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Update
What is a scenic byway?
Why a scenic byway for Riverdale
Reports on the scenic byway
2006 State of the Parkway, by Hilary Kitasei
How You Can Help
Chronology
Link to the Henry Hudson Pkwy. Scenic Byway Task Force web site
Update - March 12, 2007 
In a letter dated December 27, 2006, the Bronx Borough Commissioner of the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) informed the Preservancy that the DOT's study of city-owned retaining walls is expected to be complete in April 2007. The Commissioner said that the DOT will inform the Preservancy of its findings and recommendations at that time.
The New York Metropolitan Transportation Commission (NYMTC) has stated that it will consider moving forward with the scenic byway nomination process once the DOT study is complete.
What is a Scenic Byway?
A scenic byway is a corridor with a story to tell. Along the corridor, a story of our state's heritage is told through spectacular scenery, historic buildings and structures, recreational opportunities, natural resources, cultural celebrations, or archaeological treasures found within the roadways, open spaces, and neighborhoods of the corridor.
A Corridor Management Plan is developed to guide construction and maintenence along the corridor. More fundamentally, the Plan presents a vision of how to bring the corridor story to life for residents and visitors. It may include specific preservation and enhancement projects, design guidelines, and managment responsibilities. Scenic byway designation makes the byway eligible for federal and state byway funds, which can be used to undertake projects in the Corridor Management Plan.
Why a Scenic Byway for Riverdale?
Restoring the Park in the Henry Hudson Parkway
The parkway that cuts through Riverdale hardly resembles a scenic park road. Yet, when it was designed and built in the 1930s, the Henry Hudson Parkway was one of the finest examples of the American Parkway Movement, a movement which is regarded by many as this country’s most important contribution to global landscape architecture. The parkway was masterminded by Robert Moses as a gateway to the city, carrying the visitor through a panorama of the city’s most dramatic landscapes and monuments, through its premiere neighborhoods and into the heart of Manhattan. For the residents of the city, it was a ribbon of parks, criss-crossed with stone overpasses and tunnels connecting people to their parks and waterfront.
Changes diminish historic features
Over time, the parkway in Riverdale has begun to look more like a standardized expressway: huge signs mar the stone bridges and loom from overhead stanchions even on local service roads. The parkland buffer is paved over or eroded, if not altogether gone. The once landscaped median is now miles of Jersey barriers topped with chain link.
An overpass project illustrates the benefits of a byway
Recently, in an effort to fortify the bridges according to current safety standards, NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) proposed covering the stone walls of Riverdale’s overpasses with concrete topped with chain link. Alerted by the Riverdale Nature Preservancy, the Art Commission of the City of New York pressed DOT to come up with a design sensitive to the rustic character of this parkway and in recognition of its candidacy as the city’s first New York State Scenic Byway. While the Preservancy's effort was successful in getting the DOT to keep the traditional stonework, that achievement is marred by the installation of steel guardrails and chain link fencing, which obscure both the beautiful stonework and handsome bridges.
These individual design conflicts, which result in long delays that waste time and money, don't need to be a constant occurrence. Scenic Byway designation requires an approved Corridor Management Plan (CMP), which describes how communities wish to use, preserve, improve, and manage the resources along the byway—over a long-term (usually 20 years) time horizon—and outlines projects and strategies for achieving those goals. An overall approach to byway management -- goals, designs, and opportunities for public input -- could safeguard the Parkway's character and increase the efficiency of its management. It also makes the Parkway eligible for state and federal funding for enhancements.
Riverdale Nature Preservancy initiates byway effort
The Riverdale Nature Preservancy has a long-standing interest in the Henry Hudson Parkway, from leading the successful effort in the 1970s against widening the parkway, to our current initiative to designate the parkway a scenic byway, the first in New York City.
The Scenic Byway initiative is being spearheaded by the Riverdale Nature Preservancy as offering the best hope of halting the degradation of the parkway and restoring its original vision.
Reports on the Scenic Byway
The following reports have been prepared or are nearing completion:
- The Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) has completed Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) Report on the Henry Hudson Parkway. The report includes a contextual history, and inventory and maps of the Parkway's engineering and historic features. This work was funded by NYMTC and completed in fall 2006. Phase two of HAER's project was to create measured drawings and a GIS map. This phase remains on hold.
----» The HAER Report  (5.55 MB)
- The NYC Department of Transportation is completing a study of the structural integrity of city-owned retaining walls, including walls along the parkway.
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- The New York City Environmental Fund, in partnership with the NYC Departments of Transportation and Parks, identified a Class III bicycle and pedestrian route along the Parkway, making use of the service roads and overpasses to link the parks of the Parkway. The New Yorkers for Parks Community Design Internship program funded a design study for landscaping along this route. A report entitled Putting the Park Back in Parkway: A proposal for greenway and landscape recommedations was completed in 2004.
----» The Greenway Report (29.71 MB)
- Henry Hudson Parkway (9A) Scenic Byway Initiative - Report on Phase One of Public Outreach summarizes the venues and comments received from the public through July 2004. The report was compiled by the Preservancy's scenic byway task force.
----» Public Outreach Report (495 KB)
- Stormwater Capture Parks Along the Henry Hudson Parkway: Developing Endor Garden as a Watershed Model analyzes the potential of the parkland along the parkway to absorb stormwater runoff and divert it from city sewers, and the accompanying economic and environmental benefits. The report was completed by the Gaia Institute in 2003 with funding from the J.M. Kaplan Fund.
---» Stormwater Report (665 Kb)
----» Map 1 (1.44 MB)
----» Map 2 (843 Kb)
----» Map 3 (4.36 MB)
----» Map 4 (967 Kb)
----» Map 5 (4.8 MB)
- Understanding Jurisdiction Along the Henry Hudson Parkway was completed in 2003 by Sam Schwartz LLC, through a grant by the J. M. Kaplan Fund.
--» Jurisdiction Report (1.82 MB)
2006 STATE OF THE PARKWAY
January 31, 2006
By Hilary Kitasei
Chair, Henry Hudson Parkway Scenic Byway Task Force
Transportation money is about to rain down on the Henry Hudson Parkway. Millions of dollars in earmarks for the parkway were tucked into the State Transportation Bond Act and the Federal Transportation Bill. But where will it go? Descriptions in appropriation bills and budgets are vague. There is no plan for how this parkway should look or function. And the plan to make a plan is quashed. Our regional planning organization, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC), informed the community boards and other stakeholders that the Corridor Management Plan has been put on hold.
When we began the effort to designate the Henry Hudson Parkway a scenic byway five years ago, we had hoped to have a Corridor Management Plan in place by now. The New York State Scenic Byways Advisory Board gave its preliminary approval two years ago. NYMTC, whose members include the city and state departments of transportation,
approved funding for the plan and agreed to cooperate in its development. The Historic American Engineering Record of the National Park Service was commissioned to document and map the parkway's historic and cultural resources and their current condition, including an inventory of billboards. Their report is to be left half-finished.
When NYMTC approved the corridor management plan, it took over the public outreach function for the Scenic Byway initiative. With the plan now tabled, there is now no forum for pursuing a coherent vision for the corridor. There is no way of stimulating creative ideas to integrate this highway with the parks and neighborhoods it bisects. We will have projects - some good, some bad, most banal, but all of them piecemeal.
Most projects will be presented to a community board for its advisory opinion. They will also be presented to the NYC Arts Commission, whose approval is required. Like the community board, members of the Art Commission are volunteers. They do not have the expertise to challenge assertions by transportation engineers and they are reluctant to send a design back to the drawing board. So they suggest ways to mitigate the aesthetic injury.
Other developments will happen with no review. Maintenance of the landscape and infrastructure falls under "replacement in kind," even when it is not. Billboards are permitted.
In the last five years, the corridor has benefited from major investments by the city and the state to clean up the Hudson River, extend the Greenway, revitalize the waterfront, refurbish parks, and protect landmarks. Communities have invested years to produce plans
that balance environmental, economic development, recreational, and other goals. All of these investments, public and private, have been planned under, over, and around the highway. But the consequence of leaving the highway to the mercy of ad hoc, project-driven design, is clear. Changes in the highway sabotaged improvements in its surroundings. Concrete jersey barriers now cover miles of stone walls. Billboards are larger, louder, and spreading throughout the corridor. Eroded and paved-over landscape has exacerbated flooding, which further degrades the landscape and pollutes the river. A major piece of infrastructure, the great stone wall, remains a pile of rubble, with its owner and the city at a stalemate over its restoration.
"Every scenic byway tells a story." Every scenic byway also has a story. They are inevitably about building trust among the communities who share a corridor, and the city and state agencies who share jurisdiction. They are about building creative partnerships with private property owners.
The Arroyo Seco Parkway is an 8.2-mile highway connecting Los Angeles and Pasadena that was built shortly after the Henry Hudson Parkway. When residents proposed it as a National Scenic Byway several years ago, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) was an enthusiastic partner in developing the required Corridor Management Plan. The designation brought $1 billion in federal money to restore its historic landscape and bridges. Like many scenic byways, the plan focused on protecting the resource that underlies the landscape - the watershed.
When we started this effort, people said it couldn't be done in New York City. The vested interests are too great. But aren't the interests of New Yorkers far greater? If Los Angeles could do it, why can't New York?
How You Can Help
Please ask the Mayor and the Governor to allow the Corridor Management Plan for the Henry Hudson Parkway to be completed, so that New York City can reap the benefits of the Scenic Byways Program and rational transportation planning.
For more information about the status of the Scenic Byway initiative and how you can help, please email info@henryhudsonparkway.org , or hilary@kitasei.com, or call (212) 227-9505, Hilary Kitasei, Chair, Henry Hudson Parkway Task Force.
Click here for the Henry Hudson Parkway Scenic Byway web site.
Chronology
2001 - Preservancy Task Force is formed; public outreach begins
The Preservancy’s Henry Hudson Parkway
Scenic Byway Task Force is formed. The task force begins dozens of meetings, large
and small, with civic groups, community boards, agency representatives,
and other interested parties along the Parkway corridor.
2003 - public meetings in Riverside Park, Washington Heights, and Riverdale; symposium
The task force holds public meetings to begin to define important features of the Parkway corridor. The task force also holds a one-day symposium for design and parkway professionals.
2004 - NYMTC agrees to sponsor corridor management plan; four planning studies are funded through grants
New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC) agrees to fund and oversee the development of a comprehensive corridor management plan--the crux of the application to the state for byway designation.
The task force obtains a number of grants for scenic byway studies: the potential for stormwater capture, jurisdictional issues, and two complimentary studies of the potential for a greenway along the byway corridor. These reports can be viewed by clicking on the links in the Reports section of this page.
2005 - NYMTC funds HAER study and begins process of hiring a planning consultant to develop corridor management plan
NYMTC provides funding for the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), a division of the National Park Service, to inventory and document the full length of the parkway. The project includes three phases:
- Summer 2005: HAER historians will compile an inventory of resources related to the parkway. The inventory will describe the location and condition of bridges, ramps, interchanges, viewsheds, lighting, medians, billboards and all the other components that together make up the parkway. This three-month project will be completed by the end of September.
- Winter 2005 - 2006: The team will assemble a history of how the parkway was built and its relationship to the landscape and city. A team will also use a geographic information system to map the resources.
- Summer 2006: HAER architects will create measured drawings of select parkway features.
NYMTC also begins the process of hiring a planning consultant to develop the corridor management plan.
December 2005 - NYMTC indefinitely postpones all activities
NYMTC informs the Task Force, Community Boards and other affected parties that the Corridor Management Plan is indefinitely postponed while the City DOT completes a safety report on the Parkway. Funding for the HAER project is also halted; phase 3 remains unfunded.
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