Upper West Side

The Upper West Side is a neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan, New York City lying between Central Park and the Hudson River. Traditionally it ranged from the former village of Harsonville, centered on the Bloomingdale Road (Broadway) and 67th Street, west to the railroad yards along the Hudson, then north of 72nd Street, with Riverside Park, up to 110th Street, 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 Street. 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 ca 1870, with West End Avenue and Riverside Drive to the west and Amsterdam Avenue, Columbus Avenue 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.

Among the institutions in 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
  • Julliard School of Music
• American Museum of Natural History
• New-York Historical Society
• Children's Museum of Manhattan
• Trinity School
• Congregation Sheareth Israel

In Morningside Heights:

• Columbia University
• Cathedral of Saint John the Divine

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 Street has been home to numerous celebrities including John Lennon. Other famous buildings include the San Remo, Eldorado, Beresford and Majestic on CPW, and along Broadway, the Apthorp and Ansonia Hotel.

Table of contents

1 History 2 External links 3 References

History

Before its massive redevelopment, the Lincoln Center area was a neighborhood 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.