THE WEST IS
Exclusive uptown nabe has been home to
Every neighborhood tells a story.
In Greenwich Village, it’s one of artists, activists, and the avant-garde. On the Upper East Side, it’s about privilege, position and power.
Sometimes neighborhoods change and tell new tales. But the old stories, the lore, remain.
Jim Mackin’s “Notable New Yorkers of Manhattan’s Upper West Side” collects nearly 600 of them. And they reveal an Upper West Side character that’s lasted for a century – intellectual, political, diverse.
During Colonial days, the area was farmland. But by the late 1800s, New York was growing, and New Yorkers needed space. Smart real estate developers looked north. The Ninth Avenue El was expanding northward, followed by the subway.
The modern Upper West Side was born.
Mapping it can be tricky. Mackin defines it as running between 90th and 130th Sts. His book dedicates a chapter to each 10-block stretch. Riverside Drive, however, gets its own chapter. Each section can inspire several walking tours, customized to specific interests.
Eager to explore the neighborhood’s celebrity history? Start at 245 W. 103d St., the boyhood home of Humphrey Bogart. He went to nearby Trinity School briefly (bad grades, worse behavior), joined the Navy, then headed to Broadway. His marital life was messy until he found his fourth wife, fellow New Yorker Lauren Bacall. He was 45; she was 19. But the union lasted.
In 2006, 103rd between Broadway and West End Place was renamed Humphrey Bogart Way. “Bogie would never have believed it,” Bacall marveled.
Walk up two blocks to 255 W. 105th Street, and you’ll see the former home of Marion Davies. In 1918, William Randolph Hearst bought the building for the 21-year-old chorus girl and her mother. Davies would spend most of her life with him in California, though, at the garish castle he built in San Simeon.
“He snores and he can be petty and he has sons about as old as me,” Davies told actress Lita Grey, according to Grey’s memoirs. And, she admitted, Hearst wouldn’t divorce his wife and wasn’t “so wonderful behind the barn, either.” But “he’s kind and he’s good to me.”
Their love affair lasted more than 30 years.
Davies and Bogart were both used to gossip, but neither courted controversy as happily as George Carlin, who grew up at 519 W. 121st St.
The continually censored comic, who named one of his albums “Class Clown,” got his first laughs at the neighborhood’s Catholic schools. But when fans pushed to name a block in his honor, his old parish, Corpus Christi Church, pushed back, calling him a bad role model.
A one-block stretch of 121st St., between Amsterdam Ave. and Morningside Drive, was
eventually named for him in 2014. When a Times reporter arrived to cover the dedication, he found Carlin’s older brother Patrick watching. “This is how you celebrate George Carlin,” Patrick announced, lighting up a joint.
For one-stop sightseeing, try Pomander Walk, a private gated community on 94th and 95th, between Broadway and West End. It was once home to the Gish sisters, Gloria Swanson and Rosalind Rus
sell, among other stars. Meanwhile, at 808 West End Ave., the Allendale Apartments, near 99th Street, was mogul central, sheltering movie titans Samuel Goldwyn, Adolph Zukor and Jesse Lasky.
Hard-headed businessmen, they didn’t always understand the art they financed, though. Told the censors would never let him make a movie about lesbians, Goldwyn waved the warnings aside. “That’s all right,” he
said, “we’ll make them Hungarians!”
Performers may have settled on the Upper West Side because of its easy access to Broadway. Still, the neighborhood also sheltered Columbia University students, like Jack Kerouac and Barack Obama, and other assorted intellectuals. They strengthened the neighborhood’s reputation as a haven for the wellread and politically engaged, and their haunts offer up a
Parker’s generosity was probably appreciated by Thurgood Marshall, who lived at 501 W. 123rd St. Before joining the Supreme Court, he founded the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund (which ultimately benefited from Parker’s bequest, after King’s death). A formidable legal scholar and jurist, Marshall went to Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University with Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes.