Riverdale, the Bronx: High Ground and Disputed Borders

Riverdale is divided into subsections. Fieldston lies south of West 250th Street, east of the Henry Hudson Parkway, north of Manhattan College Parkway and west of Tibbett Avenue. Hudson Hill is above West 246th Street and west of the Henry Hudson Parkway; North Riverdale is above West 254th Street and west of Fieldston Road; Mosholu is east of Fieldston Road and above West 254th Street; Central Riverdale runs from Manhattan College Parkway to West 232nd Street; Villanova Heights is bounded by Fieldston Road, 250th Street and the Henry Hudson Parkway. Spuyten Duyvil, or South Riverdale, lies below West 232nd Street or West 239th Street, by some definitions.

Wave Hill is a 28-acre estate in the Hudson Hill section, at West 249th Street and Independence Avenue. It currently consists of public horticultural gardens and a cultural center, with two houses and a botanical garden, and on an annual basis about 65,000 people visit it. Adjacent to its grounds, Riverdale Park runs along the Hudson River for approximately 1.5 miles (2.4 km), one block wide, averaging 9 metres above sea level. The park follows Palisade Avenue between 254th Street and 232nd Street, with an entrance at Dodge Lane (247th Street), and its main sections from north to south are The North Woods, The Fishing Trail, Dodge Lane, The Oak Forest and the South End.

Christ Church Riverdale, High Victorian Gothic and built in 1866 by Richard M. Upjohn of Upjohn & Co., stands at 5040 Henry Hudson Parkway East. The Riverdale Presbyterian Church Complex, built in 1863-64 by James Renwick Jr., is at 4761-4765 Henry Hudson Parkway. The Riverdale Historic District, 15 acres in the northwest of the neighborhood, was designated on October 16, 1990. The William E. Dodge House stands at 690 W. 247th St. and the Robert Colgate House at 5225 Sycamore Ave. in Hudson Hill.

At Riverdale Avenue at W. 239th St. and Henry Hudson Pkwy., the Riverdale–Spuyten Duyvil–Kingsbridge Memorial Bell Tower — commonly the Riverdale Monument — stands in Bell Tower Park, its plaque listing World War I servicemembers from Riverdale and neighboring areas. The campus of the University of Mount Saint Vincent, at W. 261st St. and Riverdale Ave., holds Fonthill Castle; the northernmost point in New York City is at the Hudson River on that campus.

Riverdale, Kingsbridge and other northwest Bronx areas were part of the Town of Yonkers until the later 19th century.

Fieldston — the subsection south of West 250th Street, east of the Henry Hudson Parkway, north of Manhattan College Parkway and west of Tibbett Avenue — has a development history of its own. A Delafield purchase of 250 acres in 1829 gave Fieldston its name, taken from the family's Irish estate. Lots were laid out in 1909, following the extension of the IRT subway to Van Cortlandt Park–242nd Street in 1908, and Albert E. Wheeler designed Fieldston's streets to follow the land's contours. The first house was begun in 1910 and finished in 1911. In 1923, after 80 houses were completed, the Fieldston Property Owners' Association formed; it still owns Fieldston's streets and common areas, plows the streets, does sewer repair and cares for the trees. In 1938 the New York City Planning Commission approved a special zoning district there prohibiting multiple-family buildings.

The original Wave Hill House was a gray fieldstone mansion built in 1843 by William Lewis Morris. William Henry Appleton owned the estate from 1866 to 1903, enlarging the house between 1866 and 1869 and again in 1890, and George Walbridge Perkins, a partner of J. P. Morgan, purchased it in 1903. In 1960 the Perkins-Freeman family deeded Wave Hill to the City of New York. Huxley visited; the Roosevelts rented the estate in 1870 and 1871; Twain leased it from 1901 to 1903; and Toscanini lived there from 1942 to 1945.

Fonthill Castle was built in 1852 for Edwin Forrest and Catherine Norton Sinclair, a Gothic Revival cluster of six octagonal towers in hammered grey stone, its name taken from William Beckford's Fonthill Abbey. The Sisters of Charity of New York relocated the Academy of Mount Saint Vincent from McGowan's Pass to the property; that academy, founded in 1847 as a school for women, became degree-granting and took the College name in 1911, and was renamed the University of Mount Saint Vincent in 2024.

Riverdale Park was originally planned as a neighborhood centerpiece but remained undeveloped. In the 1940s the Delafield, Dodge, Douglas and Perkins families donated land to New York City with a requirement that it be kept natural, and the land was established as a special natural area in the 1950s. Wave Hill created a Learning Center connected to the park in 1981, began the Riverdale Park Project in 1983 and developed a Natural Sciences Program in 1984 — forest-management and ecological-education programs run by Wave Hill.

The Riverdale Monument was built by the architect Dwight James Baum and is dated September 17, 1930. It was moved 700 feet south from its original site in 1936 to make room for the Henry Hudson Parkway.

Van Cortlandt Park–242nd Street is the northern terminal station of the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line, served by the 1 at all times. It serves Fieldston, Kingsbridge and Riverdale, and stands on the border of Fieldston and Kingsbridge. It opened on August 1, 1908 to a design by Heins & LaFarge, is the only remaining Victorian Gothic elevated terminal station on the subway, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.

Metro-North's Hudson Line serves Riverdale at Riverdale station, between West 254th and 255th Streets, and at Spuyten Duyvil station, at Edsall Avenue. Riverdale station — also known as Riverdale–West 254th Street station, at Railroad Terrace and West 254th Street — is the northernmost Metro-North station in New York City on the Hudson Line. Spuyten Duyvil station is located in the Spuyten Duyvil neighborhood of the Bronx.

The Bx1, Bx7, Bx9, Bx10, Bx20, BxM1-3 and BxM18 buses serve the area, along with Bee-Line routes to Westchester County.

The 2011 Comprehensive Citywide Ferry Study identified potential ferry routes to western Manhattan and Riverdale, which were not implemented.