Upper East Side


The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the west. The area incorporates several smaller neighborhoods, including Lenox Hill, Carnegie Hill, and Yorkville. Once known as the Silk Stocking District, it is now one of the most affluent neighborhoods in New York City.
The Upper East Side is part of Manhattan Community District 8 and its primary ZIP Codes are 10021, 10028, 10065, 10075, and 10128. It is patrolled by the 19th Precinct of the New York City Police Department.

Geography

Neighborhood boundaries in New York City are not officially set, but according to the Encyclopedia of New York City, the Upper East Side is bounded by 59th Street in the south, 96th Street on the north, Fifth Avenue to the west and the East River to the east. The AIA Guide to New York City extends the northern boundary to 106th Street near Fifth Avenue.
The area's north-south avenues are Fifth, Madison, Park, Lexington, Third, Second, First, York, and East End Avenues, with the latter running only from East 79th Street to East 90th Street. The major east-west streets are 59th Street, 72nd Street, 79th Street, 86th Street and 96th Street.
Some real estate agents use the term "Upper East Side" instead of "East Harlem" to describe areas that are slightly north of 96th Street and near Fifth Avenue, in order to avoid associating these areas with the negative connotations of the latter, a neighborhood which is generally perceived as less prestigious.

Historic districts

The Upper East Side Historic District was designated as a city district in 1981 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. The city district runs from 59th to 78th Streets along Fifth Avenue, and up to Third Avenue at some points. It is composed of residential structures built after the American Civil War; mansions and townhouses built at the beginning of the 20th century; and apartment buildings erected later on. The city district was slightly expanded in 2010 with 74 additional buildings.
The Metropolitan Museum Historic District was designated a city district in 1977. It consists of properties on Fifth Avenue between 79th and 86th Streets, outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as properties on several side streets.
The Park Avenue Historic District was designated a city district in 2014. It encompasses 64 properties on Park Avenue between 79th and 91st Streets.
The Carnegie Hill Historic District was designated a city district in 1974 and expanded in 1993. It covers 400 buildings, primarily along Fifth Avenue from 86th to 98th Street, as well as on side streets extending east to Madison, Park, and Lexington Avenues.
There are also two smaller city historic districts. The Henderson Place Historic District, designated in 1969, comprises the town houses on East End Avenue between 86th and 87th Streets, built by John C. Henderson in 1981. The Treadwell Farm Historic District, designated in 1967, includes low-rise apartments on East 61st and 62nd Streets between Second and Third Avenues, on the former farm of Adam Treadwell.

History

Development

Before the arrival of Europeans, the mouths of streams that eroded gullies in the East River bluffs are conjectured to have been the sites of fishing camps used by the Lenape, whose controlled burns once a generation or so kept the dense canopy of oak–hickory forest open at ground level.
In the 19th century the farmland and market garden district of what was to be the Upper East Side was still traversed by the Boston Post Road and, from 1837, the New York and Harlem Railroad, which brought straggling commercial development around its one station in the neighborhood, at 86th Street, which became the heart of German Yorkville. The area was defined by the attractions of the bluff overlooking the East River, which ran without interruption from James William Beekman's "Mount Pleasant", north of the marshy squalor of Turtle Bay, to Gracie Mansion, north of which the land sloped steeply to the wetlands that separated this area from the suburban village of Harlem. Among the series of villas a Schermerhorn country house overlooked the river at the foot of present-day 73rd Street and another, Peter Schermerhorn's at 66th Street, and the Riker homestead was similarly sited at the foot of 75th Street. By the mid-19th century the farmland had largely been subdivided, with the exception of the of Jones's Wood, stretching from 66th to 76th Streets and from the Old Post Road to the river and the farmland inherited by James Lenox, who divided it into blocks of houselots in the 1870s, built his Lenox Library on a Fifth Avenue lot at the farm's south-west corner, and donated a full square block for the Presbyterian Hospital, between 70th and 71st Streets, and Madison and Park Avenues. At that time, along the Boston Post Road taverns stood at the mile-markers, Five-Mile House at 72nd Street and Six-Mile House at 97th, a New Yorker recalled in 1893.
, last remaining East River villa
The fashionable future of the narrow strip between Central Park and the railroad cut was established at the outset by the nature of its entrance, in the southwest corner, north of the Vanderbilt family's favored stretch of Fifth Avenue from 50th to 59th Streets. A row of handsome townhouses was built on speculation by Mary Mason Jones, who owned the entire block bounded by 57th and 58th Streets and Fifth and Madison. In 1870 she occupied the prominent corner house at 57th and Fifth, though not in the isolation described by her niece, Edith Wharton, whose picture has been uncritically accepted as history, as Christopher Gray has pointed out.

Arrival of famous residents

Before the Park Avenue Tunnel was covered, fashionable New Yorkers shunned the smoky railroad trench up Fourth Avenue, to build stylish mansions and townhouses on the large lots along Fifth Avenue, facing Central Park, and on the adjacent side streets. The latest arrivals were the rich Pittsburghers Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. The classic phase of Gilded Age Fifth Avenue as a stretch of private mansions was not long-lasting: the first apartment house to replace a private mansion on upper Fifth Avenue was 907 Fifth Avenue, at 72nd Street, the neighborhood's grand carriage entrance to Central Park.
Most members of New York's upper-class families have made residences on the Upper East Side, including the oil-rich Rockefellers, political Roosevelts, political dynastic Kennedys, thoroughbred racing moneyed Whitneys, and tobacco and electric power fortuned Dukes.

Transportation constructed

Construction of the Third Avenue El, opened from 1878 in sections, followed by the Second Avenue El, opened in 1879, linked the Upper East Side's middle class and skilled artisans closely to the heart of the city, and confirmed the modest nature of the area to their east. The ghostly "Hamilton Square", which had appeared as one of the few genteel interruptions of the grid plan on city maps since the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, was intended to straddle what had now become the Harlem Railroad right-of-way between 66th and 69th Streets; it never materialized, though during the Panic of 1857 its unleveled ground was the scene of an open-air mass meeting called in July to agitate for the secession of the city and its neighboring counties from New York State, and the city divided its acreage into house lots and sold them. From the 1880s the neighborhood of Yorkville became a suburb of middle class Germans.
Gracie Mansion, the last remaining suburban villa overlooking the East River at Carl Schurz Park, became the home of New York's mayor in 1942. The East River Drive, designed by Robert Moses, was extended south from the first section, from 125th Street to 92nd Street, which was completed in 1934 as a boulevard, an arterial highway running at street level; reconstruction designs from 1948 to 1966 converted FDR Drive, as it was renamed after Franklin Delano Roosevelt, into the full limited-access parkway that is in use today.
, as seen across Madison Avenue
, 85th Street
Demolishing the elevated railways on Third and Second Avenues opened these tenement-lined streets to the construction of high-rise apartment blocks starting in the 1950s. However, it had an adverse effect on transportation, because the IRT Lexington Avenue Line was now the only subway line in the area. The construction of the Second Avenue Subway was originally proposed in 1919. Finally, on January 1, 2017, the first phase of the line was completed with three new stations opened. This brought in new local business to the area and had positive impact on real estate prices in the Upper East Side.

Demographics

For census purposes, the New York City government classifies the Upper East Side as part of three neighborhood tabulation areas: Upper East Side-Carnegie Hill, Yorkville, and Lenox Hill-Roosevelt Island, divided by Third Avenue and 77th Street. Based on data from the 2010 United States Census, the combined population of these areas was 219,920, an increase of 2,857 from the 217,063 counted in 2000. Covering an area of, the neighborhoods had a population density of.
The racial makeup of the neighborhoods was 79% White, 3.2% African American, 0.1% Native American, 8.6% Asian, 0% Pacific Islander, 0.3% from other races, and 1.8% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race was 7.1% of the population. While the White population is a dominating majority in all three census tabulation areas, it is more so in Upper East Side-Carnegie Hill compared to Yorkville and Lenox Hill-Roosevelt Island, being close to 90% of the population.
The racial composition of the Upper East Side changed moderately from 2000 to 2010. The most significant changes were the increase in the Asian population by 38%, the increase in the Hispanic / Latino population by 19%, and the decrease in the White population by 3%. The small Black population increased by 3%, while the even smaller population of all other races increased by 15%. Taking into account the three census tabulation areas, the decrease of the White population was concentrated Yorkville and Upper East Side-Carnegie Hill especially, while the increases of the other racial groups were evenly split across the three areas.
The entirety of Manhattan Community District 8, which comprises the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island, had 225,914 inhabitants as of NYC Health's 2018 Community Health Profile, with an average life expectancy of 85.9 years. This is higher than the median life expectancy of 81.2 for all New York City neighborhoods. Most inhabitants are adults: a plurality are between the ages of 25–44, while 24% are between 45–64, and 20% are 65 or older. The ratio of youth and college-aged residents was lower, at 14% and 5% respectively.
As of 2017, the median household income in Community District 8 was $123,894, though the median income in the Upper East Side individually was $131,492. In 2018, an estimated 7% of Community District 8 residents lived in poverty, compared to 14% in all of Manhattan and 20% in all of New York City. One in twenty-five residents were unemployed, compared to 7% in Manhattan and 9% in New York City. Rent burden, or the percentage of residents who have difficulty paying their rent, is 41% in Community District 8, compared to the boroughwide and citywide rates of 45% and 51% respectively. Based on this calculation, as of 2018, Community District 8 is not considered to be gentrifying: according to the Community Health Profile, the district was not low-income in 1990.

Ethnic and socioeconomic trends

As of the 2000 census, twenty-one percent of the population was foreign born; of this, 45.6% came from Europe, 29.5% from Asia, 16.2% from Latin America and 8.7% from other areas. The female-male ratio was very high with 125 females for 100 males. The Upper East Side contains a large and affluent Jewish population estimated at 56,000. Traditionally, the Upper East Side has been dominated by wealthy White Anglo-Saxon Protestant families.
Given its very high population density and per capita income, the neighborhood contains the greatest concentration of individual wealth in Manhattan. As of 2011, the median household income for the Upper East Side was $131,492. The Upper East Side maintains the highest pricing per square foot in the United States. A 2002 report cited the average cost per square meter as $8,856; however, that price has noticed a substantial jump, increasing to almost as much as $11,200 per square meter as of 2006. There are some buildings which cost about $125 per square foot. The only public housing projects for those of low to moderate incomes on the Upper East Side are located just south of the neighborhood's northern limit at 96th Street, the Holmes Towers and Isaacs Houses. It borders East Harlem, which has the highest concentration of public housing in the United States.

Politics

Politically, the Upper East Side is in New York's 12th congressional district. It is in the New York State Senate's 27th, 28th, and 29th districts, the New York State Assembly's 73rd and 76th districts, and the New York City Council's 4th and 5th districts.
The Upper East Side is one of few areas of Manhattan where Republicans constitute more than 20% of the electorate. In the southwestern part of the neighborhood, Republican voters equal Democratic voters, whereas in the rest of the neighborhood Republicans make up between 20 and 40% of registered voters.
The Upper East Side is notable as a significant location of political fundraising in the United States. Four of the top five ZIP Codes in the nation for political contributions are in Manhattan. The top ZIP Code, 10021, is on the Upper East Side and generated the most money for the 2004 presidential campaigns of both George W. Bush and John Kerry.
at Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street
at Fifth Avenue and 89th Street

Landmarks and cultural institutions

Museums

The area is host to some of the most famous museums in the world. The string of museums along Fifth Avenue fronting Central Park has been dubbed "Museum Mile", running between 82nd and 105th Streets. It was once named "Millionaire's Row". The following are among the cultural institutions on the Upper East Side:
Many diplomatic missions are located in former mansions on the Upper East Side:
Other missions to the United Nations in the Upper East Side include:
There are several historic districts in the Upper East Side, the districts are:
The Upper East Side is patrolled by the 19th Precinct of the NYPD, located at 153 East 67th Street. The 19th Precinct has a lower crime rate than in the 1990s, with crimes across all categories having decreased by 84.5% between 1990 and 2019. The precinct reported 0 murders, 18 rapes, 171 robberies, 138 felony assaults, 223 burglaries, 1,658 grand larcenies, and 65 grand larcenies auto in 2019.
, Manhattan Community District 8 has a non-fatal assault hospitalization rate of 15 per 100,000 people, compared to the boroughwide rate of 49 per 100,000 and the citywide rate of 59 per 100,000. Its incarceration rate is 71 per 100,000 people, the lowest in the city, compared to the boroughwide rate of 407 per 100,000 and the citywide rate of 425 per 100,000.
Of the five major violent felonies, the 19th Precinct had a rate of 264 crimes per 100,000 residents in 2019, compared to the boroughwide average of 632 crimes per 100,000 and the citywide average of 572 crimes per 100,000.
In 2019, the highest concentration of felony assaults in the Upper East Side was near the intersection of 93rd Street and First Avenue, where there were 10 felony assaults. The highest concentration of robberies, on the other hand, was near the intersection of 86th Street and Lexington Avenue, where there were 19 robberies.

Fire safety

The Upper East Side is served by multiple New York City Fire Department fire stations:
and teenage births in the Upper East Side are lower than the city average. In the Upper East Side, there were 73 preterm births per 1,000 live births, and 3.4 teenage births per 1,000 live births. The Upper East Side has a low population of residents who are uninsured. In 2018, this population of uninsured residents was estimated to be 4%, less than the citywide rate of 12%, though this was based on a small sample size.
The concentration of fine particulate matter, the deadliest type of air pollutant, in the Upper East Side is, more than the city average. Eight percent of Upper East Side residents are smokers, which is less than the city average of 14% of residents being smokers. In the Upper East Side, 11% of residents are obese, 4% are diabetic, and 15% have high blood pressure—compared to the citywide averages of 24%, 11%, and 28% respectively. In addition, 6% of children are obese, compared to the citywide average of 20%.
Ninety-four percent of residents eat some fruits and vegetables every day, which is higher than the city's average of 87%. In 2018, 89% of residents described their health as "good," "very good," or "excellent," more than the city's average of 78%. For every supermarket in the Upper East Side, there are 5 bodegas.
Lenox Hill Hospital and NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center are located in the Upper East Side. In addition, Mount Sinai Hospital and Metropolitan Hospital Center are located nearby in East Harlem.

Post offices and ZIP Codes

The Upper East Side is located in five primary ZIP Codes. From north to south, they are 10069, 10021, 10075, 10028, and 10128. In addition, 500 East 77th Street in Yorkville has its own ZIP Code, 10162. If the AIA Guide's broader definition of the neighborhood is considered, then the neighborhood has an additional ZIP Code of 10029, along Fifth Avenue between 96th and 105th Streets. The United States Postal Service operates four post offices in the Upper East Side:
The Upper East Side generally has a higher rate of college-educated residents than the rest of the city. A majority of residents age 25 and older have a college education or higher, while 3% have less than a high school education and 14% are high school graduates or have some college education. By contrast, 64% of Manhattan residents and 43% of city residents have a college education or higher. The percentage of the Upper East Side students excelling in math rose from 61% in 2000 to 80% in 2011, and reading achievement increased from 66% to 68% during the same time period.
The Upper East Side's rate of elementary school student absenteeism is lower than the rest of New York City. In the Upper East Side, 8% of elementary school students missed twenty or more days per school year, less than the citywide average of 20%. Additionally, 91% of high school students in the Upper East Side graduate on time, more than the citywide average of 75%.

Primary and secondary schools

Public schools

The New York City Department of Education operates public schools in the city.
Public lower and middle schools
Public high schools
Other schools

Private schools

Coeducational schools
Girls' schools
Boys' schools
The New York Public Library operates four branches in the Upper East Side.
The Upper East Side is served by two subway lines, the four-track IRT Lexington Avenue Line under Lexington Avenue and the two-track Second Avenue Subway under Second Avenue.
The Second Avenue Line serves to relieve congestion on the Lexington Avenue Line. The first phase of the line opened on January 1, 2017, consisting of three stations in the Upper East Side: 96th Street, 86th Street, and 72nd Street. The planned Second Avenue Line includes three additional phases to be built at a later date, which will extend the line north to 125th Street/Park Avenue in Harlem and south to Hanover Square in the Financial District.
There are also local and limited MTA Regional Bus Operations routes going uptown and downtown, as well as the crosstown.

In popular culture

The Upper East Side has been a setting for many films, television shows, and other media.

Films

The neighborhood has a long tradition of being home to some of the world's most wealthy, powerful and influential families and individuals.

Notable residential buildings