The respectable calm of this Central Park West District has been occa-
sionally ruffled. In one block of West Seventies, for example, showgirl
Dot King and Joseph P. Elwell were both murdered. In 1931, more than
10,000 spectators lined West Ninetieth Street while 150 policemen be-
sieged notorious "Two-gun" Crowley and captured him after a rattling
small-arms battle. These events, however, are no more typical of the nor-
mal life of the neighborhood than is the Explorers Club.

Riverside Drive

Area: 72d Street to Dyckman Street bordering the Hudson River.

Riverside Drive, like Wall Street, is a national symbol of wealth, but
unlike Wall Street it has never quite deserved its reputation. From the
1890's until after the World War, to be sure, it was popular with the
newly rich, whose ornate gray and brownstone battlemented houses bore
witness to economic success; yet, lacking an old-family tradition, it never
rivaled streets like Fifth Avenue in the esteem of fashionable society. In
its location, however, with its fine parks, and impressive buildings and
monuments, Riverside Drive is unsurpassed by any street in New York.

The Drive rides the precipitous western escarpment of the island from
Seventy-second Street to Dyckman Street, winding, rising, dipping, for
almost seven miles, yet always maintaining an elevation that permits a
spreading view of the Hudson River, the Palisades, and the George Wash-
ington Bridge. The Drive is walled off on the east by apartment houses,
old and new, a few mansions, some notable institutions, and occasional
blocks of converted dwellings where a twenty-dollar-a-week clerk may rent
a small room and write the folks back home that he is living on the Drive.

Along the slope between the high roadway and the river, a narrow park
borders the Drive for most of its length; this strip of greenery is named
Riverside Park up to 158th Street where it becomes Fort Washington
Park. At the very edge of the river, and superseding the Drive as a
through automobile route, run the twin lanes of the new Henry Hudson
Parkway, which connects with the West Side highway below Seventy-
second Street and empties into the Saw Mill River Parkway at the West-
chester County line. This road is intended eventually to form part of a
continuous express route around Manhattan's rim.

But the roadway is only one feature of a $24,000,000 development