NYC DUers.I have a geo question about N.Y.City. Can you help?

[dixiegrrrrl]

Never been to New York.
I have heard, have read, references to "upper" "lower" ..East..West Side.

What is the dividing line in the city whereby the "upper" becomes the "lower"??

Or, if that is wrong question,
what is "lower" East/West side vs "Upper" East/West side?


Oh..but not just East/West side uses that distinction, right?
Isn't there also "lower" Manhatten??

Anyhow, would be a big help to me as watch movies, read about NYC.

Thanks...

[KamaAina]

1. Upper East is 59th to 96th, Lower East is 14th to Canal

in between is East Midtown, Murray Hill, Gramercy.

Lower Manhattan is everything below Canal down to the Battery.

Upper West is also 59th to 96th, but there is no "Lower West Side".

And you really should go! :-)

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. So, there is Upper and lower East side, but only "Upper West Side" ?

Interesing.

thank you for taking the time to answer my question.

:hi:

[mitchtv]

48. there is indeed an upper east side

From Sutton Place, thru Spanish Harlem

[madinmaryland]

36. You left out Mid-town.

Anyone coming into teh City comes into Mid-town!

[erodriguez]

39. Yes the tourist! :p

[KamaAina]

40. And that's where you get the best Italian food!

:hide:

[JackRiddler]

51. Also the wildest shows. I hear Shrek and Spiderman are great!

They offer pretty good rates on home equity loans for tickets.

[liskddksil]

53. Go Two blocks west to Ninth Avenue and you'll find good Italian food

at better prices.

[JackRiddler]

54. Shhh!

[mitchtv]

2. Fifth Ave is the divider , and Central Park

What separates Uptown from Downtown is Midtown, silly.
Downtown- below 14th st
Mid- 14th to 59th Sts
Uptown-above 59th
or it least that was it when I grew up.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. Thank you!!!

[erodriguez]

38. Midtown starts in the 30s

14th street is part of the village.

around 14th through the 20s in the center west side from about 9th to 6th is Chelsea.
In the 20s to the 30s on the east side is Gramercy.

[mitchtv]

42. I'll stick with the map

in post 12

[JackRiddler]

49. Depends.

If you're dividing into only three meta-categories - downtown, midtown and uptown - then Downtown is up to 14th, Midtown up to 59th, and Uptown up to 96th. Above that the general meta category becomes Harlem.

Whereas if you think in terms of all neighborhoods and common usage for places, then yeah, no one says Midtown or Downtown for 14th Street, rather it's exactly as you describe with 14th being the north end of Village (E & W), to the north of that Chelsea and Gramercy, then Midtown starts at 34th and involves the current skyscrapers but has Hell's Kitchen on the west side, and in the other direction, to the south of Village you've got Soho Chinatown etc. and Downtown is waaay Downtown.

(The previous sentence is probably no longer comprehensible to the average high-level reader of English not from New York. Then again, you could just get a good map and all of this will be on there except nowadays the straights probably label Clinton for Hell's Kitchen.)

And then again it's all relative to where you're standing, downtown/uptown are directions from wherever you may be.

[NYC_SKP]

5. Grab a map of manhattan....

To add to what others have written, SOHO means South of Houston, Tribeca means Triangle Below Canal Street.

I think of lower Manhattan as everything below Canal, but others may differ.

Central Park separates the Upper East and West Sides.

And there's Chelsea, the West side around 23rd (not quite lower west side).

And the Lower East Side, (Houston to the South, 14th Street to the North, East of Broadway or the Bowery if you prefer).

By the Way, Houston is pronounced "House-Tun", not the same way as the city in Texas.

I used to live at the corner of Houston and Avenue B. (but also lived on Sullivan, Broadway, and on Roosevelt Island and up in Washington Hts.).

The letter named Avenues are to the east of the numbered ones and lead to the nickname, "alphabet city" or "alphabet jungle".

That covers a lot of it.

[JackRiddler]

50. For East Village I do prefer east of Bowery/Third Ave.

Broadway, pah. (just playing - do i need to say it?)

Also, Alphabet City and any hint of jungle is definitely defunct. That was when middle class people didn't go there except for special purchases and to be daring. Hell, I remember when Second Ave. still looked like it could credibly have a bar called "Downtown Beirut." Meanwhile the fucking boutiques have reached Ave. D.

[ddeclue]

6. What's a Dixie Girl doing in New York City anyways?

:D

Just kidding.. buy a Frommer's guide before you go.. basically they've explained it to you. FYI: There's more to NYC than Manhattan..

[dixiegrrrrl]

11. My brother is a big New York fan, goes there a lot.

My cement days are long over, I am more of a Green Acres person.

[ddeclue]

15. My brother lives in Hackensack and works in the city near Times Square

I have visited him quite a lot over the years since he moved up there. I was living near Washington D.C. over the last year and made several trips up to see him on the weekends.

[JackRiddler]

17. Who needs a house out in Hackensack ack ack ack ack ack ack ack ack ack ack ack?

Is that all you get for your money?

[KamaAina]

34. You oughta know by now

:P

[ddeclue]

35. maybe that's why he bought a condo instead?

[JackRiddler]

44. If that's what it's all about, I'm movin' out!

Sorry sorry, it's just Billy Joel references for the middle-aged, nothing to do with your posts.

[JHB]

7. Here's a page with a map that may help

http://www.thetravelingscholar.com/2011/03/new-york-neighborhoods/

You can google "NYC neighborhoods" for more details. One important detail is a lot of the boundaries are not completely rigid, and other people have different definitions of what is a neighborhood and where it ends and the next begins. For instance, the map at the site I gave doesn't even have Noho or Kip's Bay (it goups them into the East Village and Murray Hill, respectively).

Never been to New York.
I have heard, have read, references to "upper" "lower" ..East..West Side.

What is the dividing line in the city whereby the "upper" becomes the "lower"??

Or, if that is wrong question,
what is "lower" East/West side vs "Upper" East/West side?

As for "upper" for east side/west side, the divider is Central Park.

Oh..but not just East/West side uses that distinction, right?

For street addresses (like "XXX East 57th Street") the divider is 5th Ave.

Isn't there also "lower" Manhatten??

What that means exactly is one of those things that can vary depending on the speaker, what they're talking about, and where they are when they say it. Some might be speaking about just the finacial district, others might mean everything below Canal Street. Or below Houston Street. Or below 14th Street. Or even below 23rd St. Or, from the "Upper xxx Sides" and above, sometimes anything below Central Park. In general terms, the "everything below 14th Street" definition is probably best.

Anyhow, would be a big help to me as watch movies, read about NYC.

Hope this helps, but it won't always help. There are any number of movie and TV sequences where someone is supposed to be going straight from one location to another, but all the "famous NY landmarks" they pass by are scattered all over the place.

On edit: fixed some spelling, and changed "best definition of 'lower Manhattan' from 'below Canal' to 'below 14th', and to correct the street address divider from 'Broadway' to '5th Ave.'.

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. THAT is helpful map.

Yeah, I agree with you about movie sequences being in alternative universes.
I loved picking apart Sleepless in Seattle for the Seattle alterations.

btw..anything you want to know about:
Seattle
most of the State of Washington
gulf Coast
Alabama

feel free to ask

I can throw in a wee bit of Sf from my few years there, too.

Here's a freebie:

down here in Ala. , LA means; Lower Alabama, ie: Mobile and Gulf Shores area.

[JHB]

14. Whoops, have to correct myself.

For street addresses, it's like NYC_SKP said: The divider is 5th Ave, not Broadway.
I think that explains a few bad turns I've taken.

[JackRiddler]

25. Ah, but if Broadway were the divider, it would keep you on your toes, no?

Because then 50 East 25th would be to the west of 50 West 22nd, and so forth. Pretty much no one not from the city would be able to get around at all!

[JHB]

32. You'd have to always add "between X and Y"

I think that's where I got the wrong avenue embedded in my head. The only area I've had to go by the street address and nothing else was in the Flatiron district (there's another neighborhood!), where 5th and Broadway cross. Everywhere else I had to deal with it the address included a "between" note, so I was't really paying close attention to the "E" or "W".

[JackRiddler]

18. I find that old episodes of "Kojak" explain New York very well.

:sneaky

[JVS]

8. The East Side is where you'll find a deluxe apartment in the sky once you finally get a piece of pie

[Renew Deal]

9. You also need to know NoHo, SoHo, Tribeca, Flatiron, Hells Kitchen

Little Italy, Chinatown, Wall Street, Chelsea, Harlem, Inwood, The village, West Village, and much more. Lets not even start with Brooklyn and Queens. :D

[JackRiddler]

52. Ah, all you really need to know is that Mr. Jackson is appreciated but Mr. Benjamin is preferred.

[NYC Liberal]

12. Here's a good map if you wanna visualize it:

[Divernan]

13. The upper West Side: a liberal constituency and a bohemian attitude

Don't know how long you'll be there, but it won't be long enough! So much to see and do. I hope it's the first of many visits you make there.

I've visited NYC/Manhattan regularly since 1962, particularly the 25 years one of my kids had an apt. there, first in Brooklyn/Slope Park, and then Manhattan, near 99th & Riverside. The focus of visits was always on latest museum exhibits, plays, operas, the philharmonic & restaurants - all world class. Add Rockefeller Center at Christmas, Wall Street, Central Park carriage rides, Barbra Streisand concert at Madison Square Garden, Luciano Pavarotti at the Met, sitting at a table next to Liam Neeson & Natasha Richardson at Cafe des Artiste (w/ my daughter hissing, "Don't stare, Mom - only tourists stare at celebrities"), the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Trinity Church 2 months after 9/11, the Cloisters Museum (part of the Met) on the far upper West Side/banks of the Hudson, Notwithstanding decades of memorable times, I want to tell you that just recently I took a couple of young first time visitors to the City and we took the double decker Gray Line tour bus. It was fun & I saw parts of the city I'd never seen before. I think it's a great way to start out orienting yourself to the vast wonderland that is Manhattan.

Now here's the scoop on the Upper West Side:

http://www.ny.com/articles/upperwest.html

Home to such venerable New York landmarks as Lincoln Center, Columbia University, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the Dakota Apartments, and Zabar's food emporium, the Upper West Side stretches from 59th Street to 125th Street, including Morningside Heights. It is bounded by Central Park on the east and the Hudson River on the west.

Wising Up: The Intellectual Upper West Side

In the 1890s Columbia University relocated from the East Side to Morningside Heights, taking over the grounds of the Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum. Part of a rising intellectual/artistic trend on the Upper West Side, Columbia contributed to the already active cultural life. The artists and academics shared the neighborhood with the equally lively mob, which played and fought its flashy way through the early decades of the twentieth century. The roaring twenties found Riverside and West End Avenue still wealthy, but Broadway and areas east seedier, with lower middle class families living in neglected old buildings. Development and construction ceased from the early thirties through the early eighties, and the Upper West Side's popularity and social attractiveness waned, making it an undesirable address.

The Upper West Side has often been perceived as a heavily Jewish neighborhood, but despite this reputation the influx of southern blacks, Russians, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Haitians, and Ukranians in the forties and fifties, and Cubans, Dominicans, and Puerto Ricans in the fifties and sixties has kept the area diverse and demographically unpredictable. Partially because of this diversity, the Upper West Side has retained a liberal constituency and a bohemian attitude. Major urban renewal, starting in the mid-fifties under Robert Moses, was the first step in the revival of the Upper West Side; in particular, furious debate centered around the slum clearance undertaken to make way for Lincoln Center in 1959. Despite its unpopularity throughout the seventies, the Upper West Side maintained a sense of community, attracting artists, writers, and young families with its relatively low rents and neighborhood feel. The wealth of the eighties renewed the area, raising rents and drawing yuppies and their accompanying incomes; this influx prompted renovation of the grand old buildings of the earlier era.

[virgogal]

21. I agree with you on the Gray Line Tour. Whenever I visit a place

new to me I take a guided tour and then return to some of the places I think would interest me.

I love New York.

[dixiegrrrrl]

30. Gee.. "diversity" equates to "liberal attitude"....just imagine.

Really contrasts to the overall paleness of a certain political party, no?

[virgogal]

16. Also,Avenue of the Americas is 6th ave.

[JackRiddler]

19. Can you believe they wanna name the 59th Street bridge after Koch? Hell no!

[virgogal]

20. Astonishing.

[JackRiddler]

24. And you just know that's a prelude to Giuliani Park and Bloomberg Times Square.

Or some such. Ugh.

[annabanana]

28. Ok, now I'm just getting nauseous. . . n/t

[virgogal]

29. I know. As the old Irish would say,"They sure are full of themselves".

[dixiegrrrrl]

31. What?????????????????????

HELL NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can it be stopped?????
Who do I write to???

Bet that pisses off Simon and Garfunkel.

[JackRiddler]

37. Now the official name is Queensboro Bridge. They want to make it Koch Queensboro!

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

[RevStPatrick]

22. Upper East/Lower East, Upper West/Lower West are all irrelevant...

There is ONLY Brooklyn!

[JackRiddler]

23. Right, because once you're in Brooklyn you'll never find your way out.

As no clear arrangement exists there, alphabet is mixed up with numerical and "only the dead know Brooklyn."

I now hereby declare an independent Internationale of Astoria. So there.

[readmoreoften]

46. +1

[erodriguez]

41. BROOKLYN! WHAT!

[JackRiddler]

26. Fact: This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Manhattan grid plan of 1811.

It marked out the grid system we still have, blocks proceeding in orderly rows moving north from a city that at the time was almost all south of Washington Square. A street map covering the entire island, at the time unbuilt. It was the most ambitious act of urban planning in all history until that time, and the basis for astonishing growth.

It was also rationalist hubris to the nth degree. Luckily, Central Park was later added to the plan, or Manhattan would have truly been a hell on earth.

[dixiegrrrrl]

33. Did you ever read The Power Broker by Robert Caro???

Told the story, in incredible detail, of Robert Moses, who designed a lot of the New York parks and parkways back in the 30's. also a lot about the politics then. Fascinating book, earned Caro the Pulitzer.
Highly recommend if you like to wade thru 5 # books.

[JackRiddler]

43. No, and I should. The PBS "New York" series is not a substitute.

But he's a hell of an observer.

[annabanana]

27. Helpful hint.. Usually the Even streets (36th 38th etc) go East. .

That way you can figure out if you're headed East or West when you come up out of the Subway..

[JackRiddler]

45. Fact: A few weeks ago marked the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire.

There are those today who want to go back to what workers had then.

[readmoreoften]

47. Including NYU, the owners of the building...

...who union bust every chance they get...