Audubon Park
AP
This postcard from around 1920 gives you an idea of the view of the Hudson that the apartment buildings on the east side of Riverside Drive would have had until the early 1930s. Click here to compare three versions of this postcard.
However, this artist's idealized rendition gives a deceptive view of the Audubon House which was actually some forty feet below the line of Riverside Drive and far more dilapidated than this postcard depicts it to be (see picture at left). Note that the Vauxhall (built 1914) is not yet constructed and that the connector between Riverside Drive and 155th Street (barely discernable center left) slopes steeply downward, rather than slightly upwards as it does today.
One oddity about this picture: the tall monument in Trinity Cemetery today carries a plaque commemorating a young man who died in 1918, lost at sea at the end of World War I, which would be an anacronism given the construction date of the Vauxhall. Perhaps the statue was already in place and the plaque added later. That does not explain, however, why the statue at the top, a woman in Roman toga, carries an anchor, an allusion to Steven Tyng, Jr. who died at sea.
The Audubon house after 1914.
Click picture for larger view.
Webmaster's collection
Webmaster's collection
