Manhattan Valley
Manhattan Valley is a neighborhood on the Upper West Side in the New York borough of Manhattan . This area was formerly called the Bloomingdale District - a term that is still sometimes used.
Location and development
Manhattan Valley is bounded by West 110th Street to the north, Central Park West to the east, West 96th Street to the south, and Broadway to the west.
Some sources believe that the southern limit of the Manhattan Valley is West 100th Street, but due to the geographical nature of 96th Street and also in the opinion of the people who live there, 96th Street is the southern limit: It is an important thoroughfare that runs through a natural valley and connects to a central park thoroughfare.
Broadway and Central Park West are heavily trafficked thoroughfares in the neighborhood that run in a north-south direction. Other streets in north-south orientation are Amsterdam Avenue , Columbus Avenue and Manhattan Avenue . The first two run through the entire Upper West Side and beyond. Manhattan Avenue begins on 100th Street and continues north towards Harlem .
On some larger parts of Manhattan Valley's west side, there are larger housing developments that break up the conventional Manhattan street grid. From West 100th Street to West 97th Street , between Central Park West and Amsterdam Avenue, there is a housing estate called "Park West Village". To the north of it, between West 100th Street , West 104th Street , Amsterdam Avenue and Manhattan Avenue, there is another large housing estate: "Frederick Douglass Houses". Columbus Avenue runs through both settlements, but not all of the cross streets run through these settlements. To the northeast, between Cathedral Parkway (= 110th West), Manhattan Ave, 109th West and Central Park West is "Tower In A Park".
geography
There is a natural depression in the Manhattan Valley that runs through Manhattan in an east-west direction. Your starting point is a rocky hill in western Central Park . From here it drops rapidly and runs in a westerly direction as a valley. Actually, this is a former river bed, because there was once a small river here, which originated roughly in the area of today's Harlem Meer and flowed into the Hudson River .
history
Manhattan Valley was originally part of the "Bloomingdale District". The first buildings that arose in this quarter in the 1870s and 1880s were welfare facilities for sick and old people. B. the Hebrew Home for the Aged , the Catholic Old Age Home , the Home for Aged Indigent Respectable Females as well as the Towers Nursing Home , which in 1884 as a cancer hospital by John Jacob Astor III. was built. Together with the Lion Brewery , these were the first buildings.
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the district was built on with residential buildings after the IRT Ninth Avenue Line in 1870 and the Broadway-Seventh Avenue Line connected Uptown Manhattan to public transport in 1904 .
When Columbia University acquired the grounds and buildings of the Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum in Upper Manhattan for $ 2 million in 1895 , and at the same time the Broadway-Seventh Avenue Line connected this area to the rest of Manhattan, the area was upgraded as a whole. All but six of the buildings of the former mental institution were demolished. Today, however, only the former administration building of the Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum remains. It is called "Buell Hall" and is the oldest building on the campus of Columbia University. It currently serves as the college's French house of culture.
Mostly Irish and German immigrants settled in the Manhattan Valley from the 1930s to the 1950s . In the 1950s, many Puerto Rican immigrants moved to the Upper West Side. The previous residents increasingly moved to the suburbs.
The neighborhood fell into disrepair in the 1950s and 1960s, at a time when all of Manhattan was experiencing general urban decline. As part of Robert Moses ' urban renewal program , a few blocks of Manhattan Valley were eventually demolished to create the Frederick Douglass Houses development on the same site . The rampant bribery and corruption that took place in connection with this project overshadowed its inauguration and gave the neighborhood a bad name. The associated public debate contributed significantly to Moses' loss of power and impeachment. Two difficult decades followed, which brought the development of the district to a standstill.
With the Wall Street boom of the early 1980s, Manhattan recovered in a short time. More than 70 years after the closure of the Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum, the name "Bloomingdale District", which referred to the former asylum in this district, was increasingly forgotten and the name Manhattan Valley finally caught on with residents and brokers .
The new name and the rise of the neighborhood are closely related to the not-for-profit Manhattan Valley Development Corporation , founded in 1968 , which differed from other district development institutions in that it promoted the renovation of old buildings rather than demolishing them or by promoting small shops and businesses than contractors. which the low-wage earners of this "minority quarter" would have taken advantage of.
Fluctuating house prices in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as well as the rise of the drug crack and the presence of drug dealers in the neighborhood, brought new investments to a standstill. The nightlife in this area also declined due to the rising crime rate.
Nevertheless, after this phase, the gentrification of the Manhattan Valley that began in the 1980s continued. This started on the one hand in the south from the Upper West Side, which was becoming more and more expensive, and on the other hand also from the north, as rents around Columbia University in Morningside Heights became increasingly unaffordable for students. This development coincided with the establishment of the Columbus / Amsterdam Business Improvement District in the late 1990s, which promoted the settlement and presence of shops and businesses along the main thoroughfares Columbus Avenue and Amsterdam Avenue and which opened up business opportunities for local residents.
While Broadway is where most of the shops are, Amsterdam Avenue has become Broadway's biggest nightlife challenger in this neighborhood. There are now six bars located two blocks between West 110th Street and West 108th Street . There is also the Ding-Dong Lounge on Columbus Avenue. This renaissance of nightlife is closely related to the settlement of Columbia University and Barnard College students , who are starting to find apartments in Morningside Heights too expensive.
Property prices in this area are still around 30 percent cheaper than in a comparable neighborhood on the Upper West Side. The neighborhood's proximity to the highly esteemed Central Park and the three different subway lines make this neighborhood attractive for young commuters - especially since property prices in New York have risen dramatically in 2006.
Many of the old townhouses have been saved from demolition thanks to the Manhattan Valley Development Corporation (MVDC) - just east of Columbus Avenue, where property prices are highest.
Attractions
- Frederick Douglass Circle, corner of West 110th Street and Central Park West
- Towers Condominium "The Dakota of the North", corner of West 105th Street and Central Park West
- The former East River Savings Bank is now a pharmacy and is called "Aspirineum" at the corner of West 96th Street and Amsterdam Avenue
- Church of the Ascension , West 107th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenues
- Straus Park , West 106th Street and Broadway
population
According to the 2000 US Census report , 48,983 people live in the Manhattan Valley, of which 44% are Hispanics , 32% African American , 24% Asians, whites and other minorities. Wealthier families live west of Broadway and east of Manhattan Avenue.
55% of the residents here have a very low income - around $ 13,854. This is less than 50% of the median family income in this neighborhood. So it is not surprising that 20.67% of Manhattan Valley residents depend on social benefits and 23% on welfare.
See also
Web links
- Map on NYCvisit Upper West Side (English)
- Gentrification of Manhattan Valley on therealdeal.com (English)
literature
- Hopper Striker Mott (1908): The New York of Yesterday: A Descriptive Narrative of Old Bloomingdale.
- Peter Salwen (1989): Upper West Side Story. ISBN 0-89659-894-2 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Carla Zanoni: Reactions Mixed as Businesses Close Along Broadway . In: Columbia Daily Spectator , March 25, 2005. Retrieved July 18, 2010.
- ↑ Maurice Mann: Get Ahead of the Crowd in Manhattan Valley . In: Real Estate Weekly , March 23, 2005. Retrieved July 18, 2010.
- ↑ Bloomingdale / Manhattan Valley Chronology . In: Columbus / Amsterdam Business Improvement District . Archived from the original on March 27, 2010. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved July 18, 2010.
- ↑ http://www.examiner.com/x-2365-NY-History-Examiner~y2010m7d27-On-this-day-in-NY-history-Bloomingdale-Lunatic-Asylum-opened
- ↑ "Manhattan Valley, Insane or Not ?," ( Memento of the original from December 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Curbed , April 3, 2006
- ↑ "History," MVDC ( Memento of the original from January 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Evelyn Nieves: Manhattan Valley's Long Awaited Boom Ends Up Just a Fizzle . In: The New York Times , December 25, 1990. Retrieved July 18, 2010.
- ↑ a b Vera Haller: City Living: Manhattan Valley . In: Newsday , January 6, 2008.
- ↑ S.Johanna Robledo: Valley of the deal . In: New York , May 21, 2005. Retrieved July 18, 2010.
- ↑ "Demographic / Catchment Area," MVDC ( Memento of the original from October 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
