Early in the day on December 31st, visitors will begin pouring into the city to participate in the Times Square New Year’s Eve Celebration. If you plan to be among the one million people who will ring in the New Year with the ball drop at midnight consider this: you may stand in the cold all day waiting for midnight and still find yourself watching the main event of the night on massive television screens.
Imagine an alternative: spending that time on the move instead, invigorated as you see, taste and explore one of the most charming neighborhoods in New York on your way to the New Year.
The Upper West Side is Manhattan’s “small town in a big city.” You can discover its often-missed nuances and delights using this simple guide – a self-guided walking tour that will leave you feeling a little more like a native New Yorker.
This is the walk I share with friends and family when they arrive in the city with only a few hours to spare between appointments or layovers. It’s the fastest way to saturate curiosity and satisfy the desire for a genuine New York experience when time is short. Let’s go!
Find your way to the 1,2 or 3 subway on the IRT line. Emerge at West 72nd Street – also known as, “The gateway to the Upper West Side”. You are now moments from realizing that while Times Square may be the epicenter of New York to the world this is the heart of city life to everyone who has ever called this neighborhood home.
Walk north from West 72nd to West 74th Street along the east side of Amsterdam Avenue. Listen – that’s New York quiet: the sound of delivery trucks and cabs bouncing along potholes, their sound magnified into deep booms by the elegant Florentine Renaissance palazzo landmark building you see to your left, known today as the Apple Bank for Savings, and by the pre-war landmark building standing above you on your right, previously known as The Berkeley.
Peek in each storefront. When you reach the original neon Amsterdam Cleaners sign just before the corner of West 74th, realize that this family-owned Chinese laundry has been warming the air with clean, starched steam for over 50 years. Make a right turn. It’s time to participate in two well-loved Upper West Side activities: neighbors eating sweets on stoops.
Join the line in front of Levain Bakery, purchase something warm, gooey and delicious along with your favorite hot beverage and step back outside quickly – the Upper West Side may be low-key and charming but people are still in a rush, especially when it comes to reaching pastry.
Once back on the sidewalk, stroll west just a few steps to find the brownstone building that might suit you best. Begin stoop sitting.
Let the pleasure of watching the world go by one local, one curious dog, one cranky neighbor at a time sink into your being. Much of what’s best in New York is enjoyed when you stop chasing it and let it walk right up to or just past you. Sightsee with your treats from your sun-warmed step for as long as you like.
Walk west to Broadway along West 74th Street. Turn left and walk toward West 73rd Street feasting your eyes on that grand, bizarre building that dominates the skyline to your right between West 74th Street and West 73rd Street. That is The Ansonia, once home to legends of the silent screen, to opera stars, to scandal, to a rooftop farm, the notorious (or notoriously fun) Plato’s Retreat, to Bette Midler performances and so much more (Google this place later during your chilly New Year’s Eve in Times Square!)
If you like, cross Broadway to step inside The Ansonia where you may like to tell the Concierge you are a photographer, a former resident of the building, visiting your grandparents, here to fix a sink…whatever it takes to get on the elevator to the top floor and then gaze down the 12-story grand, vertigo-inducing staircase. If you prefer to avoid that kind of stress, stay on your side of the street and make a left once you reach the corner of West 73rd Street.
Here you’ll recognize your subway stop on your right and maybe now, less dazed from hurried travel, you’ll notice it’s ensconced in a small triangle of a park. This is Verdi Square, peaceful and pretty and not at all like it was in the 1970s when it was the drug dealer and user haven featured in the film starring Al Pacino, The Panic in Needle Park.
Walk into the Apple Bank for Savings even though your instincts may ask, “Why bother?” This is no ordinary bank. Inside you are suddenly transported back to the Italian Renaissance. You are standing under a glorious vaulted 65-foot ceiling in the hushed ambiance of what could only be described as a cathedral to cash.
Back outside, hurry west across Amsterdam to walk along West 73rd Street’s treasure – a line of beautiful brownstones and varied architecture along both sides of the block.
When you reach Columbus Avenue, turn left to walk toward West 77th Street. Enjoy the bustle of the neighborhood, alive at every hour of the day, every day of the week and take in a sight you only catch in certain pockets of New York – sky! The low-rise buildings make this part of New York feel airy and spacious even though it is a densely populated area of the city.
At West 77th Street turn west and walk toward Central Park. On your left is the American Museum of Natural History, built on park-like grounds in 1877. On your right is prime real estate, elegant apartment buildings where uniformed doormen welcome New Yorkers home each day.
Cross Central Park West and enter the park at West 77th Street. Watch for speeding bicyclists as you cross toward the lake. Meander along a little path that will take you to a rocky outcropping that you’ll enjoy climbing for quintessential New York skyline views of Central Park South and Central Park West.
Take a moment to rest your gaze upon the natural, graceful landscapes all around you before you leave behind the park, it’s strolling lovers, determined runners, and quirky cast of characters via the West 72nd Street exit/entrance.
Before you cross Central Park West at West 72nd Street to walk west toward Columbus Avenue, stop and look up at the skyline of buildings, some were once considered the nation’s first ‘skyscrapers’. Each one is home to some of the city’s most illustrious citizens and one, The Dakota, is most associated with the death of John Lennon. The cost for apartments in the buildings you see from this corner have reached astonishing heights – price tags of thirty to upwards of $80 million have begun to seem New York normal for the area.
At the corner of West 72nd Street and Columbus Avenue meander south by making a left turn and zig-zag your way toward Lincoln Center, dropping in on designer shops, cup cakeries, boutiques and more just for fun. Enjoy the small-town-with-elegance feel of the Upper West Side and feel the rhythm of non-postcard city living enter your being.
“So this is what it would feel like to live in New York,” is what you’re likely to say by the time you reach West 69th Street. By the time you’re facing the spraying fountain at Lincoln Center standing at the hub of New York cultural life, you’ll be thinking about trading in the space and affordability of living anywhere else for the hum and burn of New York energy that living in an over-priced “shoebox” walk-up apartment would afford. The city is intoxicating. You’re drunk. It’s time for a bite to eat.
Walk south to West 59th Street at Columbus Circle. Walk into the Time Warner building to stand on the third and second floor balconies overlooking the intersection of avenues just below and the view of 5th Avenue in the glossy distance beyond but don’t linger too long – as glittering as it is this is just a mall. There is something much worthier of your limited time in New York just across the street.
Enter the Museum of Arts and Design at 2 Columbus Circle. If West 72nd Street is the gateway to the Upper West Side this is its stylish exit. If you had more time I would suggest paying to enter so that you could enjoy all of MAD’s displays of furnishings, glass and jewelry but this is New Year’s Eve afterall and we have to rush to Times Square…or do we? Hopefully this walk has dissuaded you from the idea.
Walk to the elevator where you will push every floor on purpose. As the elevator door opens on each floor on your way to the penthouse restaurant, Robert @MAD, you will be able to catch sight of displays and installations at a glance. By the time you’ve reached the 9th floor you will have completed the world’s fastest museum tour ever. Fascinating glimpses will inspire you to make a mental note to return.
When the elevator opens on the top floor, you will step out into the rosy glow of Robert @MAD and suddenly realize you are seeing the most epic view of the Upper West Side that the city has to offer.
Look closely and you will realize how much territory you’ve covered – you will see the terra-cotta-tiled roof of the Apple Bank for Savings in the distance where you began your day in the environs of the West 70s, you’ll see Columbus Avenue, Central Park West, Lincoln Center and Central Park plus hectic, pounding Broadway where yellow taxis define each corridor that crosses into the next. Hopefully you’ll enjoy knowing that you earned that view, learning its details, extravagances and simplicity one footstep at a time. Celebrate with champagne, a cocktail and something hot and incredible to sustain you through your New Year’s Eve ahead. It’s still early but your holiday is already in full swing and you didn’t even have to stand in a crowd.
Happy New Year!
