Manhattan Valley

Manhattan Valley is a call option on the Upper West Side. It seems like the UWS has ascended. Could it possibly have further to climb? All the celebrities that supposedly shop for apartments on the UWS seems more like a running joke.

What is Manhattan Valley?

A subneighborhood of the Upper Upper West Side, south of Columbia U.

manhatttan valley is to fktards that think LIC is crappy.....

96th street to 110th on the west side - excluding riverside drive & west end.

It excludes the area between Riveside and West End?? So what is that area called? Saw you live on 103rd and West End

Morningside Heights?

I lived there a long time ago... I always thought it was:
south boundary = 100th
north = 110th
west = Broadway
east = CPW

But, even people who lived there didn't know the boundaries.

I used to live there, and I concur with broadwayron's borders. West of Bway, south of 110th is just the Upper West Side, no particular subneighborhood name. Morningside Heights' southern border is 110th.

http://nychousewhisperer.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html

The area on the far West side over there -- where I live -- does indeed have a subneighborhood name. It's "Bloomingdale" because those blocks were part of the old Bloomingdale farm.

Not in widespread use, though.

ali r.
DG Neary Realty

http://dlxs2.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=nys&cc=nys&idno=nys151&node=nys151%3A8&frm=frameset&view=text&seq=35

Ali, if this book is to be believed (it seems to be sort of a family history, not scholarly, so I'd take it with a grain of salt), there was no Bloomingdale farm as such.

In summation, per the book:
"Bloomingdale" described the landscape (valley of flowers, although just which valley is not clear), and the term applied to the entire west side from 23rd St. & Fifth Ave. to around 125th St. Bloomingdale Square was at 53rd to 57th Sts, 8th to 9th Aves. Bloomingdale Road, the basis for Broadway (named for a short time in between "The Boulevard"), ran the length of it, and around your neck of the woods (but both sides of the Road) was a small Bloomingdale Village. As the country estates that made up the bulk of the area were built up (and/or the new street grid built on it), the name Bloomingdale started to be used just for the northern part, Bloomingdale Village District, and then only Bloomingdale Village. Columbia University was built on the site of Bloomingdale Asylum [yes, for crazies].

Clickable map, showing modern street grid overlaid on historic country houses: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nycoloni/mnhtnmp.html ... not very interesting, except for The Hollow Way. And the streams and ponds.

Oh, and the Bloomingdale Church was at 69th Street.

That Alan is truly amazing. His expertise spans from NYC History like Bloomingdale Road to the employment history of the Paradise Lounge. From the Old Penn Station to growing balcony heirloom tomatoes. Pistachio paint to unicorns. Socialist Political History to Tipping etiquette. What a mind.

Thank you, thank you very kindly.

But it's Holiday Cocktail Lounge, a little bit of paradise in the East Village.

And you forgot sidecars! And I think the socialist political history and tipping etiquette must be someone else, unless you count my advice that familiarity breeds contempt, while liquor is quicker and cash is king.

But his lack of knowledge of Pearl Jam may be his Achilles heel. Only the gods can be perfect.

Achilles heel, toe jam. Got it.

sharise, if you want just opinions about that neighborhood, here's one: that area is still very sketchy east of Broadway, especially Columbus avenue. There was a lot of hope that 455 CPW will bring some much needed services up there and do some other good things for the area but that hope's gone, at least for now. The blocks north from 106th str. are bad, and between the hair salons and really bad Chinese takeouts and strange stores where they don't really want anybody waling in, and the local "development" activists, I cannot see, for now, how it can improve.
I'd like to be wrong.

Oops. "waling" = "walking."

whats a development activist if you use quotes?

Its not very different from harlem in look or feel. in fact "greater harlem" goes from 106th (not 110th) north on the west side, and thus "Duke Ellington" is also the name of 106th. See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/nyregion/06harlem.html?pagewanted=all

Not "in fact", but in error. Or poetic license, using the meaningless term "greater Harlem".

And not "thus" ... because Duke Ellington lived someplace doesn't make it Harlem; he was free to live anywhere that wasn't restricted or exclusive or had land covenants forbidding his presence. Totally free.

alanhart...it's great having posters like yourself..i learn so much about the history of New York that is little known.

well, Alan . . . . can you take a stab?
I'm only being a little facetious . . . whats a development activist if you use quotes?

There certainly are hardly any anti-development activists in that area, from what I know.

My guess is that the reference is to a storefront office for Manhattan Valley Development Corporation, which seems to have been instrumental in turning the neighborhood around ... and it was turned around, dramatically, so I don't know what all the "bad" judgment is about. That doesn't mean that there's a Van Cleef & Arpels or Bonwit-Teller there yet, but it's basically clean and tidy with a mix of thriving old-school businesses and some newer ones. CPW, of course, will never have "much needed services", because it's noncommercial.

Alan, would you own in central Harlem?
Lenox, 7th, 8th, 110-130 or so??

I ask, because like others have noted, you seem to have a real interesting angle on lots of different topics . . . .

I used to own/live in the little area just west of 8th, between 116th & 123rd, and I wouldn't hesitate to move back there. I'm less familiar with Central Harlem, but if the price and situation/amenities were right, certainly I would.

I used to own/live on 106th for quite a while and sold recently. Manhattan Valley Development Corporation used to harass the owners of the restaurant on Columbus between 106 and 107, for starters, declaring on record that only the businesses of indigenous people (I don't know what that is, either) should be supported. And that restaurant is not the only example, I just don't think an exhaustive paper should be written about it on SE. In general, a business that was/is not a hair salon or a bodega of some sort has a very hard time in there. Ask the sushi place man on 106 between Columbus and Manhattan Avenue. Or the development of the Jewish Home on 106.
Also, the blocks between 104 and 106 on Columbus are just as bad as they were 10 years ago (drugs, mostly.)

"In greater Harlem, which runs river to river, and from East 96th Street and West 106th Street to West 155th Street..." http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/nyregion/06harlem.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

"The reason the NY Times defines "Greater Harlem" as "river to river, and from East 96th Street and West 106th Street to West 155th Street," is because that exact area is what corresponds to the Census Bureau's Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs) NY03802 (West Harlem), NY03803 (Central Harlem), and NY03804 (East Harlem) - which is what the Times uses as their source for the demographic data...."

http://open.salon.com/blog/moses_gates/2010/01/09/greater_harlem

I don't really care that much either way, but if the Times and Census say it, its not FALSE.

Its also true that Manhattan Valley looks and feels like Harlem, not the UWS, regardless of what you call it.

Just like the fringes of East Harlem look and feel more like Carnegie Hill, though they are not.

If Manhattan Valley looks and feels like Harlem, not the UWS, it's only because the UWS has changed so much. That's transient.

What fringes of East Harlem look anything at all like Carnegie Hill???

The folly of the NYT approach is two-fold (at least):

http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/geoportal/maps/nyc/pumas_nyc.pdf

1. While two of the three PUMAs have "Harlem" in the name, the last is simply "Morningside Heights/Hamilton Heights". For the reasons Mr. Gates describes, NYT chose to include, rather than exclude, that entire PUMA. (Why that one extends down to 106th is still a mystery, but I assume it has to do with load balancing, minimum population per PUMA, a preference for long right-angled straight lines or something like that).

2. The southwestern Manhattan PUMA is called "Greenwich Village / Financial District". I think we can all agree that SoHo and TriBeCa are part of neither of those neighborhoods, and yet there they are. Similar for the neighborhoods of eastern mid-Manhattan.

PUMAs are roughly based on Community Board districts, which themselves have little logic to them. To wit: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/lucds/puma_maps.pdf

[Central Park is labeled a "joint interest area", although you can buy dime bags there too. These things simply don't always make sense.]

I can't remember if the WPA Guide identifies neighborhood boundaries. Of course, part of the reason bureaucrats now think of Harlem as West/Central/East is to mirror the 1930s white/black/Italian delineation in Harlem.

NYT seems to be alone in using the PUMA/CB borders as synonymous with neighborhood borders. The much more commonly accepted boundaries are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Harlem_map2.png

East Harlem along 5th, lex, Madison, 3rd and 1st to 99th. 5th maybe a few more blocks north.

See also yorkville from 1 st east north of 92nd

getting back to the original post, I can relate anecdotal evidence. I live near there and over the past 3 years have been awakened (awoken?) fewer times by sirens in the middle of the night, as compared with ten and fifteen years ago, when that area was pretty bad. Still get awakened, but now it's stoopified Columbia students who can't find their way back to Broadway. There are a few decent micro-restaurants that have taken a tenuous hold, and an upcoming new cafe on 106th and A'dam that augurs well. Haircuts with scissors, not electric trimmers, can now be had for $12. Vibrant, healthy multi-nabe. Too early to tell if Whole Foods on edge (96th) will assume role as anchor tenant/pacifier for speculators. Subway access good, as well as both parks. Leading indicator might be to note any pet/grooming stores opening?

birdier, there was a pet grooming store on Amsterdam between 106 and 107. The WF effect will have to bridge over the Frederick Houses, which is not easy. I have friends on the (now fully landmarked) block Manhattan Avenue. They've been there forever, the real neighborhood people, and the townhouses there are truly beautiful. They're saying that their hope for the WF (now offset by TJ Max, by the way) so far didn't materialized.

Bowitt Teller closed about 15 years ago - where have you been? MV has many walkup buildings. They have charm, but the apt I lived in the sound of the radiator clanking would wake me up before I wanted to. The tenement buildings were mainly occupied by domincan immigrants, and there influence is dominant in this microhood. Columbia supplied many transients. Drug dealing is way down and i wouldn't let it bother me. The retail mix has improved somewhat recently. I think the landlords raised rents too high, and that is why Columbus was so dead for so long.

I am born and raised on the Upper west Side living within spitting distance of the area that has come to be known as "Manhattan Valley".

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The Upper West Side is a huge neighborhood. Long-time Upper West Siders tend to just say they are from the Upper West Side, not any of these sub-neighborhoods. That is more of a real-estate agent phenomenon.

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Manhattan Valley is in no way part of Harlem. The map that Alan Hart linked to had the boundaries of Harlem correct. People from Manhattan Valley don't say they are from Harlem, and people from Harlem don't say they are from Manhattan Valley. Because they are not. You have to be careful when you take your data from realtors or maps drawn by people or organizations that are not familiar with the area. realtors especially because they like to embellish in any way they can.

Any changes from 7 months ago?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomingdale_District

Something on the Bloomingdale area presently in Manhattan.