Henry Hudson Parkway in the context of "West Side Highway"

The West Side of Manhattan refers to the side of Manhattan Island that abuts the Hudson River and faces the U.S. state of New Jersey. The major neighborhoods on the West Side are (from north to south) Inwood, Hudson Heights, Washington Heights, West Harlem, Morningside Heights, Manhattan Valley, the Upper West Side, Hell's Kitchen, Chelsea, the West Village, SoHo, and Tribeca. The 8th Avenue and West Side subway lines connect all parts of the West Side.

The main north–south roads servicing the West Side are the Henry Hudson Parkway in the north and the West Side Highway in the south. The Hudson River Greenway separates these highways from the island's western shore.

The Joe DiMaggio Highway, commonly called the West Side Highway and formerly the Miller Highway, is a 5.42-mile-long (8.72 km) mostly surface section of New York State Route 9A (NY 9A), running from West 72nd Street along the Hudson River to the southern tip of Manhattan in New York City. It replaced the West Side Elevated Highway, built between 1929 and 1951, which was shut down in 1973 due to neglect and lack of maintenance, and was dismantled by 1989. North of 72nd Street, the roadway continues as the Henry Hudson Parkway.

The current highway was complete by 2001, but required reconstruction after the September 11 attacks that year, when the collapse of the World Trade Center caused debris to fall onto the surrounding areas, damaging the highway. It uses the surface streets that existed before the elevated highway was built: West Street, Eleventh Avenue and Twelfth Avenue. A short section of Twelfth Avenue still runs between 125th and 138th Streets, under the Riverside Drive Viaduct. Eleventh Avenue is a separate street north of 22nd Street. The portion between West 42nd Street and Canal Street is part of the Lincoln Highway.

125th Street, co-named Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard is a two-way street that runs east–west in the New York City borough of Manhattan, from First Avenue on the east to Marginal Street, a service road for the Henry Hudson Parkway along the Hudson River in the west. It is often considered to be the "Main Street" of Harlem.

Notable buildings along 125th Street include the Apollo Theater, the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, the Hotel Theresa, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Mount Morris Bank Building, Harlem Commonwealth Council, the Harlem Children's Zone, the Church of St. Joseph of the Holy Family, and the former West End Theatre, now home to the La Gree Baptist Church.

96th Street is a major two-way street on the Upper East Side and Upper West Side sections of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It runs in two major sections: between FDR Drive and Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side, and between Central Park West and the Henry Hudson Parkway on the Upper West Side. The two segments are connected by the 97th Street transverse across Central Park, which links the disconnected segments of 96th and 97th Streets on each side.

96th Street is one of the 15 hundred-foot-wide (30 m) crosstown streets mapped out in the Commissioner's Plan of 1811 that established the numbered street grid in Manhattan. On Manhattan's West Side, 96th Street is the northern boundary of the New York City steam system, the largest such system in the world, which pumps 30 billion pounds of steam into 100,000 buildings south of the street. (The northern boundary on the East Side is 89th Street.)

Fort Tryon Park is a public park located in the Washington Heights and Inwood neighborhoods of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The 67-acre (27 ha) park is situated on a ridge in Upper Manhattan, close to the Hudson River to the west. It extends mostly from 192nd Street in the south to Riverside Drive in the north, and from Broadway in the east to the Henry Hudson Parkway in the west. The main entrance to the park is at Margaret Corbin Circle, at the intersection of Fort Washington Avenue and Cabrini Boulevard.

The area was known by the local Lenape tribe as Chquaesgeck and by Dutch settlers as Lange Bergh (Long Hill). During the American Revolutionary War, the Battle of Fort Washington was fought at the site of the park on November 16, 1776. The area remained sparsely populated during the 19th century, but by the turn of the 20th century, it was the location of large country estates.

The Grand Central Parkway (GCP) is a 14.61-mile (23.51 km) controlled-access parkway that stretches from the Triborough Bridge in New York City to the Queens–Nassau County line on Long Island. At the Nassau County line, it becomes the Northern State Parkway, which runs across the northern part of Long Island into Suffolk County, where it ends in Hauppauge. The westernmost stretch (from the RFK Bridge to the BQE) also carries a short stretch of Interstate 278 (I-278). The parkway runs through Queens and passes the Cross Island Parkway, Long Island Expressway, LaGuardia Airport and Citi Field, home of the New York Mets. The parkway is designated New York State Route 907M (NY 907M), an unsigned reference route. Despite its name, the Grand Central Parkway was not named after Grand Central Terminal.

The Grand Central Parkway has a few unique distinctions. It is only one of four parkways in New York State to carry an elliptical black-on-white design for its trailblazer, the others being the Henry Hudson Parkway, the Jackie Robinson Parkway, and the Cross Island Parkway, all in New York City. Other parkways in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island use the state-standard design, while the Belt-system parkways use a modified version of the Long Island regional parkway shield with the Montauk Point Lighthouse logo. In addition, it is one of the few parkways in the state to allow truck traffic to any extent. The section shared with I-278 allows for all trucks under 14 feet (4.3 m) high.

New York State Route 9A (NY 9A) is a state highway in the vicinity of New York City in the United States. Its southern terminus is at Battery Place near the northern end of the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel in New York City, where it intersects with both the unsigned Interstate 478 (I-478) and FDR Drive. The northern terminus of NY 9A is at U.S. Route 9 (US 9) in Peekskill. It is predominantly an alternate route of US 9 between New York City and Peekskill; however, in New York City, it is a major route of its own as it runs along the West Side Highway and Henry Hudson Parkway. It is also one of only two signed New York State routes in Manhattan (the other is NY 25). In northern Westchester County, NY 9A follows the Briarcliff–Peekskill Parkway.

The origins of NY 9A date back to the 1920s when an alternate route of then-NY 6 from Yonkers to Tarrytown was designated as NY 6A. NY 6 was redesignated as US 9 in 1927; however, NY 6A was not renumbered to NY 9A until the 1930 renumbering of state highways in New York. NY 9A was extended south into New York City in 1934 and north to Ossining in the late 1930s. In 1933, the Briarcliff–Peekskill Parkway opened as NY 404. All of NY 404 was incorporated into an extended NY 9A on January 1, 1949. NY 9A was extended northward to Peekskill in 1967 following the completion of the Croton Expressway and southward to the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel in the mid-1990s.