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The G.W.B. doesn’t disappoint. It’s really big—the roadway is almost a mile long and is suspended more than 200 feet above the surface of the Hudson River—but it’s also digestible. Walking across it doesn’t take terribly long, and it’s actually a bit easier than the walk across the Brooklyn or Manhattan Bridges, since the deck links a high point in New Jersey to a high point in Manhattan.
The day that I took this walk, the south sidewalk was closed, so I used the walkway on the north side of the bridge. The natural scenery up the river is just as magnificent as the man-made scenery downriver.
From the metro area that gives us such names as Hoboken, Weehawken, Hackensack*, Harsimus Cove and Throgs Neck, comes Yonkers, which sits across the city line from the Bronx. It’s visible from the bridge.
The Cloisters, part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sits on the top of a hill in Fort Tryon Park at the very northern tip of Manhattan. Its tower pokes through the trees in this photo. Below it, just above the shoreline, is Robert Moses’s Henry Hudson Parkway. In The Power Broker, Robert Caro’s biography of Moses, the construction of the Henry Hudson Parkway was where Moses went from arrogant-but-generally-good to essentially maniacal (but there were signs earlier, of course).
The views of Midtown are as good as ever, of course. The scale of the Empire State Building is, I think, best appreciated from this distance, where it still overpowers just about everything else.
As we cross over the Manhattan shoreline on the bridge, we can see railroad tracks below us. These were originally built by the New York Central to gain access to the West Side (its Grand Central Terminal is on the East Side). Now they’re owned by Amtrak, which uses them for trains to Albany and Chicago. These tracks and the environment around them in the early 20th century inspired Robert Moses to pursue public works in the first place. When he built Riverside Park and the Henry Hudson Parkway, the tracks were the source of much of his funding, part of which came directly from the New York Central and another chunk of which came from Federal funds earmarked for the elimination of railroad grade crossings.
Upon arriving in Manhattan, we’re greeted by the sight of the George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal (in the foreground). Behind it are residential towers that are located directly on top of the Cross-Manhattan Expressway segment of I-95.
And now, a final view of the bridge.
The tour is over. The A train whisks me back downtown, and safely home to Park Slope.
The local installment of Mitsuwa, the Japanese mini-mall, is located in Edgewater, New Jersey. Below is the main feature: a supermarket that sells Japanese ingredients, including excellent fish. It has a full food court that includes lots of basic Japanese food, but also some stands with hamburgers and Italian beef.
The supermarket is at the center of a small strip-mall that also includes a Japanese bookstore and stationer. The books there are beautifully printed, and their uniform dimensions make for a pleasing display.
The magazine section has Japanese editions of American publications, as well as Japanese periodicals. Included is “Wink Up,” a teen magazine.
From behind Mitsuwa, we get a great view of Morningside Heights, the neighborhood that includes Columbia University’s main campus and Riverside Church (right), which was built by John D. Rockefeller from 1926 to 1930. Its congregation remains prominent today, and is particularly famous for its leftist activism. The tower of the church contains the only carillon in the world that bests that of my alma mater, the University of Chicago. Both instruments are named for Laura Spelman Rockefeller, the wife of John D.
The colonnaded rotunda on the left-hand side of the photo is the tomb of Ulysses S. “Bury me next to my wife, but nothing too fancy” Grant. It was finished in 1897, fell into disrepair in the 1970s along with much of the rest of public New York, and was restored impressively in the late 1990s.
Getting back on the bus, I keep heading north.
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The ride has some other minor attractions.
Back between Jersey City and Hoboken, the light rail trains pass this stop, which really ought to be announced by a recorded pirate voice:
After leaving Hoboken Terminal, and just as they pull out of the Lincoln Harbor station, where I disembark, the light rail trains pass beneath the “Helix”, a curved causeway that brings Route 495 off of the Palisades and down into the Lincoln Tunnel. The views from the Helix are spectacular.
Lincoln Harbor is a drab, sterile development that includes a marina, a couple of strange housing/something-else piers, and a blue office complex that includes this gem of a food court:
But at least this is where the bus stops, and it’s on time. Route 158 follows River Road up the narrow plane between the Hudson and the Palisades. Good views of the west side of Midtown are off to the right the whole way:
The road has been developed quickly over the last few years, and there’s now a great deal of expensive, low-quality housing crammed in between it and the river.
Condos start at $600,000 in “Grandview II at Riverwalk”, and the developer, K. Hovnanian, promises “an enticing shopping promenade” in the neighborhood. But the commercial options in this area are bland strip malls like this one, which turns its back on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and the tower of Riverside Church.
But not to worry. There’s something pretty neat coming up.
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