Upper West Side Wander

Going North to South from the Upper East Side is easy. Going west is a bit more difficult. It involves taking a cab or one of New York's notoriously slow cross town buses. After being in the city for over a month, in November of 2008 I decided to take a wander to see what lies on the other side of Central Park; the Upper West Side.

Click here for wander map.

I started at the Lincoln Center. The central square has been under renovations since I arrived in New York. I think they're supposed to be done soon, so I'll have to make a trip back to get this shot without the giant blue plywood construction barriers.

 

From the Lincoln Center I hopped on the 1train and headed north to 96th street. From the stop, I went west toward the water where I found Riverside Park:

  

Unlike Central Park, Riverside is long and narrow. It runs from around 72nd st up to 130th st, but there are other chunks of trails/parks/playgrounds to the north and south of it, so it seems to go on forever. But it's only a block wide at its widest. I was luck on this day to have randomly chosen 96th street to get off the subway and enter. The park follows the same route along the Hudson River as the Henery Hudson Parkway. This means that there are only a few spots where there are passages from the west side, over or under the Parkway and into the park. I've since spent a lot of time wandering (not happily) up and down the west side looking for a way across the highway and into the park. I believe this is a Robert Moses design, where it's assumed that you're in a car enjoying your scenic view of the Hudson River as you enter Manhattan, and you decide to pull over into a large parking lot to enjoy the park for a bit. Wandering around was not in the designs.

Riverside Church. I've since managed to wander back up this way, so I got to see it with the scafolding down (I didn't know they ever took it down once it was up):

  

 Grant's Tomb. Very nice monument, and free to go in.

  

Tiled benches around the outside of Grant's Tomb. I had been lucky enough to visit Barcelona a couple of years ago. This work seemed very Gaudi to me:

  

Two caskets, Grant and his wife:

  

Looking down on Harlem from the top of Morningside Park. This was the first time that I thought that Manhattan is a bit hilly:

  

Saint John the Devine: This church had just reopened around the time of this wander after a fire in 2001 did extensive damage. I recently rewandered the UWS and managed to show up in time to wander inside.

  

 Main quad a Columbia University, looking north toward the library. Sorry NYUers, but this is a nice campus. You're in the cooler neighbourhood, but you don't have a central quad like this:

 

My nighttime photography skills are severely lacking, so I've bee planning a return wander to the area for a while to get decent pictures of Saint John and Columbia.