Upper West Side

Upper West Side

The Upper West Side is a neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan in New York City and lies between Central Park and the Hudson River. Traditionally it ranged from the former village of Harsonville, centered on the Bloomingdale Road (Broadway) and 67th St., west to the railroad yards along the Hudson, then north of 72nd St., with Riverside Park, up to 110th St., where the ground rises to Morningside Heights. With the building of Lincoln Center its name, though perhaps not the reality, was stretched south to 59th St. North of the Upper West Side lie Morningside Heights, site of Columbia University, and Harlem beyond.

Its north-south avenues include the upper stretch of Broadway, the original spine of this area, which was generally referred to as 'Bloomingdale' until circa 1870, with West End Ave. and Riverside Drive to the west and Amsterdam Ave., Columbus Ave. and Central Park West towards the park.

In the eighteenth century, the Upper West Side-to-be contained some of colonial New York's most ambitious houses, spaced along the Bloomingdale Road, which was increasingly infilled with smaller, more suburban villas in the first half of the nineteenth century. The Hudson River line railroad right-of-way, granted in the late 1830s, soon ran along the riverbank. Bloomingdale degenerated into ragtag development of squatters' housing, boarding houses (Edgar Allen Poe roomed in a former farmhouse just west of the Bloomingdale Road in the 1840s) and rowdy taverns. The urban development of the neighborhood lagged even while Central Park was being laid out in the 1860s and 70s, then was stymied by the Panic of 1873, until the elevated train's rapid transit was extended up Ninth Avenue (renamed Columbus Avenue in 1890). The Upper West Side was built in a boom from 1885 to 1910.

The Bloomingdale district was the site for several long-established charitable institutions: their unbroken parcels of land have provided suitably-scaled sites for Columbia University and the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, as well as for some vanished landmarks, such as the Schwab Mansion on Riverside Drive, the most ambitious free-standing private house ever built in Manhattan.

The name Bloomingdale is still used in reference to a part of the Upper West Side, roughly the area from about 96th St. up to 110th St. and from the Hudson River east to Amsterdam Ave. The neighborhood includes the Bloomingdale School of Music and Bloomingdale brank of the New York Public Library. Adjacent to it is a neighborhood called Manhattan Valley, focused on the downslope of Columbus Ave. and Manhattan Ave. from about 102nd St. up to 110th St.

Among the present institutions on the Upper West Side:

Lincoln Center
- Metropolitan Opera
- Avery Fisher Hall, home of the New York Philharmonic
- New York State Theater, home of City Opera
- Juilliard School of Music
American Museum of Natural History
New-York Historical Society
Children's Museum of Manhattan
Trinity School
Congregation Sheareth Israel
Society for Ethical Culture

In Morningside Heights:

Famous landmarks or places of business:

Grant's Tomb
Riverside Park
Zabars - gourmet grocery
Fairway - market and grocery
H&H Bagels

The apartment buildings along Central Park West, facing the park, are some of the most exclusive apartments in New York, if not the world. The Dakota at 72nd St. has been home to numerous celebrities including John Lennon. Other famous buildings include the San Remo, Eldorado, Beresford and Majestic on CPW all built by Emory Roth, and along Broadway, the Apthorp and the Ansonia Hotel.

Table of contents

1 History
2 External links
3 References

History

Before its massive redevelopment, the Lincoln Center area was a rough neighborhood of tenement housing previously called 'San Juan Hill,' the setting for exterior shots in the movie musical 'West Side Story'.

External links

NYCvisit Upper West Side map

References

Peter Salwen, Upper West Side Story, 1989.
Steven Bermingham, Life at the Dakota.