Upper West Side  

The Upper West Side (UWS) is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded by Central Park on the east, the Hudson River on the west, West 59th Street to the south, and West 110th Street to the north. The Upper West Side is adjacent to the neighborhoods of Hell’s Kitchen to the south, Columbus Circle to the southeast, and Morningside Heights to the north.

Like the Upper East Side opposite Central Park, the Upper West Side is an affluent, primarily residential area with many of its residents working in commercial areas of Midtown and Lower Manhattan, NYC. Similarly to the Museum Mile district on the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side is considered one of Manhattan‘s cultural and intellectual hubs, with Columbia University and Barnard College located just to the north of the neighborhood, the American Museum of Natural History located near its center, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School located at the south end.

The long high bluff above useful sandy coves along the North River was little used or traversed by the Lenape people. A combination of the stream valleys, such as that in which 96th Street runs, and wetlands to the northeast and east, may have protected a portion of the Upper West Side from the Lenape’s controlled burns; lack of periodic ground fires results in a denser understory and more fire-intolerant trees, such as American Beech.

N the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the Upper West Side-to-be contained some of colonial New York’s most ambitious houses, spaced along Bloomingdale Road. It became increasingly infilled with smaller, more suburban villas in the first half of the nineteenth century. In the middle of the century, parts had become a decidedly lower class.

Bloomingdale District

The name “Bloomingdale District” was used to refer to a part of the Upper West Side – the present-day Manhattan Valley neighborhood – located between 96th and 110th Streets and bounded on the east by Amsterdam Avenue and on the west by Riverside Drive, Riverside Park, and the Hudson River.

Its name was a derivation of the description given to the area by Dutch settlers in New Netherland, likely from Bloemendaal, a town in the tulip region. The name was Anglicized to “Bloomingdale” or “the Bloomingdale District,” covering the west side of Manhattan from about 23rd Street up to the Hollow Way. It consisted of farms and villages along a road known as the Bloomingdale Road. Bloomingdale Road was renamed The Boulevard in 1868, as the farms and villages were divided into building lots and absorbed into the city. By the 18th century, it contained numerous farms and country residences of many of the city’s well-off, a major parcel of which was the Apthorp Farm. EZ Bed Bug Exterminator NYC

 

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