Riverside Drive - West 105th Street Historic District

Until the end of the nineteenth century, the Upper West Side of Manhattan was known as Bloomingdale, after Bloemendael, the flower-growing region of Holland. Although the site of two large building complexes, the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum and the Leake and Watts Orphanage, it was not until the 1890s that major development began. The townhouses built between 1899 and 1902 on West 105th and 106th Streets are the end result of a period of great optimism, originally fueled by the hope that the proposed World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 (eventually located in Chicago) would be in Riverside Park. By the turn of the century, the area had become a fashionable residential neighborhood, and these elegant houses, built in the French Beaux-Arts style, were intended to lure wealthy residents from the Upper East Side, which by then had developed into New York's most fashionable neighborhood. Among the area's amenities were the park, with its views of the river and hills of New Jersey, and the quiet atmosphere of the side streets. The neighborhood is notable for the visual harmony of the streetscapes—the results of restrictive covenants dictating their uniform heights and character of the facades.

Many of the houses have had unusually long occupancies, which helps to explain their exceptional state of preservation today. The elegant residences along Riverside Drive between 105th and 106th Streets have attracted interesting occupants from all walks of life over the years. No. 330 was once home to Robert Benson Davis, the founder of Davis Baking Powder. Early film starlet Marion Davies, who resided at No. 331, was the mistress of the publisher William Randolph Hearst, who apparently spent a great deal of money renovating the residence. Today this residence houses a Buddhist Church; the neighboring building (No. 332) was torn down and replaced by a low-scale modernist structure. Nos. 333 and 334 were home to composer and bandleader Duke Ellington's family during the 1950s and 1960s. ©2014