SECRETS AND SCANDALS OF MIDDLE RIVERSIDE DRIVE

Curving gracefully along the great Hudson River on New York’s Upper West Side, Riverside Drive is best known for the elegance of its buildings and the quiet of its streets. But behind serene facades overlooking lush Riverside Park lie shocking tales of headline-making scandals – infidelities, suicides, murders, and more -- along with amazing architectural details of the homes where they happened. Join local historian and author Stephanie Azzarone for a special tour based on her award-winning book, Heaven on the Hudson: Mansions, Monuments, and Marvels of Riverside park. Explore the delights of exquisite Gilded Age Mansions, Art Deco landmarks and monuments that were the first of their kind. Learn the history of how and why Riverside Drive and Riverside Park came to be, from a guide who literally “wrote the book.”

Tour highlights include:

• an exquisite villa that is the Drive’s only privately owned freestanding mansion (and whose owner stiffed his famous architect)
• the sad fate of America’s first supermodel
• the mansion where William Randolph Hearst ensconced his paramour, Marion Davies
• the landmark apartment building created for a Russian mystic -- with a “stupa” and a notable cornerstone
• the sites of a hidden passageway and what's left of a 17th century path

Host or Publisher Riverside Walks and Talks