What Atwater and Lockwood built still shapes the place. They laid out winding shoreline lanes, donated land for St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in 1876, and tied Riverside to Manhattan with the New York, New Haven & Hartford line — an hour’s ride that turned a farming neck into a commuter’s Eden. Through the 1880s and into the new century, Victorian cottages and Shingle-style houses rose on leafy lots along Riverside Avenue, the old “Potato Road.” By the 1930s the neighborhood held some of the highest real-estate values in the region.
Riverside also keeps a genuine rarity. Carrying Riverside Avenue over the railroad tracks is the Riverside Avenue Bridge — a 19th-century truss built almost entirely of structural cast iron, the only surviving cast-iron bridge in Connecticut and one of very few left in the country. It began life in 1871 as part of a six-span railroad bridge over the Housatonic in Stratford, fabricated by the Keystone Bridge Company; when that bridge was replaced, a span was salvaged and re-erected here over the tracks in 1894. Elegant, ornate, and improbably durable, it has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1977.
Why People Visit Riverside
Riverside rewards visitors who like the quiet, watery side of the Gold Coast: sailboats on the Mianus, shaded streets, and a handful of real landmarks close together. Add the Sound-side parks and the easy ride to the city, and the genteel calm makes its own case.
