of this entrance and appreciate that it “gives [them] access to the entire park” and various things to do and people to see.
Diagram of the 83rd street entrance to Riverside Park.
A panorama taken at the base of the 83rd street hill of the different paths.
Children climbing on the rocks just left of the playground.
Children at play in River Run.
The West 79th Street Rotunda in the early 1980s. The Boat Basin, the area depicted in the picture, consists of a marina, a pathway that runs along Hudson, the rotunda, and the West Side Highway (the roads just above the rotunda).
Pre-pandemic, the West 79th Street Rotunda was home to a restaurant called the Boat Basin Café. The café sat below the entrance and exit of the West Side Highway on 79th street. The circular building contains a divot in the center, almost as if a fountain should be in place of the tented area.
The empty, post-pandemic Rotunda with stone flooring and arches with a glimpse of New Jersey across the way. Today, the Rotunda is home to pigeons, rats, and more.
The secret entrance to Mount Tom.
The view from Mount Tom on a rainy day.
Although 47% of UWS households were family households in 2020, children lived in roughly 20% of them. Out of all the people who I saw walk up and down the 83rd street hill, about one-quarter were kids. As I passed River Run playground, a playground that sits at the bottom of the 83rd street hill, I saw roughly thirty children at play. Whether swinging on the swings, crawling around in the sandbox, or trotting through the sprinklers, the area surrounding the 83rd street entrance was lively with children under the age of seven. Because of how child-friendly both the UWS and this particular part of the park are, it is not uncommon for children to run into friends as they walk up or down the hill.
A map of Manhattan divided by zip code. The UWS is made up of zip codes 10023, 10024, and 10025.
The sun setting over River Run Playground.
As opposed to Central Park, the area surrounding the 83rd street hill is much “more intimate,” Amy shared. Because Riverside Park is not as populated and is less than half the size of Central Park, Riverside tends to feel more neighborly. Amy and Gary shared their appreciation of how they run into friends more in Riverside versus Central Park. Due to its size, location, and ovular shape, Riverside has fewer walkways, narrower paths, and many benches lining the promenade which allows neighbors to frequently bump into each other. The view from Riverside also adds to this intimacy. Because of the great presence of the skyline, it is easy to feel lost in Central Park. The view of the Hudson River from Riverside, however, creates a more tight-knit atmosphere.
A biker laying on a bench on the promenade, overlooking the Hudson River and New Jersey.
The 83rd street entrance’s proximity to many family households is appealing to UWS resident Mark and his five-year-old daughter Poppy. Not only is the 83rd street hill convenient, but it is their go-to entrance because they know they will “likely know someone who is in this area of the park.” Because Mark grew up in Los Angeles, he has a unique fondness for how easy it is to walk out of his house, down the block, and into the park. In L.A., he shared, the equivalence of finding community is going to the movies. Because Mark lacked the convenience and chance encounters of meeting friends that his daughter now has, the entrance of the park is “a magical thing” to him.
Pedestrians walking up and down the 83rd street hill.
When looking for an apartment to raise her family, my mother, Stacy Bolton, knew she needed to look for a place where her family could enjoy “outdoor time.” By moving one block away from the 83rd street entrance, my parents knew that their kids would have easy access to this “outdoor time.” When I asked my father, James Stulman, about the significance of the 83rd street entrance to him, he recalled the hundreds of times he walked down and down the hill with me and my siblings to push us on the River Run swings, run alongside me when he taught me to ride a bike without training wheels, or head toward the river to play on the 96th street tennis courts.
The entrance to River Run.
Before the pandemic, there used to be an ice cream cart that sat at the bottom of the hill every summer. On hot summer days, children would line up for a Choco Taco or King Kone. Even though many of the cart’s patrons were people who were already enjoying the park, it also served as an attraction, drawing more people toward the 83rd street hill into the park.
Although I have found that many people do not have the same affinity to the 83rd street hill as I do, as my mother expressed, the hill “unites dog park people with the playground people and the athletes.” This hill is home to every type of person.
Just a wonderful article to read & reminisce about my time there with you & your siblings!
Love
Grandma