This posting raises some very interesting questions about the origins of the Spuyten Duyvil Parkway. Was it originally a scenic avenue to a park, comparable to Olmsted and Vaux’s Ocean Parkway and Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn? When and why was it constructed and named? What entities or people promoted its construction and design? Did it run from south to north from Spuyten Duyvil (somewhere around Kappock) to Fieldston, and then loop around the northern side of what’s now the Fieldston School area and then the southern side of the Manhattan College Campus to reach Broadway around 242nd Street?
I’m guessing that the south to north axis was widened and transformed in the 1930s to become the Henry Hudson Parkway, and that the Henry Hudson Parkway was re-routed northward to join the Saw Mill and Mosholu Parkways in the northern half of Van Cortlandt Park. The remaining portion of the Spuyten Duyvil Parkway (the west-east portion) would have been left as a scenic two-lane avenue with no median, and it was eventually re-named as Manhattan College Parkway because it no longer came from, or led to, Spuyten Duyvil.