"Riverside Drive, north from West 80th Street, showing the transitional aspects of this marginal thoroughfare. In the foreground is one of the last squatters shacks. The row of buildings at the right is at the S. E. corner of West 82nd Street, ca. 1895."

This area of Riverside Drive and Riverside Park (across the street behind the structure in this image) would see occupation by a number of shanty towns in the 19th and 20th century. Well known as a Hooverville during the Great Depression, it was also home to a shanty town earlier. The Hudson River was lined with these communities but as Riverside Drive and the Upper West Side in general began to be developed in the 1880s and 1890s, these types of dwellings were demolished. The notation on this photo suggests that this structure, still standing in 1895, was the last of the shacks to go.