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Best advice I was ever given was to live where you are happy. I like city folk, I like suburban folk, but I love living in the country.
Manhattan is where all the big deals happen. It's the city that never sleeps, it's magic on broadwAy, it's tragic on 9/11. Manhattan offers a lot, more then most could ever need and for me it's more then I would ever be willing to put up with, I don't like noise, I like to hear the birds chirp in the morning.
Manhattan is a city for the rich, plain and simple. Most of your Northern cities are. In my own opinion I think Manhattan should want to be more open to a diverse population, not just the elitist 1%.
City living for the young hip white collar professional is pretty much the norm. They're out of college and wAnt to go where the jobs are.
I would say that if Manhattan keeps on this trend however that part of the city will no longer have deep roots. Everyone there will be from somewhere else who are looking for a fast track career and high salaries. The real NYC I believe died along time ago.
Yorkville brings with it associations of when the "other" side of the tracks was the Third Avenue EL (elevated trains), for the UES. Long as that structure remained that avenue was the clear dividing line between the wealthy from Lexington to Fifth Avenues, and the middle, working, and poorer classes from Third to First. East End Avenue returns to wealth but much of the blocks between that and First are and were still fill of tenements.
If you have seen the musical "42nd Street" and or listened to the song there is a line about "sexy ladies from the 80's who are indiscreet...". That is because that part of Yorkville was famous for prostitution. Indeed am told by old timers street walkers used to ply their trade on East 84th Street around where the post office is today. Then there were the brothels and indoor "working girls"...
You can literally see this dividing line today if you stand at most parts of Lexington Avenue above East 79th and look east and then west. Property changes begin almost dramatically the closer you get to Third Avenue and certainly once you pass Second. There is little to nil commercial activity after Lexington going west, and the feeling is one of wealth.
Yorkville going up to Spanish Harlem had long been the home of European immigrants (Germans, Hungarians, Italian, Irish, etc...). Going up past East 86th and further up to East 96th there was also quite a lot of commercial businesses (manufacturing, breweries, etc...), all things that just didn't fit with the name "Upper East Side".
Real estate persons in NYC will redo their own parents in order to make a sale. So "Yorkville" is now "the Upper East Side", and so is much of what is really Spanish Harlem.
Happily or not depending upon how you look at it the USPS has solved the problem in a way. The much desired zip code of 10021 (UES) was shrunk a few years ago as the area was divided up. Now above East 79th is 10075 and residents even those on Fifth Avenue have lost the cachet of living in one of the demographically highest income zip codes in the USA.
This renaming has not just affected UES/Yorkville. South Brooklyn towards Windsor Terrace and beyond has been branded "Park Slope South" by real estate persons to cash in on the cachet of that area.
All this works because vast numbers of persons looking to rent and or buy in these areas come from outside NYC and wouldn't know the UES from Spanish Harlem if you printed it out on a map.
Yorkville brings with it associations of when the "other" side of the tracks was the Third Avenue EL (elevated trains), for the UES. Long as that structure remained that avenue was the clear dividing line between the wealthy from Lexington to Fifth Avenues, and the middle, working, and poorer classes from Third to First. East End Avenue returns to wealth but much of the blocks between that and First are and were still fill of tenements.
If you have seen the musical "42nd Street" and or listened to the song there is a line about "sexy ladies from the 80's who are indiscreet...". That is because that part of Yorkville was famous for prostitution. Indeed am told by old timers street walkers used to ply their trade on East 84th Street around where the post office is today. Then there were the brothels and indoor "working girls"...
You can literally see this dividing line today if you stand at most parts of Lexington Avenue above East 79th and look east and then west. Property changes begin almost dramatically the closer you get to Third Avenue and certainly once you pass Second. There is little to nil commercial activity after Lexington going west, and the feeling is one of wealth.
Yorkville going up to Spanish Harlem had long been the home of European immigrants (Germans, Hungarians, Italian, Irish, etc...). Going up past East 86th and further up to East 96th there was also quite a lot of commercial businesses (manufacturing, breweries, etc...), all things that just didn't fit with the name "Upper East Side".
Real estate persons in NYC will redo their own parents in order to make a sale. So "Yorkville" is now "the Upper East Side", and so is much of what is really Spanish Harlem.
Happily or not depending upon how you look at it the USPS has solved the problem in a way. The much desired zip code of 10021 (UES) was shrunk a few years ago as the area was divided up. Now above East 79th is 10075 and residents even those on Fifth Avenue have lost the cachet of living in one of the demographically highest income zip codes in the USA.
This renaming has not just affected UES/Yorkville. South Brooklyn towards Windsor Terrace and beyond has been branded "Park Slope South" by real estate persons to cash in on the cachet of that area.
All this works because vast numbers of persons looking to rent and or buy in these areas come from outside NYC and wouldn't know the UES from Spanish Harlem if you printed it out on a map.
For many years, I was under the impression that the entire East Side of Manhattan from Midtown up to at least 96th Street (if not a bit further north and all the way from Fifth Avenue to the East River) was all upper-class affluent and upscale or enough so . . . compared to outright gritty tenement areas like Hell's Kitchen or the Lower East Side and so on or more variable areas like Chelsea. I had heard of and, a number of times, passed through certain parts of what I thought was "Yorkville" (figuring that, if I was anywhere or somewhere within the vicinity of 1st Avenue or York Ave. in the 80's or 90's, then that must be the so-called "Yorkville"). In other words, I thought Yorkville was just a sub-section of the "Upper East Side" at-large and that what is referred to as the "Upper East Side" at-large is ALL upper-class affluent or enough so through-and-through (instead of working class or lower-to-middle class or instead of a diversity of socioeconomic levels living together there).
Well, reading all the threads on C-D over time that touch on "Yorkville" and environs has informed me that I had a misconception of this territory. That is, that not all that is between Fifth Ave. and the East River from Midtown to 96th St. is all upper-end affluent through-and-through. That there are or have been immigrant and working-class populations in this area (and even lower-class populations) even up through more recent times. Well, what a revelation! But then I rarely had occasion to explore this area in-depth beyond just briefly passing through some section of it a couple of times (usually along a main avenue like First Ave. or Second Ave. or York Ave.) and in the more distant past.
Trouble with the suburbs is that for the peace and quiet you pay with CARS, CARS, CARS, GASOLINE, GOASOLINE, GASOLINE, TRAFFIC JAM, TRAFFIC JAM, TRAFFIC JAM, ACCIDENTS ACCIDENTS ACCIDENTS.
Car insurance is a pain, the dead battery in the morning is a pain the guy who scraped your fender during the night and didn't stop is a pain.
And then there's the joy of hearing: "You need a new roof," "Your septic system is shot."
You got two whole days off this weekend? First order of business: the lawn needs mowing and the leaves need raking and bagging.
The automobile culture is dying and that's why people are flocking to the cities and overcrowding them with expensive apartments. The demographic pattern has reversed: where previously an in-towner made his money and moved to the suburbs, now it is the guy who just lost his job or was priced out of the city housing market who moves "to the suburbs."
The guy who "made it" is looking for a lovely "New York apartment in the sky" like George Jefferson. <His apartment was 85th and Third.>
Nirvana for many who work hard in the top business markets in this country is NOT having to drive an hour or two to and from work every day. Work is torture enough without piling up at the Lincoln Tunnel every day and crawling out Route 3.
Not to mention commuter railway systems that are slowly falling apart.
Nothing is wrong with city or suburban living. However, city people who would rather die than live in the suburbs are typically rents who cannot afford to buy a car or a home. If you actually look at posts on this forum overall, many "city" dwellers have landlords who never make repairs, noisy/crazy/thug neighbors, etc. For many of these people it's hard to move ,and if they move into a new apartment they'll get similar.
I also notice that city people who can afford it often have country homes and often send their kids to universities in suburban and rural areas (of the Ivy League, only Columbia and U Penn are in cities).
Basically, the people who put down suburbs are doing so because of sour grapes (I know you heard the story about the Fox and the sour grapes).
Back on topic, I think one reason why Manhattan rentals are through the roof is because they are not meant for people to live there indefinitely. Manhattan has a huge transient populations. Students, doctors doing their residencies, lawyers working their first job, young people coming on a variety of internships, business people that need to be there for only part of the time, actors who come over when a movie is being filmed, etc.
Manhattan landlords would rather rent out to people who are going to pay a lot of money and be in NYC short term as opposed to renting out to working class and middle class people who are trying to build their lives in NYC. In short, the landlords are going for what brings them the most money and could careless that most people can't afford such rents.
So things will continue to be as high as the market will bear.
Only Columbia and U Penn are in cities out of all the Ivy Leagues? What do you think Providence, New Haven and Cambridge are? Out of eight schools, five are urban campuses and I would argue that where Cornell is is neither suburban or rural, but simply a much smaller city/village.
Yorkville brings with it associations of when the "other" side of the tracks was the Third Avenue EL (elevated trains), for the UES. Long as that structure remained that avenue was the clear dividing line between the wealthy from Lexington to Fifth Avenues, and the middle, working, and poorer classes from Third to First. East End Avenue returns to wealth but much of the blocks between that and First are and were still fill of tenements.
If you have seen the musical "42nd Street" and or listened to the song there is a line about "sexy ladies from the 80's who are indiscreet...". That is because that part of Yorkville was famous for prostitution. Indeed am told by old timers street walkers used to ply their trade on East 84th Street around where the post office is today. Then there were the brothels and indoor "working girls"...
You can literally see this dividing line today if you stand at most parts of Lexington Avenue above East 79th and look east and then west. Property changes begin almost dramatically the closer you get to Third Avenue and certainly once you pass Second. There is little to nil commercial activity after Lexington going west, and the feeling is one of wealth.
Yorkville going up to Spanish Harlem had long been the home of European immigrants (Germans, Hungarians, Italian, Irish, etc...). Going up past East 86th and further up to East 96th there was also quite a lot of commercial businesses (manufacturing, breweries, etc...), all things that just didn't fit with the name "Upper East Side".
Real estate persons in NYC will redo their own parents in order to make a sale. So "Yorkville" is now "the Upper East Side", and so is much of what is really Spanish Harlem.
Happily or not depending upon how you look at it the USPS has solved the problem in a way. The much desired zip code of 10021 (UES) was shrunk a few years ago as the area was divided up. Now above East 79th is 10075 and residents even those on Fifth Avenue have lost the cachet of living in one of the demographically highest income zip codes in the USA.
This renaming has not just affected UES/Yorkville. South Brooklyn towards Windsor Terrace and beyond has been branded "Park Slope South" by real estate persons to cash in on the cachet of that area.
All this works because vast numbers of persons looking to rent and or buy in these areas come from outside NYC and wouldn't know the UES from Spanish Harlem if you printed it out on a map.
Thank you for fleshing the area out. When I was walking a grid pattern on google street view I could tell how much nicer things got closer to the park like you mentioned. I also noticed the area where the warehouses were clustered during my walk.
I read on here that people had mentioned that there was some development in these areas to bring local cafes, restaurants, brew pubs and it was becoming the neighborhood go to spots. However, the demographics weren't populating the businesses at all hours. Rather the trend with the areas working to middle and professional class they went out there on nights and weekends between certain hours so it wasn't as noticeable. Which goes along with that kind of "suburban urban" feel being cultivated. The places to patron like these were criticized by locals because there seemed to be too few of them in these areas. It has the potential of being further developed and they seem eager for this.
People like new fresh things and they like to see a good comeback. I wouldn't be surprised if the real estate developers used the 10075 zipcode change to their advantage and rebranded it as the "Nouveau UES" once it's newly arrived and developed. Currently it seems it's still in "Up and Coming" and "Under Development" status, but you know how things happen in a New York minute.
I was reading about the urban development projects in the Bronx and particularly in the South Bronx. They have many things happening there that have been approved and are past the proposal stage. I could see that water front development with affordable housing being one of the solutions for the displacement of the Yorkville and lower East Harlem tenants. They're shifting them from one side of the river to the other though it doesn't help all of them I suppose. I also notice people will tend to say on this site that the South Bronx aka SoBro will never happen because of the amount of hoodlums who live in the projects, but honestly I wouldn't discredit it and toss it out the window just yet because they're still in the early phases. These urban renewal things can take decades.
Quote:
Originally Posted by UsAll
For many years, I was under the impression that the entire East Side of Manhattan from Midtown up to at least 96th Street (if not a bit further north and all the way from Fifth Avenue to the East River) was all upper-class affluent and upscale or enough so . . . compared to outright gritty tenement areas like Hell's Kitchen or the Lower East Side and so on or more variable areas like Chelsea. I had heard of and, a number of times, passed through certain parts of what I thought was "Yorkville" (figuring that, if I was anywhere or somewhere within the vicinity of 1st Avenue or York Ave. in the 80's or 90's, then that must be the so-called "Yorkville"). In other words, I thought Yorkville was just a sub-section of the "Upper East Side" at-large and that what is referred to as the "Upper East Side" at-large is ALL upper-class affluent or enough so through-and-through (instead of working class or lower-to-middle class or instead of a diversity of socioeconomic levels living together there).
Well, reading all the threads on C-D over time that touch on "Yorkville" and environs has informed me that I had a misconception of this territory. That is, that not all that is between Fifth Ave. and the East River from Midtown to 96th St. is all upper-end affluent through-and-through. That there are or have been immigrant and working-class populations in this area (and even lower-class populations) even up through more recent times. Well, what a revelation! But then I rarely had occasion to explore this area in-depth beyond just briefly passing through some section of it a couple of times (usually along a main avenue like First Ave. or Second Ave. or York Ave.) and in the more distant past.
When I first discovered Yorkville on the map I kind of liked the name. Then learning about the working class history it felt like it had a degree of charm like Hyde Park. I definitely see they could keep it as a nabe for the historical aspect but craft it into something new. I can see what it's going to be but I already sort of talked about that already in prior posts. It's "Yoville". The new yet old UES village in the city at 10075. It's not the established UES but near it and reasonably nice with the latest technology for ways to travel the subway, unlike any other in the city. It has a mixture of the newly remodeled older NYC structures, new luxury structures, newly developed "Yoville" commercial village with craft brewery pubs, dining and shopping for the neighborhood. All on the water front that is over looking the new sustainable water front skylines of SoBro. With access to lower Manhattan, central park, and the rapidly exciting developments of the charming historical Harlem and newly developed SoBro.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Forest_Hills_Daddy
Not to mention commuter railway systems that are slowly falling apart.
Per the recommendation of CD members I also examined moving to the outer borough's. I looked at both the Bronx and Queen. Queens was a stretch for the commute but not so much if we kept the car. I liked that it is very multi-culturally diverse, family oriented, lots of shopping and amenities and an over all safe place to live. I'd read about continuing maintenance on subways and trains as an issue for Queens and that Queens was wondering how the SAS was going to affect them and when. There seemed to be some answers missing. That's another consideration for going ahead with Phase II or delay it to work on the other Phases that focus lower Manhattan and the outer boroughs.
With the gas explosions bringing to light the crumbling infrastructure in Upper Manhattan coupled with the development still in the early stages there seems to be an urgency to work on the area that's falling apart first rather than the outer borough areas that are stable and developed yet need routine maintenance. One could attribute the explosions from the SAS under ground construction to having an effect on the 100 year old gas mains. Research has linked under ground fracking, which are essentially explosions, to the increase in earth quakes around the area of fracking.
If that entire Upper Manhattan area needs an update first on their gas mains they may wish to delay Phase II to work on the outer boroughs until that happens to prevent further gas main explosions. I could see how that possibly needs to be done before increasing demand on it's already limited resources. It would be ideal if they had the resources to simultaneously do both. It needs to be done anyways so why not do it at once. It will be a mess for that area. I guess also the reason they're doing it in phases is so as not to clog the system in order to leave people with alternative routes. The same could be said for not doing multiple phases at once. That's when it comes down to budget and bottom lines.
Last edited by Merrily Gather; 05-18-2014 at 03:46 AM..
As one of the above links tells it says much about the demographics of Yorkville that James Cagney's parents moved their family from the Lower East Side/Bowery to first East 79th then East 96th streets.
Far as some see things the UES starts at 57th Street from Fifth to the River all the way to East 96th, and Yorkville is just a neighborhood but still part of the whole.
Regarding gas mains on the UES. Con Edison *is* replacing and or installing new gas mains all over NYC including the Upper Eastside and so forth. In fact several blocks in our area have been disrupted at various times over the past few years for just that sort of work.
Problem is there are hundreds if not thousands of miles of gas lines and God only knows what else buried under NYC streets, especially Manhattan. Abandoned pipes from things that no longer even exist such as those air tubes that once shuttled mail between floors in buildings and even between them as well for instance. This means when Con Edison has to dig up a street it takes much planning and can cause major disruption. The latter is *NOT* something New Yorkers take too kindly. For one thing it can mean weeks of streets being partially or fully closed. Then there is the loss of parking while the street is ripped up. And of course the ever favourite complaint of New Yorkers, noise.
I don't want to hijack this thread or anything. I just don't believe my question warrants a new thread...
Is it possible to find a very nice apartment (studio, 1 bedroom, 1 bedroom w/ large wardrobe) in Manhattan for $1.5M?
Of COURSE it is.
And there are probably 100 people on this board who can testify to that.
You can get 2 bedrooms on the UES with doorman for that.
Last edited by Kefir King; 05-18-2014 at 06:32 AM..
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