Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City
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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 more commercial areas in Midtown and Lower Manhattan. 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, in contrast to the Upper East Side, which is perceived to be traditionally home to more conservative commercial and business types. The neighborhood is rather upscale with the median household income in many areas exceeding Manhattan average to a considerable extent.
Geography
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[citation needed] as 110th Street, which fixes the neighborhood alongside Central Park, it is now often considered to be 125th Street, encompassing Morningside Heights. This reflects demographic shifts in Morningside Heights, as well as the tendency of real estate brokers to co-opt the tony Upper West Side name when listing Morningside Heights apartments.
From west to east, the avenues of the Upper West Side are Riverside Drive (12th Avenue), West End Avenue (11th Avenue), Broadway, Amsterdam Avenue (10th Avenue), Columbus Avenue (9th Avenue), Manhattan 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 at the bottom of the neighborhood and above 72nd Street moves parallel to 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).
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, Teachers College, Columbia University and Jewish Theological Seminary, as well as Grant's Tomb and Riverside Church.
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.
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