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Upper West Side Information
The Upper West Side is a neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan in New York
City that lies between Central Park and the Hudson River above West 59th Street.
Like the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side is primarily a residential and
shopping area, with many of its residents working in the commercial areas
downtown. While these distinctions were never hard-and-fast rules, and now mean
little, it has the reputation of being home to New York City's liberal cultural
and artistic workers, whereas the Upper East Side is traditionally home to more
conservative commercial and business types.
Tom's Restaurant, at West 112th Street and Broadway, was used as the
establishing shot for "Monk's Cafe" on Seinfeld, a program that was set on the
Upper West Side of Manhattan.
The Upper West Side is bounded on the south by 59th Street, Central Park to the east, and the Hudson River to the west. Its northern boundary is somewhat less obvious. Although it has historically been cited as 110th Street, it is now often considered to be 125th Street, encompassing Morningside Heights.
In modern terms, 125th Street is probably the more accepted boundary as the demographics of Morningside Heights have changed in recent decades and it now has more in common with the Upper West Side than with Harlem, with which it was historically associated. The Upper West side also contains the neighborhoods of Lincoln Square and Ansonia.
The Lincoln Square neighborhood is centered at Lincoln Center, the performing arts center of New York, at the confluence of Broadway and Columbus Avenue, running from 59th Street toward 72nd Street. Lincoln Square contains the Juilliard School, Fordham University, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and other notable institutions.
Morningside Heights, just west of Harlem, is the site of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, Columbia University, Barnard College, Union Theological Seminary, Manhattan School of Music and Jewish Theological Seminary, as well as Grant's Tomb and Riverside Church.
The Ansonia section is named for the historic Ansonia Hotel at Broadway and 73rd Street. The Art Deco landmark Beacon Theater is located in this area. It was designed by Chicago architect Walter W. Ahlschlager and opened in 1928. The American Museum of Natural History is located at 79th Street and Central Park West.
From west to east, the avenues of the Upper West Side are Riverside Drive (12th Avenue), West End Avenue (11th Avenue), Amsterdam Avenue (10th Avenue), Columbus Avenue (9th Avenue), and Central Park West (8th Avenue). The 66-block stretch of Broadway forms the spine of the neighborhood and moves diagonally across the avenues; it enters the neighborhood at its juncture with Central Park West at Columbus Circle (59th Street), crosses Columbus Ave. at Lincoln Square (65th Street), crosses Amsterdam Ave. at Verdi Square (72nd Street), and then merges with West End at Straus Square (aka Bloomingdale Square, at 107th Street).
Traditionally the neighborhood ranged from the former village of Harsenville, centered on the old Bloomingdale Road (now Broadway) and 65th Street, west to the railroad yards along the Hudson, then north 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.
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, essentially the location of old Bloomingdale Village, the area from about 96th Street up to 110th Street and from Riverside Park east to Amsterdam Ave. The triangular block bound by Broadway, West End Ave., 106th Street and 107th Street, although generally known as Straus Park (named for Isidor Straus and his wife Ida), was officially designated Bloomingdale Square in 1907. The neighborhood also includes the Bloomingdale School of Music and Bloomingdale neighborhood branch of the New York Public Library. Adjacent to the Bloomingdale neighborhood is a neighborhood called Manhattan Valley, focused on the down slope of Columbus Ave. and Manhattan Ave. from about 102nd St. up to 110th St.