Manhattan Valley

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The castle-like onetime Towers Nursing Home, now converted to a luxury condominium, at 455 Central Park West in Manhattan Valley.

Manhattan Valley is a neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by West 110th Street to the north, Central Park West to the east, West 96th Street or 100th Street to the south, and Broadway to the west. It was formerly known as the Bloomingdale District, and is still occasionally so called.

Geography

Manhattan Valley occupies a natural depression running east-west across Manhattan, declining rapidly from high rocky bluffs at the western border of modern Central Park, and following west the valley created by what was once a minor stream draining from roughly the area of the Harlem Meer into the Hudson River.[Gil Tauber, "Bloomingdale/Manhattan Valley Chronology,"] [Columbus/Amsterdam Business Improvement District]

Many sources consider the lower boundary of Manhattan Valley to be West 100th Street, but a more natural division preferred by community groups extends the area south to West 96th Street,[Carla Zanoni, "Reactions Mixed as Businesses Close Along Broadway,"] Columbia Spectator, 25 March 2005 a major thoroughfare which provides crosstown access through Central Park. The dispairty is largely semantic, however, since the area from West 100th to 97th Street is comprised of superblocks occupied by public housing projects, and is thus exists in more of a "buffer zone" than being smoothly integrated into the neighborhoods to the north or south.

Broadway and Central Park West provide the largest thoroughfares longitudinally through the neighborhood, but it also transected, from west to east, by Amsterdam Avenue, Columbus Avenue, and Manhattan Avenue. The former two extend through the entirety of the Upper West Side (and beyond). The latter originates at 100th Street and proceeds north into Harlem, and can thus be considered uniquely a feature of Manhattan Valley.

In addition to the superblocks below West 100th Street, the area bordered by Amsterdam Avenue, West 100th Street, Manhattan Avenue, and West 104th Street is also a single superblock, transected only by Columbus Avenue. All other streets in the neighborhood proceed in a uninterrupted grid.

History

The neighborhood's original name of Bloomingdale District derived from the Blooming Dale Road, presumably named for the florescence in the well-watered valley, built in the early 16th century roughly along the path of modern-day Broadway. Many of the early landmarks in the area acquired the name, but it was the nearby Bloomingdale Mental Asylum, which in the 19th century occupied roughly the same location as the present-day Columbia University in Morningside Heights, that probably most influenced the area's early nomenclature.

Early development in the 1870s and 1880s focused on institutional care for the ill or aged, and included the Hebrew Home for the Aged, the Catholic Old Age Home and the Home for Aged Indigent Respectable Females, as well as the Towers Nursing Home constructed as a cancer ward by John Jacob Astor III in 1884.[Maurice Mann, "Get Ahead of the Crowd in Manhattan Valley,"] Real Estate Weekly, 23 March 2005 These were located primarily to take advantage of the ample area needed by institutions of substance, and gave the area its earliest landmarks.

The neighborhood only began to fill out residentially, however, at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, when first the IRT Ninth Avenue Line in 1870 and then the IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue Line in 1904 allowed the public ready access to uptown Manhattan. Columbia's purchase of the asylum's property at around the same time as the Broadway line's arrival made the neighborhood a more palatable milieu as well.

This area was populated mostly by Irish and German immigrants in the 1930s through 1950s. Young boys and girls took advantage of Central Park and Riverside Drive or played stick ball and roller hockey in the streets. The 1950s saw many immigrants from Puerto Rico took up residence in the Upper West Side and a proposed project to eliminate the older brownstone apartments began to drive earlier residents moving to the suburbs.

The area went into decline in the 1950's and 1960s, mirroring a general urban deterioration in Manhattan which saw flight from the central city into the surrounding suburbs. The acute problems in Manhattan Valley began then as well, when several city blocks were demolished under Robert Moses's urban renewal programs to construct the Frederick Douglass Houses in the superblock where they stand today. Rampant graft and corruption associated with the project, however, blighted their opening and brough ill repute on the neighborhood, and the debacle contributed stronlgy the Moses's fall from power and ouster. Two decades of general malaise settled over progress in the neighborhood.

But with the Wall Street boom in the early 1980s, Manhattan as a whole experienced a sharp recovery. Seventy years after the Bloomingdale Asylum's closing, the provenance of the name was fading into obscurity, and residents and brokers alike began referring to the neighborhood by its present name.["Manhattan Valley, Insane or Not?,"] Curbed, 3 April 2006 The new name and recovery were both much bolstered by the foundation in 1968 of the non-profit Manhattan Valley Development Corporation. It sought to differentiate itself from other community development organizations by opposing the demolition of pre-war buildings in favor of renovation, and seeking to promote small business and "prevent harassment by out-side management companies prevalent in low income 'minority' neighborhoods."["History," MVDC]

Wavering property prices in the late 1980s and early 1990s, combined with the rise of crack use and dealers in the area, brought a halt to new investment, and the nightlife in the area stagnated in the face of crime; Manhattan Valley earned a reputation as one of the easiest places in the city to score a hit.[Evelyn Nieves, " Manhattan Valley's Long Awaited Boom Ends Up Just a Fizzle,"] New York Times, 25 December 1990 But as the drug epidemic and crime waned in the latter days of the 20th century and young professionals began to eye the area hungrily again, the neighborhood's cache—and prices—have only climbed.

Modern Developments

At the turn of the 21st century, the community has seen itself rise to among "New York's toniest areas." Manhattan Valley has gentrified significantly since the 1980s, along with the rest of the Upper West Side and Harlem, under steady encroachment north from the "traditional" Upper West Side and south from Morningside Heights.[Vera Haller, "City Living: Manhattan Valley,"] Newsday, 6 January 2006 Coinciding with this transition, the Columbua/Amsterdam Business Improvement District organized in the late 1990s to develop stronger business presence along the main thoroughfares of Columbus and Amsterdam, and to provide enterpreneurial opportunities to locals.

While Broadway still provides most retail shopping opportunities, Amsterdam Avenue has emerged as a major contender in local nightlife with a glut of six bars in the two blocks from West 110th Street 108th Street. These join the venerable Ding-Dong Lounge on Columbus, which has been providing a hipster vibe to the area for decades. The renaissance has much to do with increased migration of Columbia and Barnard College girls south as Morningside Heights venues become increasingly expensive.

Brokers report the properties in the area remains up to thirty percent less expensive than comparable Upper West Side neighborhoods.[S Johoanna Robledo, "Valley of the Deals,"] New York Magazine, 28 February 2005 The neighborhood's proximity to the much-valued Central Park as well as to three separate subway lines make it attractive to young commuters, and prices are rising dramatically as New Yorkers are "tipped off" by their brokers. Many of the historical brownstones and townhouses were successfully saved by the MVDC from demolition, particularly east of Columbus Avenue, where the property values are the highest. Indeed, the nearly complete lack of traffic along Manhattan Avenue make have drawn families as well as twenty-somethings. And although low-rent housing predominates between Broadway and Columbus, even this is rapidly changing as the 21st century progresses.

Landmarks

• Frederick Douglass Circle, West 110th Street and Central Park West
• Towers Condominium, "The Dakota of the North," West 105th Street and Central Park West
• Sing & Sing Market, locally called "Sing-Sing" after the New York penitentiary, West 96th Street and Columbus
• The former East River Savings Bank, now a pharmacy and called the "Aspirineum," West 96th Street and Amsterdam
• [Church of the Ascension], West 107th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam
• [Straus Park], West 106th Street and Broadway

Demographics

According to the 2000 census (in which Manhattan Valley's census tracks are 187, 189, 191, 193, and 195), 48,983 persons live in the community, of which 44% are of Hispanic origin, 32% African Americans, and 24% Asians, Whites and others. Fifty-five percent of the residents are of very low income (below 50% of the area's median family income, which is $13,854). The more affluent families reside West of Broadway and East of Manhattan Avenue. Of the Manhattan Valley population 20.76% are on social security and 23% on public assistance.["Demographic/Catchment Area," MVDC]

Notes