page_title: Riverside Park (Manhattan)
section_title: Riverside Park South
hierarchical_section_title: Riverside Park (Manhattan) / History / Late 20th century / Riverside Park South
caption_attribution_description: English: Riverside Park South looking south towards Waterline Square
context_page_description: Riverside Park is a scenic waterfront public park in the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights, and Hamilton Heights neighborhoods of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The park consists of a 4-mile strip of land with a width of between 100 and 500 feet, situated between the Hudson River/Henry Hudson Parkway and the serpentine Riverside Drive.
  Riverside Park was established by land condemnation in 1872 and was developed concurrently with Riverside Drive. Originally running between 72nd and 125th Streets, it was extended northward in the first decade of the 20th century. When the park was first laid out, access to the river was blocked by the right-of-way of the New York Central Railroad's West Side Line. In the 1930s, under parks commissioner Robert Moses's West Side improvement project, the railroad track was covered over with an esplanade and several recreational facilities. Very few modifications were made to the park until the 1980s, when it was renovated and extended southward as part of the Riverside South development.
  Riverside Park is part of the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway, a pedestrian and bicycle route around Manhattan's waterfront.
context_section_description: In the 1980s Donald Trump, then the owner of the 57 acres (230,000 m²) of land just south of Riverside Park that had been the Penn Central freight rail yard, proposed building a massive development including a huge shopping mall and the world's tallest skyscraper. Facing great opposition and hobbled by his weak financial position, Trump agreed in 1990 to adopt a new plan for the site put forward  by six civic groups. The new plan, called Riverside South, included much smaller buildings centered around a new Riverside Park South, stretching between 72nd and 59th Streets with a similar design to the original Riverside Park. In order to expand Riverside Park by 25 acres (100,000 m²), Trump's proposed shopping mall would be eliminated and the elevated West Side Highway would be relocated eastward to grade and buried. A new Riverside Boulevard would curve above the relocated highway, with the park sloping down toward the river. Portions of the former rail yard, such as the New York Central Railroad 69th Street Transfer Bridge, would be incorporated into the new park. As part of the project, Trump and the city agreed to build a new bicycle path connecting Riverside Park with Hudson River Park immediately to the south.
  In November 1998, the first phase of the new Riverside Park South started, having been designed by Thomas Balsley & Associates. Phase 1, a 7-acre (3 ha) section from 72nd to 68th Streets, was opened just over two years later in January 2001. Pier I at 70th Street, part of the railyard, was rebuilt; it maintains its original length of 795 feet (242 m), but is narrower than originally, at 55 feet (17 m). Phase 2, opened in 2003, comprises a waterfront section from 70th Street to 65th Street, including two plazas at 66th and 68th Streets and a jagged waterfront. Phase 3, opened in August 2006, stretches from 65th Street to 62nd Street on the waterfront. Phase 4 opened in 2007 along the waterfront from 62nd to 57th Streets.
  The design of Phases 5 and 6, located between the current and future highway alignments, is partially tied to the fate of the highway relocation, the timing of which is still uncertain. However, NYC Parks has approved interim and final designs for those two sections; construction of the interim park started in August 2016. Relocating the highway will require some reconstruction of the park.
caption: The Riverside South development funded this extension of Riverside Park. New Waterline Square buildings visible to the left.
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