6. Riverside Drive Viaduct & the West Side Highway

The viaduct that runs along Riverside Drive from Tiemann Place to 135th Street was built in 1900 to connect Manhattanville and Washington Heights. As our guides explained, back in the first half of the twentieth century, people used to go for joyrides on Sundays up and down the Hudson, though that seems like a strange idea to us now. This is why the West Side Highway was built directly overlooking the river. The elevated steel viaduct was inspired by the City Beautiful movement and was highly praised as a marriage of form and function. At the northern end of the viaduct is a historic Greek temple-inspired building that now houses Manhattan Mini Storage.