Upper East Side

This article is about the neighborhood in New York City. For the neighborhood in Miami, see Upper Eastside.
Upper East Side
Neighborhood of Manhattan

The neighborhood of Yorkville on the Upper East Side

View of Yorkville, a part of the Upper East Side (August 2008)
Location in New York City, New York, and the United States
Upper East Side
Location in New York City, New York, and the United States
Upper East Side
Location in New York City, New York, and the United States
Upper East Side
Coordinates: 40°46′09″N 73°57′56″W / 40.76917°N 73.96556°W / 40.76917; -73.96556Coordinates: 40°46′09″N 73°57′56″W / 40.76917°N 73.96556°W / 40.76917; -73.96556
Country United States
State New York
City New York City
Borough Manhattan
Area
 • Total 1.76 sq mi (4.6 km2)
 • Land 1.76 sq mi (4.6 km2)
 • Water 0 sq mi (0 km2)
Population
 • Total 207,543
 • Density 120,000/sq mi (46,000/km2)
  2000 figures for Manhattan CB 8
Ethnicity
 • White 89.3%
 • Asian or Pacific Islander 6.2%
 • Hispanic 5.6%
 • Black 1.3%
 • Other 3.3%
ZIP code 10021, 10028 ,10065, 10075, 10128
Area code(s) 212, 917

The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated as UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, between Central Park/Fifth Avenue, 59th Street, the East River, and 96th Street.[1] The area incorporates several smaller neighborhoods, including Lenox Hill, Carnegie Hill, and Yorkville. Once known as the Silk Stocking District,[2] it is now one of the most affluent neighborhoods in New York City.

History

Development

Before the arrival of Europeans, the mouths of streams[3] that eroded gullies in the East River bluffs are conjectured to have been the sites of fishing camps used by the Lenape, whose controlled burns once a generation or so kept the dense canopy of oak-hickory forest open at ground level.[4]

In the 19th century[5] the farmland and market garden district of what was to be the Upper East Side was still traversed by the Boston Post Road and, from 1837, the New York and Harlem Railroad, which brought straggling commercial development around its one station in the neighborhood, at 86th Street, which became the heart of German Yorkville. The area was defined by the attractions of the bluff overlooking the East River, which ran without interruption from James William Beekman's "Mount Pleasant", north of the marshy squalor of Turtle Bay, to Gracie Mansion, north of which the land sloped steeply to the wetlands that separated this area from the suburban village of Harlem.[6] Among the series of villas a Schermerhorn country house overlooked the river at the foot of present-day 73rd Street and another, Peter Schermerhorn's at 66th Street,[7] and the Riker homestead was similarly sited at the foot of 75th Street.[8] By the mid-19th century the farmland had largely been subdivided, with the exception of the 150 acres (61 ha) of Jones's Wood, stretching from 66th to 76th Streets and from the Old Post Road (Third Avenue) to the river[9] and the farmland inherited by James Lenox, who divided it into blocks of houselots in the 1870s,[10] built his Lenox Library on a Fifth Avenue lot at the farm's south-west corner,[11] and donated a full square block for the Presbyterian Hospital, between 70th and 71st Streets, and Madison and Park Avenues.[12] At that time, along the Boston Post Road taverns stood at the mile-markers, Five-Mile House at 72nd Street and Six-Mile House at 97th, a New Yorker recalled in 1893.[8]

69th Street, within the neighborhood
East 69th Street between Park and Madison Avenues, in the Upper East Side Historic District
Gracie Mansion, last of the East River villas

The fashionable future of the narrow strip between Central Park and the railroad cut was established at the outset by the nature of its entrance, in the southwest corner, north of the Vanderbilt family's favored stretch of Fifth Avenue from 50th to 59th Streets.[13] A row of handsome townhouses was built on speculation by Mary Mason Jones, who owned the entire block bounded by 57th and 58th Streets and Fifth and Madison. In 1870 she occupied the prominent corner house at 57th and Fifth, though not in the isolation described by her niece, Edith Wharton, whose picture has been uncritically accepted as history, as Christopher Gray has pointed out.[14]

It was her habit to sit in a window of her sitting room on the ground floor, as if watching calmly for life and fashion to flow northward to her solitary door... She was sure that presently the quarries, the wooden greenhouses in ragged gardens, the rocks from which goats surveyed the scene, would vanish before the advance of residences as stately as her own.[15]
— Edith Wharton

Famous residents move in

Before the Park Avenue Tunnel was covered (finished in 1910), fashionable New Yorkers shunned the smoky railroad trench up Fourth Avenue (now Park Avenue), to build stylish mansions and townhouses on the large lots along Fifth Avenue, facing Central Park, and on the adjacent side streets. The latest arrivals were the rich Pittsburghers Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. The classic phase of Gilded Age Fifth Avenue as a stretch of private mansions was not long-lasting: the first apartment house to replace a private mansion on upper Fifth Avenue was 907 Fifth Avenue (1916), at 72nd Street, the neighborhood's grand carriage entrance to Central Park.[16]

Most members of New York's upper-class families have made residences on the Upper East Side, including the oil-rich Rockefellers,[17] political Roosevelts,[18] political dynastic Kennedys,[19] thoroughbred racing moneyed Whitneys,[20][21] and tobacco and electric power fortuned Dukes.[22]

Transportation constructed

Construction of the Third Avenue El, opened from 1878 in sections, followed by the Second Avenue El, opened in 1879, linked the Upper East Side's middle class and skilled artisans closely to the heart of the city, and confirmed the modest nature of the area to their east. The ghostly "Hamilton Square", which had appeared as one of the few genteel interruptions of the grid plan on city maps since the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, was intended to straddle what had now become the Harlem Railroad right-of-way between 66th and 69th Streets; it never materialized, though during the Panic of 1857 its unleveled ground was the scene of an open-air mass meeting called in July to agitate for the secession of the city and its neighboring counties from New York State, and the city divided its acreage into house lots and sold them.[23] From the 1880s the neighborhood of Yorkville became a suburb of middle-class Germans.[24]

Gracie Mansion, the last remaining suburban villa overlooking the East River at Carl Schurz Park, became the home of New York's mayor in 1942. The East River Drive, designed by Robert Moses, was extended south from the first section, from 125th Street to 92nd Street, which was completed in 1934 as a boulevard, an arterial highway running at street level; reconstruction designs from 1948 to 1966 converted FDR Drive, as it was renamed after Franklin Delano Roosevelt, into the full limited-access parkway that is in use today.

45 East 66th Street, a designated New York City landmark
45 East 66th Street, a designated New York City landmark, as seen across Madison Avenue
Musicians Mutual Protective Union, 85th Street

Demolishing the elevated railways on Third and Second Avenues opened these tenement-lined streets to the spotty construction of high-rise apartment blocks from the 1950s. However, it had an adverse effect on transportation, because the IRT Lexington Avenue Line was now the only subway line in the area.[25] The construction of the Second Avenue Subway has brought up the price of houses in the Upper East Side somewhat.

Geography

Neighborhood boundaries in New York City are not officially set, but according to the Encyclopedia of New York City, the Upper East Side is bounded by 59th Street in the south, 96th Street on the north, Fifth Avenue to the west and the East River to the east.[26] The AIA Guide to New York City extends the northern boundary to 106th Street near Fifth Avenue.[27]

The area's north-south avenues are Fifth, Madison, Park, Lexington, Third, Second, First, York, and East End Avenues, with the latter running only from East 79th Street to East 90th Street. The major east-west streets are 59th Street, 72nd Street, 79th Street, 86th Street and 96th Street.

Some real estate agents use the term "Upper East Side" instead of "East Harlem" to describe areas that are slightly north of 96th Street and near Fifth Avenue, in order to avoid associating these areas with the negative connotations of the latter, a neighborhood which is generally perceived as less prestigious.[28]

Historic district

The Upper East Side Historic District is one of New York City’s largest districts, as the neighborhood. This district runs from 59th to 78th Streets along Fifth Avenue, and up to 3rd Avenue at some points. In the decades after the Civil War, the once decrepit district transitioned into a thriving middle-class residential neighborhood. At the start of the 20th century, the neighborhood transformed again, but this time into a neighborhood of mansions and townhouses. As the century continued, and living environments altered, a lot of these single-family homes were replaced by lavish apartment buildings.[29]

Demographics

As of the 2000 census, there were 207,543 people residing in the Upper East Side. The population density was 118,184 people per square mile (45,649/km²), making Manhattan Community Board 8, coterminous with the Upper East Side, the densest Community Board in the city.[30] The racial makeup of the neighborhood was 89.25% White, 6.14% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 1.34% African American, 0.09% Native American, 1.39% from other races, and 1.74% from two or more races. 5.62% of the population were Hispanic of any race. Twenty-one percent of the population was foreign born; of this, 45.6% came from Europe, 29.5% from Asia, 16.2% from Latin America and 8.7% from other. The female-male ratio was very high with 125 females for 100 males.[31] The Upper East Side contains a large and affluent Jewish population estimated at 56,000.[32] Traditionally, the Upper East Side has been dominated by wealthy White Anglo-Saxon Protestant families.[33][34][35]

Given its very high population density and per capita income ($85,081 in 2000), the neighborhood contains the greatest concentration of individual wealth in Manhattan.[36] As of 2011, the median household income for the Upper East Side was $117,903.[37] As of 2011, 60.6% of adults (25+) had earned a bachelor's degree or higher.[37]

The Upper East Side maintains the highest pricing per square foot in the United States. A 2002 report cited the average cost per square meter as $8,856; however, that price has noticed a substantial jump, increasing to almost as much as $11,200 per square meter as of 2006. There are some buildings which cost about $125 per square foot (~$1345/㎡).[38][39] The only public housing projects for those of low to moderate incomes on the Upper East Side are located just south of the neighborhood's northern limit at 96th Street, the Holmes Towers and Isaacs Houses. It borders East Harlem, which has the highest concentration of public housing in the United States.[40]

Politics

The Upper East Side is one of few areas of Manhattan where Republicans constitute more than 20% of the electorate. In the southwestern part of the neighborhood, Republican voters equal Democratic voters (the only such area in Manhattan), whereas in the rest of the neighborhood Republicans make up between 20 and 40% of registered voters.[41]

The Upper East Side is notable as a significant location of political fundraising in the United States. Four of the top five ZIP codes in the nation for political contributions are in Manhattan. The top ZIP Code, 10021, is on the Upper East Side and generated the most money for the 2004 presidential campaigns of both George W. Bush and John Kerry.[42]

The Metropolitan Museum of Art at Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum at Fifth Avenue and 89th Street
The Jewish Museum on Fifth Avenue at 92nd St. The Museum Mile Festival

Landmarks and cultural institutions

Museums

The area is host to some of the most famous museums in the world. The string of museums along Fifth Avenue fronting Central Park has been dubbed "Museum Mile", running between 82nd and 105th Streets. It was once named "Millionaire's Row." The following are among the cultural institutions on the Upper East Side:

Art galleries

Hotels

Houses of worship

Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity
Temple Emanu-El of New York

Diplomatic missions

Many diplomatic missions are located in former mansions on the Upper East Side:

Other missions to the United Nations in the Upper East Side include:[48]

Post offices

The United States Postal Service operates post offices at Lenox Hill Station (ZIP code 10021), 221 East 70th Street; Cherokee Station (10075), 1483 York Avenue;[49] Gracie Station (10028), 229 East 85th Street;[50] and Yorkville Station (10128), 1617 Third Avenue.[2][51] New ZIP codes now include 10065, 10029 and 10075.

Transportation

The Upper East Side is currently served by one subway line, the four-track IRT Lexington Avenue Line (4 5 6 <6> trains), as well as local and limited MTA Regional Bus Operations routes M1, M2, M3, M4, M15, M15 SBS, M31, M98, M101, M102, M103 going uptown and downtown, as well as the crosstown M66, M72, M79, M86, M96.[52]

Due to severe congestion on the subway and buses, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is building a new subway line, the IND Second Avenue Line, along Second Avenue. The first phase of the line, a four-station extension with three new stations being built and one existing station being renovated, is planned to run from 96th Street to the BMT 63rd Street Line at Lexington Avenue – 63rd Street, where the line will continue to 57th Street – Seventh Avenue and connect with the BMT Broadway Line there. Service will be provided by a northern extension of the Q train, but in later phases, the line will be extended north to 125th Street/Park Avenue in Harlem and south to Hanover Square in the Financial District, and a new T train will run its entire length.[53]

Education

Primary and secondary schools

Urban Academy Laboratory High School is in the Julia Richman Education Complex

Public schools

The New York City Department of Education operates public schools in the city.

Public lower and middle schools

Public high schools

Other schools

Marymount School of New York

Private schools

Coeducational schools

Girls' schools

Boys' schools

The West Building of Hunter College

Colleges and universities

Public libraries

The New York Public Library operates the 67th Street Branch Library at 328 East 67th Street, near First Avenue,[54] the Yorkville Branch Library, 222 East 79th Street and the 96th Street Branch Library at 112 East 96th Street, near Lexington Avenue.[55]

In popular culture

The Upper East Side has been a setting for many films, television shows, and other media.

Films

Television shows

Books

Fictional places and characters

Notable residents

The neighborhood has a long tradition of being home to some of the world's most wealthy, powerful and influential families and individuals. Some of the notable people who have lived here include:

See also

References

  1. ↑ Gronowicz, Anthony. ""Upper East Side in Jackson, Kenneth T. (ed.), (2010) The Encyclopedia of New York City (2nd edition). New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-11465-2 p.1352
  2. 1 2 The City Review Upper East Side, the Silk Stocking District
  3. ↑ Noted at East 53rd, 62nd, 74th Streets (the Saw Kill, dammed to form the Lake in Central Park) and 80th Street (Eric W. Sanderson, Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, 2009, p. 261`"Lenape sites and place-names").
  4. ↑ A reconstructed map of the patchwork ecologies of Manhattan island before Europeanization is presented in Sanderson 2009; map p. 139.
  5. ↑ The history of the Upper East Side, in the broader citywide context, is repeatedly noted in Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (1999).
  6. ↑ The original ecology of Manhattan Island and its evolution is now thoroughly explored in Eric W. Sanderson, Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City (New York: Abrams, 2009), based in part on a British army map detailing the island's natural terrain at the time of the American Revolution.
  7. ↑ In 1818, with a purchase to the south, Peter Schermerhorn enlarged the property given him by his father-in-law, John Jones (FindaGrave: Peter Schermerhorn, based on "History of the Schermerhorn family", The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record,, 36 (July 1905:204)), now the site of Rockefeller University (Rockefeller University: history).
  8. 1 2 ""Early New York History: Old Days In Yorkville And Harlem", 1893". Oldandsold.com. Retrieved May 12, 2011.
  9. ↑ Jones's Wood, owned by the Joneses and their Schermerhorn cousins and operated as a popular beer-garden resort, was briefly touted as a possible location for a public park before Central Park was established (Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar, The Park and the People: A History of Central Park, New York, 1992, pp 20–21, map p. 38, et passim).
  10. ↑ "Realty Romance in Old Lenox Farm". The New York Times. December 15, 1918. The occasion was the auction of the auction sale an 1874 map of the section of Robert Lenox's farm, bought in 1818 that lay between 71st and 74th Streets, from Fifth Avenue to the railroad right-of-way that became Park Avenue.
  11. ↑ When the library was consolidated with Astor and Tilden trusts to form the New York Public Library, a unique block-long stretch of Fifth Avenue frontage was liberated for the latecomer Henry Clay Frick to build his grand residence, now the Frick Collection.
  12. ↑ "Founded by James Lenox, the chief features of the Presbyterian hospital...". The New York Times. July 3, 1892.
  13. ↑ Arthur T. Vanderbilt 2nd, Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt (New York, 1989).
  14. ↑ Gray, Christopher (August 27, 1995). "Streetscapes: "Edith Wharton; In 'The Age of Innocence,' Fiction Was Not Truth'". The New York Times.
  15. ↑ Wharton, The Age of Innocence
  16. ↑ "The Upper East Side Book: 907 Fifth Avenue". Thecityreview.com. July 31, 2010. Retrieved May 12, 2011.
  17. ↑ "The Upper East Side Book: Fifth Avenue: 834 Fifth Avenue". Thecityreview.com. Retrieved May 12, 2011.
  18. ↑ "Home". Brown Harris Stevens. Retrieved May 12, 2011.
  19. ↑ "Clos Mimi". Clos Mimi. March 22, 2007. Retrieved May 12, 2011.
  20. ↑ "The Upper East Side Book: Fifth Avenue: 1125 Fifth Avenue". Thecityreview.com. Retrieved May 12, 2011.
  21. ↑ "Natives of New York Still Own Upper Fifth Avenue – In Spite of the Influx of Outsiders, Knickerbocker Families Easily Remain In the Ascendant. The Majority, Who Are Not Knickerbockers, Hail from New England and the Eastern States". The New York Times. May 26, 1907. Retrieved May 12, 2011.
  22. ↑ "at". Divasthesite.com. Archived from the original on July 28, 2010. Retrieved May 12, 2011.
  23. ↑ Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: a history of New York City to 1898, 1999, pp. 421, 840, 849.
  24. ↑ Croton-On-Hudson Historical Society (2001). Images of America Series. Arcadia Publishing. pp. 41, 128. ISBN 0738505439.
  25. ↑ "www.nycsubway.org: Second Avenue Subway: The Line That Almost Never Was". www.nycsubway.org. New York City Transit Authority. 1972. Retrieved 2015-09-30.
  26. ↑ Gronowicz, Anthony. "Upper East Side" in Jackson, Kenneth T. (ed.), (2010) The Encyclopedia of New York City (2nd edition). New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-11465-2, p.1352
  27. ↑ White, Norval & Willensky, Elliot with Leadon, Fran (2010). AIA Guide to New York City (5th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195383867., p.416
  28. ↑ Depalma, Anthony (January 31, 1988). "Is the Upper East Side Moving North?". The New York Times. Retrieved May 12, 2011.
  29. ↑ "The Upper East Side" (PDF). Citi Habitats. 2007.
  30. ↑ UPPER EAST SIDE – CD 308
  31. ↑ "Social Explorer 2000 Demography Map: Median Income in Upper East Side". Socialexplorer.com. Retrieved May 12, 2011.
  32. ↑ Baila Olidort (February 17, 2014). "Jewish Identity Grows On Manhattan's Upper East Side". lubavitch.com. Retrieved June 23, 2014.
  33. ↑ Craig J. Calhoun; Donald Light; Suzanne Keller (1997). Sociology. McGraw-Hill. p. 178.
  34. ↑ Paul Schlueter; Dorothy Nyren Curley (1998). Modern American literature: volume V second supplement to the fourth edition. Gale Group. p. 13.
  35. ↑ Briton Hadden; Henry Robinson Luce (1998). Time, Volume 110,Edizioni 1-9. Time Incorporated. p. 156.
  36. ↑ "Where do the wealthiest citizens of New York live? Map that shows vast income difference between neighborhoods just yards apart". Daily Mail (London).
  37. 1 2 "Upper East Side (UES) neighborhood in New York, New York (NY), 10021, 10028, 10128 detailed profile". city-data.com. Retrieved June 23, 2014.
  38. ↑ Hevesi, Dennis (May 17, 2002). "Residential Real Estate; TriBeCa Is Priciest Neighborhood". The New York Times. Retrieved June 7, 2007.
  39. ↑ "Charts". Miller Samuel. February 14, 2011. Retrieved May 12, 2011.
  40. ↑ "Low-Income Parents Worry Cuts to Childcare Will Force Them Out of Work".
  41. ↑ "Who Are NYC's Republicans?". Gothamgazette.com. Retrieved May 12, 2011.
  42. ↑ "Big Donors Still Rule The Roost". Retrieved July 18, 2006.
  43. ↑ http://www.nyc.gov/html/lpc/downloads/pdf/press/10_30_07-30.pdf
  44. ↑ "Contact & hours of operation." Consulate-General of France in New York. Retrieved January 26, 2009.
  45. ↑ "Welcome to the website of the Consulate General of Italy in New York." Consulate-General of Italy in New York. Retrieved January 26, 2009.
  46. ↑ "Contact Us." Consulate-General of India in New York. Retrieved January 26, 2009.
  47. ↑ Home. Consulate-General of Pakistan in New York. Retrieved January 26, 2009.
  48. ↑ "United Nations Member States." United Nations. Retrieved January 26, 2009.
  49. ↑ "Post Office Location – Cherokee". United States Postal Service. ZIP code 10021, a widely used ZIP code and spoken as an "prestigious zip code indicating status" ,was recently split up by the post office. Retrieved January 30, 2009.
  50. ↑ "Post Office Location – Gracie." United States Postal Service. Retrieved January 30, 2009.
  51. ↑ "Post Office Location – Yorkville Station". United States Postal Service. Retrieved January 30, 2009.
  52. ↑ Manhattan Bus Map
  53. ↑ "MTA Capital Construction – Second Avenue Subway Project Description". mta.info. MTA. Retrieved October 5, 2013.
  54. ↑ "67th Street Branch Library". New York Public Library. Retrieved January 30, 2009.
  55. ↑ "9th Street Branch Library". New York Public Library. Retrieved January 30, 2009.
  56. ↑ Nir, Sarah Maslin."Nowadays, 'Odd Couple' Would Have to Be Rich Couple, Too" The New York Times (December 25, 2012). Quote: "[Their] the apartment seemed to bounce between locations. At various times it was on the Upper West Side, where some episodes seemed to indicate that the pair drove each other crazy amid the twin spires of the exclusive San Remo on Central Park West between 74th and 75th Streets. But exterior shots of their home often were across Central Park, at 1049 Park Avenue..."
  57. ↑ Upper East Side Journal: "Awaiting a Glimpse of Their 'Gossip Girl' Kin" by Eric Konigsberg, The New York Times, December 1, 2007
  58. ↑ de la Cruz, Melissa. Blue Bloods. Hachette. p. 23. ISBN 9780748115501.
  59. ↑ "A Rationale for Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief, rickriordan.com
  60. ↑ Day, Sherri (March 26, 2004). "Disappointment for Woody Allen, But Not at Box Office". The New York Times. Retrieved August 19, 2012. "The state's highest court yesterday dismissed an effort to halt construction of a 10-story building on the Upper East Side, ending a six-year battle that pitted Woody Allen and a group of fellow Upper East Siders against the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission."
  61. ↑ (registration required) "Barbara Margolis, Prisoners’ Advocate, Dies at 79". The New York Times. July 12, 2009. Retrieved July 21, 2009.
  62. ↑ (registration required) Grimes, William (August 1, 2009). "Lynn Pressman Raymond, Toy Executive, Dies at 97". The New York Times. Retrieved August 2, 2009.
  63. 1 2 Lovine, Julie V. (October 21, 2007). "The Vignellis – In an Instant, Their Pared-Down Designs—For the Subway, Bloomingdale's, American Airlines—Conjure a Particular Moment in the City's History". New York. Retrieved August 19, 2012. In the living room of their Upper East Side apartment...

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