East Side Story

Running the length of Manhattan’s west side, the Hudson River Greenway is familiar to most New Yorkers for both recreation and transit. The continuous thirteen-mile path is the “most heavily used bikeway in the United States” and has spurred development such as Little Island and Gansevoort Peninsula. The island’s east side is another story: A pathway along the East River, decades in the making, is still decades out from completion.

Even so, progress on that front is underway. The East Midtown Greenway runs alongside Sutton Place, the affluent micro-neighborhood where Midtown becomes Uptown, and where Woody Allen schmoozes Diane Keaton as Gershwin’s Someone to Watch Over Me begins to swell. Grid-wise, the enclave’s namesake avenue runs parallel to FDR Drive (over which its coveted co-ops and townhouses cantilever) from 53rd to 59th streets, stopping just short of the Queensboro Bridge (it continues north as York Avenue). By the end of this year or shortly thereafter, New Yorkers will be able to admire—and circumvent—the stately neighborhood from a seven-block, 2,000-f…