The Riverside Drive Viaduct, built in 1900 by the US

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 City of New York

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, was constructed to connect an important system of drives in Upper Manhattan

Upper Manhattan

Upper Manhattan denotes the more northerly region of the New York City Borough of Manhattan. Its southern boundary may be defined anywhere between 59th Street and 155th Street. Between these two extremes lies the most common definitions of Upper Manhattan as Manhattan above 96th Street...

 by creating a high-level boulevard extension of Riverside Drive

Riverside Drive (Manhattan)

Riverside Drive is a scenic north-south thoroughfare in the Manhattan borough of New York City. The boulevard runs on the west side of Manhattan, generally parallel to the Hudson River from 72nd Street to near the George Washington Bridge at 181st Street...

 over the barrier of Manhattan Valley

Manhattan Valley

Manhattan Valley is a neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by West 110th Street to the north, Central Park West to the east, West 96th Street to the south, and Broadway to the west...

 to the former Boulevard Lafayette in Washington Heights

Washington Heights, Manhattan

Washington Heights is a New York City neighborhood in the northern reaches of the borough of Manhattan. It is named for Fort Washington, a fortification constructed at the highest point on Manhattan island by Continental Army troops during the American Revolutionary War, to defend the area from the...

.

F. Stuart Williamson was the chief engineer for the municipal project, which constituted a feat of engineering technology. Despite the viaduct

Viaduct

A viaduct is a bridge composed of several small spans. The term viaduct is derived from the Latin via for road and ducere to lead something. However, the Ancient Romans did not use that term per se; it is a modern derivation from an analogy with aqueduct. Like the Roman aqueducts, many early...

's important utilitarian role as a highway, the structure was also a strong symbol of civic pride, inspired by America’s late 19th-century City Beautiful movement

City Beautiful movement

The City Beautiful Movement was a reform philosophy concerning North American architecture and urban planning that flourished during the 1890s and 1900s with the intent of using beautification and monumental grandeur in cities. The movement, which was originally associated mainly with Chicago,...

. The viaduct’s original roadway, wide pedestrian walks and overall design were sumptuously ornamented, creating a prime example of public works that married form and function. An issue of the Scientific American

Scientific American

Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...

magazine in 1900 remarked that the Riverside Drive Viaduct's completion afforded New Yorkers “a continuous drive of ten miles along the picturesque banks of the Hudson

Hudson River

The Hudson is a river that flows from north to south through eastern New York. The highest official source is at Lake Tear of the Clouds, on the slopes of Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. The river itself officially begins in Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York...

 and Harlem River

Harlem River

The Harlem River is a navigable tidal strait in New York City, USA that flows 8 miles between the Hudson River and the East River, separating the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx...

s.”

The elevated steel highway of the viaduct extends above Twelfth Avenue from 127th Street (now Tiemann Place) to 135th Street and is shouldered by masonry approaches. The viaduct proper was made of open hearth medium steel, comprising twenty-six spans, or bays, whose hypnotic repetition is much appreciated from underneath at street level. The south and north approaches are of rock-faced Mohawk Valley

Mohawk Valley

The Mohawk Valley region of the U.S. state of New York is the area surrounding the Mohawk River, sandwiched between the Adirondack Mountains and Catskill Mountains....

, N.Y., limestone with Maine

Maine

Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...

 granite trimmings, the face work being of coursed ashlar. The girders over Manhattan Street (now 125th Street

125th Street (Manhattan)

125th Street is a two-way street that runs east-west in the New York City borough of Manhattan, considered the "Main Street" of Harlem; It is also called Martin Luther King, Jr...

) were the largest ever built at the time. The broad plaza effect of the south approach was designed to impart deliberate grandeur to the natural terminus of much of Riverside Drive’s traffic as well as to give full advantage to the vista overlooking the Hudson River and New Jersey Palisades

New Jersey Palisades

The Palisades, also called the New Jersey Palisades or the Hudson Palisades are a line of steep cliffs along the west side of the lower Hudson River in northeastern New Jersey and southern New York in the United States. The cliffs stretch north from Jersey City approximately 20 mi to near...

to the west.

The viaduct underwent a two-year long reconstruction in 1961 and another in 1987.