Description

The  Henry Hudson Parkway runs along the Hudson River from West 72nd Street to the Bronx-Westchester border and includes the Henry Hudson Bridge, which connects Manhattan with the Bronx. The Parkway was part and parcel of the West Side Improvement project of 1934-37, which included the reconstruction of Riverside Park.  The Parkway and Riverside Park were financed and built together, as noted here by researcher Frank da Cruz.

Part of its route also runs through Van Cortlandt Park, as described here: “Moses chose to run the new parkway through Van Cortlandt Park because it was already city property. To run it outside of the park would have required condemning and buying up vast amounts of privately owned land.”

Financing from the parkway came from a range of sources: “In brief, about 62% of the West Side Improvement funding was federal, 34% state and city, and only 4% private, and [Moses] had tens of thousands of work-relief laborers on hand for construction” (kermitproject.org).

More specifically, sources of funding for the project are listed here as including:

• Funds from PWA (Public Works Administration) for the “79th Street Grade Crossing Elimination Structure,” including marina, restaurant, underground parking facility and ornamentation: $5.1 million
• Federal highway funds (for the link between the West Side Highway and the George Washington Bridge): $12 million
• Funds from CWA (Civil Works Administration) for Riverside Park and “park access road” (the parkway was classified as a “park access road,” since the CWA could not specifically build highways): $30 million