Stone-walled Tudor and Georgian Revival mansions line winding lanes on a ridge above the Hudson.
What Riverdale looks like
Riverdale sits on a ridge above the Hudson River, high enough that the Palisades and the George Washington Bridge are visible from several streets. , and curve along the contours of the hill rather than running straight. Century-old oaks and elms close over the pavement on all three.
Stone walls and wrought-iron gates enclose Tudor and Georgian Revival mansions set back on sloping lawns, most of them built in the early twentieth century. Driveways curve in from the street rather than meeting it at a right angle, and hedges rather than fences mark where one property ends and the next begins.
Six-story brick apartment buildings from the 1950s stand along the wider streets. Taller brick towers went up in the 1960s nearer the river, including the twenty-story blocks of on Arlington Avenue. They rise well above the roofline of the houses around them.
's quadrangle sits off Manhattan College Parkway, bordered by Georgian brick halls with slate roofs and a central lawn. 's fieldstone gatehouse opens onto the grounds at West 249th Street and Independence Avenue, where a lawn slopes down toward the river.
Shot in Riverdale
Manhattan College's campus turns up on screen more than once. The producers of A Beautiful Mind used its quadrangle as Harvard University. The crew of Law & Order SVU filmed on the same campus the week before shooting a car and school bus collision nearby at Oxford Avenue and West 236th Street, for the show's 25th season.
A Beautiful Mind, 2001
The Manhattan College campus
Played Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
The production used the campus's quadrangle as Harvard University for John Nash's academic scenes. Its Georgian brick halls include Memorial Hall, and the campus sits in the Fieldston section off Manhattan College Parkway. Street View
Law & Order SVU, season 25, 2025
The crew filmed on campus the week before its own street shoot nearby, though the network did not say what the campus stood in for. The same production separately staged a car and school bus collision at Oxford Avenue and West 236th Street for the same season.
What Riverdale can double for
Lawrence Park in Bronxville, New York
Lawrence Park's houses climb a wooded hillside on winding roads laid out much like Riverdale's own Hudson Hill lanes. Tudor Revival gables and stone are among the styles built there from the 1890s into the 1910s. Lawrence Park's lots sit closer together than Riverdale's larger grounds, so a wide shot needs a stretch of road with more space between houses to hold the comparison. Try searching Tudor Revival hillside houses now.
Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey
Llewellyn Park's winding roads curve past large houses set well back behind stone gateposts and mature trees, laid out the same way Fieldston's own streets were decades later. Most of its houses date from the 1850s through the turn of the century. The period gas lamps along its curving streets are unmistakably Llewellyn Park's own in close-up, so hold wider shots on the road and tree cover rather than the lamps or gates. Try searching winding roads stone gateposts now.
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