Riverdale, Bronx

Riverdale (population approximately 45,000, according to the 2000 U.S. Census) is a middle- and upper-class residential neighborhood in the northwest portion of the borough of the Bronx in New York City.

Riverdale's ZIP codes are 10463 and 10471. While 10471 is entirely in Riverdale, 10463 also covers the adjacent neighborhoods of Kingsbridge and Marble Hill.

Demographics

Riverdale has a population of around 45,000. The neighborhood is predominantly White, most of whom are of Irish, Jewish, German, or Russian ancestry. Over the recent years, Riverdale has attracted many families from Manhattan. With an average income of $60,000 it is easily one of the more upscale areas in The Bronx.^{citation needed}

In 1974, a large residential compound and school was established in North Riverdale by the Permanent Mission of the USSR to the United Nations (now the Russian Mission to the UN) to house diplomats and their families. The 20-story building was constructed from the top down, with the upper floors built first.^[1]

Geography

Cityscape

Housing in Riverdale ranges from multi-story apartment buildings dating from the 1950s and 60s to large, architecturally distinguished houses built in the early 20th century, mostly in Georgian- and Tudor-revival styles. It is also home to the modernist landmark Saul Victor house, designed by Ferdinand Gottlieb in 1967.^[2] Other famous mansions in Hudson Hill include: Greyston (1864), Alderbrook (1880), Stonehurst (1861) and Oaklawn (1863).^[3] Since 2005, Central Riverdale has experienced a building boom with the addition of many mid- and high-rise condominium buildings.

In August of 2008, Columbia University purchased an almost-completed apartment building at 3260 Henry Hudson Parkway for use as faculty housing.

Riverdale is in a sense the closest northern suburb of New York City although it is not its own municipality. Administratively, Riverdale is part of Bronx Community Board 8.^[4] Wave Hill, a combination botanical garden and outdoor art gallery, is located in the so-called Estate Area overlooking the Hudson River.

Two weekly newspapers, the Riverdale Press and the Riverdale Review, focus on news of interest to residents of the neighborhood.

Churches and synagogues

Riverdale in literature and movies

The exteriors of many of Riverdale's mansions have been used in movies; most notably, the "Corleone House" located on Independence Avenue (across from Wave Hill) was used for the exterior shots in the film The Godfather.^{citation needed} Dorney and Malone's Tavern on Broadway was also filmed in the 2007 romantic comedy The Accidental Husband, starring Uma Thurman.

Education

The public elementary schools are the Spuyten Duyvil School (P.S. 24)^[5] and the Robert J. Christen School (P.S. 81)^[6]. The public middle school and high school is M.S./H.S 141, The Riverdale Kingsbridge Academy.^[7] Nearby high schools that also serve the community include the Bronx High School of Science and John F. Kennedy High School.

Riverdale is also home to SAR Academy, a private Jewish day school near the Riverdale train station, and SAR High School as well as the Yeshiva of Telshe Alumni and Yeshiva Ohavei Torah of Riverdale. Kinneret Day School,^[8] is a private Jewish day school in Spuyten Duyvil, serving grades K through 8 in addition to pre-school. Catholic elementary schools in the area are St. Gabriel's School and St. Margaret of Cortona School.

Also in the area are several pre-schools including the Riverdale Temple Nursery School, Spuyten Duyvil Preschool,^[9], Kinneret Day School,^[10], SAR Academy (Early Learning Center), Riverdale Nursery School and Family Center, and the Riverdale Presbyterian Church Nursery School.^[11]

Transportation

The northern terminal station of the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line of the New York City Subway is located at the intersection of 242nd Street and Broadway. The tracks and stations are elevated along Broadway in Kingsbridge. Riverdale is accessible from Kingsbridge and from Inwood by city bus lines that run throughout the Riverdale area. Metro-North commuter railroad service is available at the Spuyten Duyvil station, located underneath the Henry Hudson Parkway and alongside the shore of the Harlem River at Edsall Avenue. Metro-North service is also available at the Riverdale station, located between West 254th Street and West 255th Street. The 242nd Street elevated subway station is served by the 1, while the Spuyten Duyvil and Riverdale railroad stations are served by the Hudson Line. Metro-North commuting time from the Spuyten Duyvil station to Grand Central Terminal in Midtown Manhattan is around 22 minutes.

Manhattan can also be reached by MTA Bus Company's (formerly Liberty Lines) express routes. By car, Riverdale is commonly reached by the Henry Hudson Parkway (Route 9A), which bisects much of the neighborhood. This major thoroughfare connects it to Manhattan over the Henry Hudson Bridge to the south. One can also drive between Manhattan and Riverdale via the Broadway Bridge, which is on Broadway, by the Harlem River.

Historical Significance

The rich history of portions of Riverdale has led to the creation, by unanimous vote, of the Riverdale Historic District. The exact area is bound roughly by 252nd and 254th Streets and Palisade and Independence Avenues. Leland Weintraub, the commissioner who moved for the district's creation, noted that "most of the features commonly associated with the American romantic suburb of the mid-19th century," including "a picturesque site, landscaping and architecture; connection to the city by accessible transportation and a layout adapted to the topography" are present in the area. ^[12]

Notable residents

References

^ Siegal, Allan M. "Russian Building Going Up Form the Top Down; The Construction Technique", The New York Times, June 17, 1974. Accessed May 5, 2008.
^ AIA Guide to New York City, p. 610
^ Riverdale, New York - Estate Area. 4 July 2008 <http://www.robertehill.com/Riverdale_Estate_Area.asp>
^ Welcome to Community Board No. 8, Bronx Community Board 8. Accessed May 3, 2008.
^ InsideSchools profile of P.S. 24 Spuyten Duyvil School
^ InsideSchools profile of P.S. 81 Robert J. Christen School
^ Riverdale Kingsbridge Academy
^ Kinneret Day School
^ Spuyten Duyvil preschool
^ Kinneret Day School
^ RPC Nursery School
^ "Postings: Historic Designation; Recognizing Riverdale. " New York Times [New York, N.Y.] 21 Oct. 1990, Late Edition (East Coast): A.1.
^ Goodman, Lawrence. 'Too Jew For Who?", Brown Alumni Magazine, March / April 2008. Accessed May 4, 2008. "Altman, who grew up in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, doesn't consider himself religious."
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d A Brief History of Wave Hill, Wave Hill. Accessed May 3, 2008.
^ Oestreich, James R. "Rudolf Bing, Titan of the Met, Dies at 95", The New York Times, September 3, 1997. Accessed May 4, 2008. "Sir Rudolf Bing, who as the dapper and acerbic general manager of the Metropolitan Opera from 1950 to 1972 ushered the company into the modern era and into Lincoln Center, died yesterday at St. Joseph's Hospital in Yonkers. He was 95 and lived at the Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale in the Bronx.... In 1989, Sir Rudolf was admitted to the Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale with what was diagnosed as Alzheimer's disease."
^ "June Bingham Birge, Who Wrote Books and Plays, Dies at 88", The New York Times, August 29, 2007. Accessed May 4, 2008. "June Bingham Birge, the author of books and plays, died on Aug. 21 at her home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. She was 88."
^ ^a ^b Jacobson, Mark. "Joltin' Jew", New York (magazine), April 17, 2006. Accessed May 3, 2008. "I lived in Riverdale, in the same building with Willie Mays."
^ Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher. "Ted Brown, Talk Show Host and New York Radio D.J., Is Dead", The New York Times, March 22, 2005. Accessed May 4, 2008. "As a teenager in the 1950's, Jonathan Schwartz, another New York radio colleague, watched Mr. Brown broadcasting from his basement studio at his home in Riverdale, in the Bronx."
^ Gorenberg, Gershom. "How Do You Prove You’re a Jew?", The New York Times, March 2, 2008. Accessed May 4, 2008. "Farber, 41, has a round, clean-shaven face and frameless glasses that make him look like an earnest grad student. He grew up in Riverdale, N.Y., attending the kind of Orthodox parochial school that, he told me, “celebrated Americanism,” that turned the American bicentennial into the focus of an entire school year."
^ "Profile: Fernando Ferrer", The New York Times, August 10, 2005. Accessed May 4, 2008. "HOMETOWN Riverdale, the Bronx"
^ Bernstein, Nina. "Ward of the State;The Gap in Ella Fitzgerald's Life", The New York Times, June 23, 1996. Accessed May 3, 2008. "Her most recent biographer, Stuart Nicholson, has surmised that the authorities caught up with her and placed her in the Colored Orphan Asylum in Riverdale."
^ "SIDNEY FREY DIES; MADE HI-FI DISKS; Ex-Head of Audio Fidelity, 47, Popularized Stereo", The New York Times, January 14, 1968. Accessed July 26, 2008.
^ Dempsey, John. "TV news giant Friendly dies: Legacy of integrity and highest standards", Variety (magazine), March 5, 1998. Accessed May 3, 2008. "Slowed by several strokes in recent years, Friendly was at home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, just north of Manhattan, when he died."
^ Yardley, Jonathan. "Book World Live: Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig", The Washington Post, April 5, 2005. Accessed May 3, 2008. "On June 2, 1941, just days short of his 38th birthday, Henry Louis Gehrig died at his house in the pleasant New York City neighborhood of Riverdale."
^ Lucy interviews Jordan Gelber, Avenue Q. Accessed May 4, 2008.
^ Goldberger, Paul. "CHARLES E. HUGHES 3D DEAD; LEADER IN BANK ARCHITECTURE", The New York Times, January 10, 1985. Accessed May 4, 2008. "Mr. Hughes, who lived in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, was the grandson of Charles Evans Hughes, the former Chief Justice of the United States."
^ Eder, Richard. "BOOK REVIEW Living at the Low End of the Upper Crust GENTLEMAN REBEL The Memoirs of H. Stuart Hughes.", Los Angeles Times, December 13, 1990. Accessed May 4, 2008. "Surely, that baked Henry Stuart into the upper crust. Perhaps, the bottom of the upper crust, he muses. But then there were the Kennedys; much richer, and beginning to be more powerful. When Joseph P. Kennedy moved from Riverdale to greater things, the Hugheses thriftily bought his house. Yet they-the Hugheses-were received by Hudson River Society; the Kennedys were not."
^ McNeil, Kate. 'For Yeshiva's president, life can imitate television", The Riverdale Press, January 3, 2008. Accessed May 3, 2008. "Riverdale resident Richard Joel compares his job - president of Yeshiva University - to the presidency of the United States."
^ Eric R. Kandel: Autobiography, Nobel Prize. Accessed May 3, 2008. "Finally, Denise was on the Columbia faculty and our house in Riverdale was near Columbia, thereby greatly simplifying our lives."
^ McPhee, Michele; and Wedge, Dave. "The Fall of Joan", Boston magazine, August 2005. Accessed May 4, 2008. "Virginia Joan Bennett was born September 9, 1936, in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, a neighborhood that closely resembles the lace-curtain Irish communities in Boston where paintings and photographs of JFK still hang on the walls."
^ ^a ^b Gross, Max. "Riverdale Run", The New York Post, April 24, 2008. Accessed May 3, 2008. "Over the years, these areas, filled with multimillion-dollar homes, have attracted the rich and privileged, including Lou Gehrig, Ella Fitzgerald and Sugar Ray Robinson. John F. Kennedy spent his youth in an enormous white mansion on Independence Avenue."
^ Bernstein, Nina; and Stein, Robin. "Mystery Woman in Kerik Case: Nanny", The New York Times, December 16, 2004. Accessed May 4, 2008. "Most puzzled about the nanny, perhaps, are former neighbors of the Keriks and their kin. In the Riverdale section of the Bronx, where the family lived in a first-floor apartment for years before moving last year into the Franklin Lakes home they had extensively renovated, neighbors did not recall any household help."
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Jackson, Nancy Beth. "If You're Thinking of Living In/Fieldston; A Leafy Enclave in the Hills of the Bronx", The New York Times, February 17, 2002. Accessed May 3, 2008. "Fiorello H. La Guardia, a three-time mayor of New York, lived and died at 5020 Goodridge Avenue.... After World War II, Richard Simon, founder of Simon & Schuster, bought a Georgian red-brick Baum house where he brought up his three musical daughters: Joanna, Lucy and Carly. TODAY, residents include United Nations ambassadors from Benin and Guinea; Jennifer J. Raab, president of Hunter College and former head of the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission; and G. Oliver Koppell, the former New York attorney general newly elected to the City Council. Theodore Kheel, the labor lawyer, has a house around the corner from Ruth Friendly..."
^ McCarthy, Peggy. "A New York Irishman, and Flaunting It", The New York Times, March 16, 1997. Accessed May 4, 2008. "WHEN John L. Lahey was growing up in St. Margaret's parish in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, he thought the world was Irish."
^ Novelist Christopher Lehmann-Haupt to Read at Mount Saint Vincent, College of Mount Saint Vincent press release dated September 2, 2005. Accessed May 4, 2008. "A former senior daily book reviewer for The New York Times, Lehmann-Haupt resides in Riverdale with his wife, writer Natalie Robins."
^ Bruni, Frank. "Manhattan Through a Warped Window; Featured in a Film: A Homeless Tour Guide's Offbeat City View", The New York Times, October 1, 1998. Accessed May 4, 2008. "Mr. Levitch grew up in a middle-class Jewish family of five in Riverdale, the Bronx, and attended Horace Mann, a respected private school."
^ Collins, Glenn. " BASEBALL: SUBWAY SERIES; 1956 vs. 2000? It's Deja Vu All Over Again, Except for When It's Not", The New York Times, October 21, 2000. Accessed May 3, 2008. "In 1956, the Dodger legend Pee Wee Reese occupied a modest brick duplex on Barwell Terrace in Bay Ridge, pitcher Sal Maglie lived in Riverdale and many Yankees occupied an apartment hotel on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx."
^ Wolfer, Sondra. "Olympic fencer Tim Morehouse takes his stab at being the best", New York Daily News, July 21, 2008. Accessed August 5, 2008. "As a young teen, Tim Morehouse took up fencing at the Riverdale Country School as an excuse to get out of gym class.... Almost kicked off his first fencing team for skipping practices, the Riverdale native was encouraged by a patient coach and discovered a passion for the sport."
^ Hartocollis, Anemona. "Apartment Complex Official Accused of Taking $1 Million", The New York Times, March 20, 2008. "The Century, built in 1976, is home to Tracy Morgan, the actor and comedian."
^ Glueck, Grace. "ART: PERU'S 'NAZCA LINES' AS SEEN FROM AIR", The New York Times, February 5, 1982. Accessed May 3, 2008. "Feb. 20 marks the 100th birthday of the sculptor Elie Nadelman (1882-1946), who spent the last 26 years of his life living and working in the Riverdale section of the Bronx."
^ Boxing Legends - Ray Robinson
^ Parhizkar, Maryam. "David Shapiro ’68: Four Decades of Poems", Columbia College Today, May/June 2007. Accessed May 4, 2008.
^ Maslin, Janet. "Heroines in the Footlights, From All Sides Now", The New York Times, April 17, 2008. Accessed May 3, 2008. "And Ms. Weller segues neatly from the fictional melodramas watched by the young Ms. Mitchell (then Roberta Joan Anderson) on Canadian movie screens to the real-life ones unfolding in Ms. Simon’s privileged, sexually overcharged household in Riverdale in New York."
^ Lowenstein, Roger. "As Governor, What Would His Battles Be?", The New York Times, July 16, 2006. Accessed April 13, 2008. "Eliot and his two siblings grew up in the prosperous Riverdale enclave of the Bronx, fed on progressive politics and duly enrolled in private schools."
^ Dunlap, David W. "Bronx Residents Fighting Plans Of a Developer", The New York Times, November 16, 1987. Accessed May 4, 2008. "A battle has broken out in the Bronx over the future of the peaceful acreage where U Thant lived when he headed the United Nations. A group of neighbors from Riverdale and Spuyten Duyvil has demanded that the city acquire as a public park the 4.75-acre (19,200 m²) parcel known as the Douglas-U Thant estate, north of 232d Street, between Palisade and Douglas Avenues."
^ Biography: Richard J. Tofel, International Freedom Center. Accessed May 4, 2008.
^ Frank, Mortimer H. "A Toscanini Odyssey", The Juilliard Journal Online, April 2002. Accessed February 26, 2008. "That archive was housed at Wave Hill, Toscanini's Riverdale residence during World War II."
^ "FEAR THAT GEN. WEBB WILL NOT RECOVER; Artillery Commander in the "Bloody Angle" at Gettysburg on His Deathbed.", The New York Times, February 12, 1911. Accessed May 4, 2008.
^ Stern, Eliyahu. "Leaping to respectability", The Jerusalem Post, May 24, 2002. Accessed May 4, 2008. "Based in the affluent Jewish enclave of Riverdale, in the New York City borough of the Bronx, Weiss has never really been accepted in the upper echelons of the US Jewish establishment."
^ Rosalyn Yalow Autobiography, Nobel Prize. Accessed February 24, 2008. "During that period Aaron and I had two children, Benjamin and Elanna. We bought a house in Riverdale, less than a mile from the VA."

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