The Lost Palaces Down by the Riverside ... Drive

If I had the cash and was going to build a palace, I'd build it in a great city by a river.

Imagine living in a huge home, gilt and elegance everywhere, and then looking out the window and seeing a brilliant cityscape, and then looking out another window and seeing a big placid stream of water.

How lovely, how ... rich.

This is not, no surprise, not an original idea to me. There have been several historic palaces built next to rivers but today, sadly, most of them are phantoms.

And here in NYC we also have phantom riverside palaces -- the lost mansions that used to exist on Riverside Drive in Manhattan.

But foist, to history!

In London, in the medieval era, there was a huge palace on the banks of the River Thames in London called the Savoy Palace. It was huge, gorgeous, and absolutely screamed of power and wealth. Unsurprisingly it was owned by the then-royal family, the Plantagenets. Its last resident was John of Gaunt, son of King Edward III, and an important political and military leader of his time -- a kind of guy-behind-the-guy, a Bismark or James Baker or Tywin Lannister kind of guy.

But tragedy befell the Savoy Palace in 1381 when, during the Peasants Revolt, it was burned down, totally destroyed (John of Gaunt had levied a very unpopular tax on the peasants and the peasants let him know what they thought of it). A smart politician, John didn't rebuild the palace -- instead, he made tax reforms and quelled the rebellion, restoring peace.

John of Gaunt was an important historic figure (see below), and he is also the grandfather of every British monarch since Henry IV. John and his longtime-mistress/last wife, the gorgeous and amazing Kathrine Swynford, had four kids. John of Gaunt's riverside palace may not have survived but his DNA sure does!

Moving down to Paris, on the right back of the River Seine, used to stand the Tuilleries Palace. It was one of many residences of the French Kings and it was actually the brainchild of the great Queen Catherine de Medici herself. The French Kings before the 1789 didn't actually live there much (they soon headed out to Versailles) but in the 19th century it was used by the short-lived monarchs Louise-Phillipe and Louise Napoleon.

But the Tuilleries Palace became another victim of mass fervor when, during the Paris Commune of 1871, it was destroyed, never to be rebuilt. Now it's a massive public park, the Tuilleries Garden, where families strolls and couples go to ... French.

Sidenote: a forgotten historical figure named Phillipp Prince of Saxe Coburg Gotha was born in the Tuilleries Palace in 1844. He was the brother-in-law and friend of the Austrian Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria who, along with a couple of others, discovered Rudolf and his dead mistress at Mayerling in 1889. Philipp is an intriguing, pivotal character in Episode 4 of Fall of Eagles -- see below; it's an amazing episode. (Phillipp also put his crazy cheating wife in an insane assylum and fought a duel with her lover that he lost. But anyway.)  

Then there's the Yusupov Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia. Built by the insanely wealthy noble Yusupov family on the banks of the Moika River, it was as huge, as gorgeous, as jaw-droppingly splendid as any palace ever built anywhere. It was a (literally) shining example of Tsarist Russia -- the kind of place that represented everything that the Communists hated and wanted to destroy.

Amazingly, the Communists didn't destroy it after the 1917 Russian revolution. It was too big, too impressive, and too useful to destroy. Instead, the Yusopov family fled Russia and the Communists turned into a ministry. Now its a museum. But even though this riverside palace still exists, it's still a phantom -- no one lives there, its use abandoned, it's a curiosity of history and not a living part of it.

But what's most interesting about this palace is that while it's huge and gorgeous and an architectural marvel, its best known for something that happened in a basement room in the palace late at night on December 30, 1916. That's the night that Prince Felix Yusupov and his friends killed the mysterious and fake holy man/Tsarist whisperer and advisor Rasputin. They fed him poisoned cakes and wine and, when those failed to kill him, shot him. Rasputin managed to flee outside of the palace where Yusupov and his friends shot him again. Then they chained him up and drove him outside St. Petersburg where they dumped his body into another river. And while Yusopov and his friends thought killing Rasputin would save the Russian monarchy, it was in fact the moment when its doom was sealed.

Okay, so we've delved into history of the riverside palaces in London, Paris and St. Petersburg. Let's come home to NYC.

And here you can learn all about the huge, beautiful mansions -- some of them almost as big and gorgeous as palaces -- that were built in the 19th-century on Riverside Drive in Manhattan. Obviously no nobles or royals built or lived in them, but they were examples of the the Gilded Age, of New Money, of trying to show their European counterparts that they could build great homes as grand as anything in the Old World. And Riverside Drive, that great stretch of road by the watery Western frontier of NYC, seemed like the perfect place.

Sadly, most of these mansions on Riverside Drive are gone today. A couple still exist but, during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, their wealthy residents could no longer afford their upkeep and sold them to developers. The new owners proceeded to knock them down and build apartment buildings -- some quite splendid themselves but not quite as interesting as the mansions they replaced. 

This documentary below about the lost mansions, the lost palaces, of Riverside Drive tells the story about ten of these long-gone gems.

And I have a personal interest in this -- one of the mansions mentioned in this documentary was replaced by the building that I myself grew up in myself and where my family still owns the apartment.

So yeah ... I kinda-sorta-but-not-really-but-want-to-believe that I grew up and lived for years in a kinda-sorta-palace on the riverside of a great city.

And that I have a some stuff in common with other previous residents of riverside mansions -- like intelligence and elegance -- except for like ... 

John of Gaunt; I mean this guy had it all, money, power, a hot woman (and women), kids, bling -- I just wouldn't want to have my home burned down ... 

... or Catherine de Medici but without all the killing ... 

... or Prince Phillipp of Saxe Coburg Gotha but without putting my wife in a loonie bin or discovering my brother-in-law dead ... 

... or Prince Felix Yusopov without killing a gross and weird holy man and then fleeing the country.

And if want to just enjoy the beauty and impressive current day architecture of Riverside Drive, I strongly suggest taking along this most amazing and unique of NYC thoroughfares.