Financial District, SoHo and Chinatown
Wall Street, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, etc. The cradle of historic New York, this is the city's most emblematic area. Indeed, it was here, just south of Manhattan, that New York was born, and not inhabited beyond its limits until the 19th century. It was also here that successive waves of immigrants arrived from Ellis Island until the middle of the 20th century. The Twin Towers no longer loom over the skyline, and Lower Manhattan is now a curious mix of business district and historic buildings. Since September 11, 2001, the face of Wall Street has obviously changed, although real estate developers and the City of New York have rehabilitated the area. Downtown New York is still a work in progress, with scaffolding and barricades all around the area where the World Trade Center once stood. Wall Street is well worth a visit for its ambience, its megalomaniacally erect monuments, both recent and from the 1960s, its old cathedrals, its cobblestone streets and its promenade along the Hudson, south of the Financial District.
A stay in New York can start in the Financial District, where you can take the boat to two of the city's landmarks, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. The district is also home to the symbols of American economic power, with Wall Street and the Federal Reserve. It's also a great place to take a stroll, on the Brooklyn Bridge, around South Street Seaport, New York's old port redeveloped as a tourist site, or along the Hudson River in the western part.
The Financial District is a good twenty minutes' walk from SoHo and TriBeCa, two other - no less emblematic - Downtown districts, rich in trendy boutiques, bars and restaurants. In both areas, vertical buildings give way to smaller ones, dotted with fire escape ladders on the facades. These are the famouscast-iron industrial buildings, taken over by artists in the 1980s... Since then, things have changed, and the SoHo (South of Houston) paradise has earned its stripes as a shopping mall. TriBeCa (Triangle Below Canal Street) extends its north-facing triangle between Canal and Chambers on the one hand, and West Street (along the Hudson River) and Broadway on the other. TriBeCa shares with SoHo the privilege of having undergone a major renovation that has catapulted it to the forefront of the artistic, gastronomic and real-estate scene. Unknown twenty years ago to most of the city's inhabitants, then reserved for penniless artists squatting in lofts with no electricity, today this district is overpriced and furiously sought-after for its targeted restaurants. It's a haven for pure, upper-class New Yorkers. With their cobblestone streets and relatively few modern buildings, these two neighborhoods have retained some of their old-world charm. So don't hesitate to get lost! While TriBeCa is rather quiet during the day and evening, SoHo vibrates from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., until the shops close.
Just north of the business district, to the east of TriBeCa and SoHo, begin Chinatown and Little Italy. These two neighborhoods, which coexist on the same small block of streets, have undergone contrasting, but closely related, developments over the past twenty years. Along with Mott Street, Canal Street is Chinatown's main thoroughfare: its name comes from the canal that drained a huge pond that used to stand there. Almost non-existent until the middle of the 20th century, Chinatown is now expanding like the blades of a fan: to the north, Chinatown crosses Canal Street and takes root in Little Italy, now reduced to the tiny portion huddled around Mulberry Street alone (Italian flags and tourist attractions galore), a hotbed of the New York mafia, Italian in its day. Chinatown bewitches with its labyrinth of narrow, bustling streets, which earned it this rather famous quip from Woody Allen: "I'm astounded by the number of people who want to 'know' the universe, when it's hard enough to find your way around New York's Chinatown!" In any case, here are two of New York's most historically charged "ethnic" neighborhoods, whose contrasting atmospheres are a joy to breathe in, especially on Chinese festival days. And if Little Italy has lost some of its charm and become solely a tourist destination, this has been reflected in an adjoining neighborhood: NoLIta. Nestled right next to Little Italy, between Houston and Broome Streets, NoLIta (North of Little Italy) covers a mini-perimeter centered around Elizabeth Street. Fashion boutiques and trendy cafés vie for space. Chinatown, Little Italy, NoLIta, SoHo and TriBeCa are all neighborhoods where there are few monuments to admire, but where it's good to lose oneself between quiet little streets and crowded avenues.
Financial District. At the very south of the island. This famous crest of skyscrapers piled one on top of the other at the southern tip of Manhattan, facing the monumental Hudson Bay, represents the visual quintessence of New York: the image merges with the city and has been seen around the world. In 1624, the Dutch trading post of Nieuw Amsterdam was founded here, and a few years later, under English rule, it changed its name to New York, in honor of the Duke of York and Albany. It was here that the largest city on the North American continent was born, and with it began the history of America. Here, you can breathe in the excesses of capitalism. It's a bustling place during weekday business hours (8am to 6pm). Watching the stock market and the so-called golden boys in action is a real spectacle. In the streets of this district, tourists stand out among the hordes of young wolves in suits and ties, reading the Wall Street Journal, and women in suits and stilettos. The streets are bustling with activity, as street vendors deal in hot dogs and fake Rolexes, while shoeshine boys toil away. This district is a city within a city, with over 50,000 people coming to work here every day. At night and on weekends, these empty, narrow, dark and windy streets impress with their ghostly allure, in the shadow of bureaucratic monsters! For now, the Wall Street district is worth a visit for its atmosphere during office hours, its monuments and its open-air promenade along the Hudson, south of the Financial District. The district, which is very noisy due to its numerous buildings and crowded sidewalks, is not the most pleasant place to take a stroll in New York. But once you've visited the must-sees, there's no need to linger.
Battery Park City. Battery Park City is a small stretch of land at the very end of the island. It's home to a large, landscaped green space offering superb views from the quayside. Strolling along the harbor, you can see the Statue of Liberty, tiny in the distance. The Battery Park docks are home to the ferry terminal for Staten Island and Ellis Island, with its Immigrant Museum.
south Street Seaport and Civic Center. South Street Seaport is New York's historic port, dating back to the 1600s. The redeveloped district has become a very touristy site, with a shopping mall on the old Pier 17 dock and many small restaurants. A rooftop terrace offers a comfortable lounger for admiring the view of the Brooklyn Bridge and the contrast between the architecture of the Financial District and the old boats. Many of the old warehouses of New York's East River harbor, reminders of the island's maritime past, have been transformed. Six fully restored old sailing ships are permanently moored on the docks and can be visited. Two maritime-related museums are located on the same site: the Museum of Historic Ships and the South Street Seaport Museum. On the old docks, you can still see the Fulton Fish Market, which has retained its picturesque air. Just a stone's throw from the warehouses, you can walk or cycle across the mythical Brooklyn Bridge, inaugurated in 1883. To appreciate it even more, first take the subway to Brooklyn (High Street station, lines A and C), then walk over the bridge on your way back to Manhattan, the panorama is truly exceptional. At the foot of the bridge, along Chambers Street, the Civic Center houses a series of official buildings including City Hall, the Federal Court of Justice, the Criminal Court and more. Again, Sandy did enormous damage destroying all the waterfront shops and restaurants in 2013, but the area has since regained its vibrancy.
Little Italy. Strangely joined by the vagaries of history and geography, the Italian enclave (Little Italy) and the Chinese enclave (Chinatown) managed to cohabit with varying degrees of success for several decades. But now the situation has changed in favor of Chinatown, whose expansion is threatening the very boundaries of Little Italy, New York's oldest ethnic neighborhood. Located between Houston Street and Canal Street on the one hand, and Broadway and the Bowery on the other, Little Italy is certainly a pretty neighborhood, reputed to be the safest in Manhattan, because it's guarded by the Mafia. But the younger generation of Italians has prospered elsewhere, the godfathers live in southwest Brooklyn (many scenes from the film The Godfather were shot in this neighborhood), and even if families are reunited in the historic enclave for special occasions, weddings, christenings and funerals, Little Italy is looking more and more like a museum, with its small boutiques, old St. Patrick's Cathedral, former police headquarters (an admirable neoclassical building now converted into private apartments) and Mulberry, Grand and Broome streets, lined with touristy restaurants, cafés and pastry shops. In its own way, Little Italy is a bit like New York's Montmartre. For good Italian food, we'd recommend no more than Little Italy.
NoLIta. A little spot nestled right next to Little Italy, between Houston and Broome Streets. NoLIta (North of Little Italy) covers a mini-perimeter centered around Elizabeth Street, a street lined with luxury antique and furniture stores. NoLIta is one of those neighborhoods that didn't exist in New York until recently, but that doesn't detract from its charm. In the Mecca of trendy shopping, brimming with vintage boutiques and small restaurants, supermodels and fashionistas can be observed nonchalantly..
Chinatown. While Little Italy flows into SoHo, to the south lies Chinatown, instantly recognizable. With an estimated population of 150,000 residents, several newspapers, some 300 garment factories, two or three hundred of New York's best and cheapest restaurants and an impressive array of banks. Chinatown, despite its overt identity, carefully conceals its deeper reality behind its façade of hard-working prosperity and guaranteed exoticism. Smaller than San Francisco's, New York's Chinatown is, along with Harlem, New York's only authentic ethnic enclave. Language helps, it's all a family affair, and the mystery isn't about to get any clearer with the influx of immigrants from Hong Kong, Korea, China and Vietnam, whose bloody rivalries in the form of gangs, rackets, gambling dens and prostitution are confusing the police (whose HQ is not far away) and making the headlines. It was here, in the wake of Irish, German, Jewish and then Italian immigrants, that the first Chinese arrived. They'd come from the West, where they'd worked on the railroads or in the gold mines, and all they wanted to do was earn money as quickly as possible to go back home. They stayed... After decades of violence and discrimination, the Chinese community managed to regroup and grow. If you're interested in the history of Chinese civilization, the Museum of Chinese in America (70 Mulberry Street and Bayard Street,2nd floor) traces the history of Chinese immigration to New York. Chinatown offers the face of a prosperous Asia.
TriBeCa. TriBeCa (Triangle Between Canal Street) extends its north-facing triangle between Canal and Chambers on the one hand, and West Street (along the Hudson River) and Broadway on the other. TriBeCa shares with SoHo the (later achieved) privilege of having undergone a major renovation that catapulted it to the forefront of the artistic, gastronomic and real-estate scene. Previously unknown to most of the city's inhabitants, reserved for penniless artists squatting in lofts with no electricity, this district is now fashionable not only for its spacious, overpriced housing, but also for its highly sought-after restaurants. Robert De Niro, who has a residence here, has opened a number of high-end restaurants in this pleasant, now-influential district, setting its grand buildings (hardly different from those in SoHo) in a rather privileged atmosphere. A den of pure New Yorkers, rather upper class. The TriBeCa Film Festival (www.Tribecafilm.com/festival) has been held here every year since 2002, the brainchild of Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal, to help revive this Lower Manhattan neighborhood affected by the events of September 11, 2001. The streets near the Hudson River, scented with the sweet smell of the ocean, are among the quietest in Manhattan.
SoHo. Lofts, chic stores and cobblestone streets... SoHo (South of Houston Street) stretches between 6th Avenue to the west, Canal Street to the south, Broadway to the east and Houston Street to the north. SoHo, where art celebrates business dreams, is often compared to the Left Bank of Paris for its creative, gentrified atmosphere. SoHo was once known as the Cast Iron District, cast iron meaning "cast iron". Cast iron was, in fact, the basic material, economical and resistant, used to build the dozens of factories and warehouses whose bold and beautiful facades, now listed by the Monuments Historiques, stretch along the streets. Cast iron could support heavy loads and allow the creation of wide open spaces. In the aftermath of the war, these buildings(loft factories) were unoccupied and SoHo seemed doomed to abandonment, if not destruction, when artists, aware of the district's unprecedented possibilities, surreptitiously moved into monumental spaces to work at ease and exhibit their work. The battle against the owners lasted more than ten years. In 1968, Paula Cooper, an enterprising art dealer, opened SoHo's first gallery in a 1,500 m² loft. Until then, contemporary art had occupied pockets of space in the 57th Street galleries. Thanks to Paula Cooper, soon followed by Leo Castelli, New York's veteran art dealer, the contemporary art market was moving Downtown.
In 1971, with the City of New York declaring that hard-fought artists could work in the lofts without risk of eviction, SoHo quickly became the world's center for contemporary art. By 1975, there were 84 galleries in SoHo and, by 1990, over 200. If the 1980s were SoHo's heyday (Wall Street was investing in painting...), today the art market has turned to other, lower-rent neighborhoods: Chelsea and the Lower East Side. Today, boutiques, restaurants and sidewalk bars have given way to galleries.
East Village, Lower East Side and Alphabet City
East Village. East of Broadway, between 14th Street and Chinatown, are two neighborhoods quite distinct from the rest of Manhattan. If the East Village, north of Houston Street (pronounced "how-ston", at the risk of being stamped tourist in less than two minutes!) and the Lower East Side, to the south, have in common this rock and traditional spirit, they are nevertheless quite different. And if they have kept their soul, their physiognomy has changed a bit in the last ten years, in the sense that they have become safe and frequented at all hours of the night. Before becoming a rock and roll neighborhood in the 1980s, the East Village was home to artists as diverse as Charlie Parker, Iggy Pop and Jimi Hendrix, the painter Basquiat, Andy Warhol, poets like Allen Ginsberg, but also Leon Trotsky. It's hard to imagine that the pretty park of Tompkins Square - Avenue A between 7th and 10th Streets -, today full of children and walkers, was once a drug hub and a place of homeless riots. Not far from the Tompkins statue, the homeless still play chess on the southwest corner of the park, and neighborhood churches often hold collections there, but the situation pales in comparison to the past. A neighborhood of choice for Eastern European Jewish immigrants, Greeks, Ukrainians - on 7th Street between 3rd and 2nd Avenues -, Poles, Puerto Ricans or Filipinos throughout the long history of New York immigration, the Southeast area is still this popular, lively, somewhat anarchic and extremely endearing neighborhood. St Marks Place (Eighth Street) coming from the Astor Place station (line 6), with its record stores, tattoo shops and small vintage boutiques, is the main artery of the East Village. Around it, many bars, restaurants, small clubs and small decoration stores gravitate, in an atmosphere that tends towards the trendy..
Alphabet City. To the east of the East Village, you will notice that the area that stretches towards the East River bears letters and not numbers, Avenue A, B, C, D... Hence the nickname Alphabet City. Here again, it is difficult to imagine that this enclave was a real cut-throat in the 1990s, as described by the few New Yorkers who dared to go there. Symbol of the violent image that stuck to the neighborhood, Alphabet City is the title of a gangster movie released in 1984! Today, the bars flourish as elsewhere, mainly up to Avenue C. And the atmosphere remains furiously authentic, with less danger... In short, a residential neighborhood that is not very touristy and that has increased in value over the years. Note that the name of the neighborhood only dates back to the 1980s. Before that, avenues A, B, C and D were simply part of the Lower East Side.
Lower East Side. Below Houston Street, the Lower East Side, a historic immigrant neighborhood, but also a former Jewish neighborhood of New York. Today, freed from the omnipresent criminality that has long sclerotised its development, the Lower East Side is now the most animated district of Manhattan at night. Restaurants there too, terraces, and targeted or authentic bars, it depends. The crazy New York of the 1980s is still found in the Lower East Side. In addition to the trendy bars, there are still a few underground concert halls and art galleries that don't have the chic of those in Chelsea. Here, we are far from the towers and buildings, the red brick buildings are essentially horizontal - even if some towers have come to cause panic in the last few years -, the houses are beautiful, a little decrepit, in short, we enter great neighborhoods, but less touristy. The Lower East Side is one of the Manhattan neighborhoods that has changed the least in its architecture, despite an obvious gentrification of its population. Bordered on the north by the East Village, contained on the west by 2nd Avenue and the Bowery, and on the east by the East River and the Williamsburg Bridge, the Lower East Side comprises two territories: one, to the south, still with a strong Jewish influence, and the other, to the northeast, with its Latino, black population. The remnants of the past of the largest Jewish community remain on Orchard Street and form what is called the Historic Orchard Street Shopping District. You can still get some bargains on fabric and clothing.
Bowery. In the western part of the Lower East Side, Bowery is a tiny, long neighborhood. It is bounded by Allen Street to the east and Bowery to the west, while 5th Street and Hester Street form its northern and southern borders. Previously blighted like the rest of the Lower East Side, it has been revitalized since the 1990s. Clear signs of its gentrification, towers are growing taller and taller, housing luxury condos. Despite this, the Bowery is still tinged with authenticity and few tourists come to lose themselves there. Bars and restaurants are legion and street art is still spread on its walls, especially the Bowery Mural whose frescoes change frequently.
Greenwich Village, West Village and Meatpacking District
Greenwich Village, West Village. 1916 : Marcel Duchamp, surrealist poet, solemnly proclaims the birth of the "New Bohemia State". The whole thing was perched on the top of the Washington Square arch... Quite a symbol... This mythical neighborhood of the bourgeoisie and then of the artistic bohemia in the 1960's is deserving. Until the Great War, the Village was home to notorious nonconformists, such as the poet Edna Saint-Vincent Millay, whose many love affairs were legendary, the playwright Eugene O'Neill, the travel writer Mark Twain, the journalist John Reed, who witnessed the Bolshevik revolution, or the cursed poet Dylan Thomas, who died of an alcoholism attack in front of the White Horse Tavern. The Village was also the birthplace of the gay community, and Christopher Street remains their rallying point. Between Chelsea to the north and SoHo to the south, the Village is not a homogeneous whole, but is indeed made up of different villages with subtle boundaries: tall, distinguished buildings on 5th Avenue, between 8th and 13th Streets; gay bars from Christopher Street to the Hudson River; the West Village between Hudson Street and the Hudson River; the Meatpacking District at the end of Bleecker Street, with its meat warehouses converted into trendy restaurants, bars and boutiques... Between 14th Street to the north and Houston (pronounced "how-ston") Street to the south, the geometry of Manhattan becomes blurred: the alleys maintain confused relationships and no longer bear the reassuring numbers of Midtown. Numbers give way to names: Hudson Street, Greenwich Street, Bleecker Street, Mercer Street, Charles Street, etc. Go deeper into its winding streets past 7th Avenue. Explore 12th Street, Perry Street, Charles Street, Bethune Street and the small area of 9th and 10th Streets between Greenwich Avenue and Hudson Street. As you move away, the touristy atmosphere disappears and you rediscover an authentic neighborhood, with beautiful, shady (and expensive) homes, lovely little gardens and the tranquility of a village. The Village retains more than ever its urban resort aura and happy few oasis feel, and it's clear that the neighborhood has become much more gentrified in the last ten to fifteen years. The days of bohemia are over, but the Village still has that casual atmosphere that characterizes it. The area is home to an incredible number of restaurants, bars, pubs, cafes, jazz clubs, nightclubs, boutiques, movie theaters and bookstores. All this in a residential area, full of beautiful houses. If the atmosphere is not the quietest during the week, it is even less so at the weekend. The atmosphere becomes electric, when its pretty streets lined with trees and private houses are invaded by tourists and students. The many benches of Washington Square, which marks the heart of the district, attract every day walkers, strollers or chess players. Built in 1895 in the Beaux-Arts style, the triumphal arch, symbol of the passage to Greenwich Village, is the meeting place par excellence of blind dates, since the time when Fred Astaire danced at the top of it in the film The Belle of New York. Behind the arch, the Row. This beautiful line oftownhouses in the Greek revival style, built around 1830, bears witness to the time when the richest New York families lived on the edge of the park. The decoration of each of the facades follows an overall plan, controlling the width of the stoop and the height of the windows. The painter Edward Hopper (1882-1967) and the writer John Dos Passos, who wrote Manhattan Transfer (1925), lived at number 3. All around the park, beautiful houses, including that of Henry James and Eleanor Roosevelt. And of course, the prestigious New York University (NYU) - 1831 -, the largest private university in the United States, which contributes greatly to the atmosphere of the neighborhood. Greenwich Village is a great place to live. But to buy or rent, you need to have a well-funded bank account; you will easily realize this by strolling between 5th and 6th Avenue, 10th, 11th and 12th Streets, but also Grove Street, Bank Street or 4th Street.
Meatpacking District. The industrial New York that became trendy! And to think that the former mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg did not like the High Line project, a suspended greenway comparable to the Coulée verte in Paris. Undeniably, the High Line, opened in 2009, has transformed the neighborhood. Making it more attractive to businesses and tourists and more beautiful. The Meatpacking District occupies the area between Chelsea and West Village, between Greenwich Avenue, Gansevoort Street and 14th Street. The old slaughterhouse district still houses a few cold storage facilities for meat (butchers cut it up into pieces and ship it to distributors), but today, wholesalers have largely given way to fashionistas. In the space of a few years, the area has become trendy (even bling-bling), and the chic boutiques of the great contemporary designers, unaffordable for the common man, have taken over the old warehouses. As proof of the Meatpacking District's rapid transformation, the Whitney Museum moved in in the spring of 2015 and changed the neighborhood's DNA even more, attracting many tourists and hastening the departure of the last remaining industrial warehouses.
In this neighborhood of small cobblestone streets, everything seems to wake up at sunset. It will seduce nightlife lovers: bars, restaurants and quality clubs now occupy the former red meat warehouses. Night owls go to the posh Bubby's diner or to the terrace of the Gansevoort hotel at sunset, after walking the High Line... Unlike the Lower East Side, the other nightlife district in New York, here the entrances to nightclubs and bars are very selective, and the restaurants do not offer slices of pizza at 3 US$. But with a little luck, you'll be dancing with Pharrell Williams or Kate Moss.
Times Square and Midtown
The most symbolic place in New York. Buildings and more buildings! Midtown alone covers an immense core of the city, and offers as much color as its space can hold. By Midtown, we mean Midtown East, Midtown West, Chelsea and, at the heart of it all, Times Square! While Central Park represents Midtown's northern boundary, opinions differ on its southern border, sometimes at 23rd Street, sometimes from 34th Street onwards. We have, however, included Chelsea, the Flatiron District and Gramercy Park in Midtown for reasons of travel logic. Similarly, we've clearly distinguished between Midtown West and its entertainment empire (Times Square, of course) and Midtown East, which is institutional, commercial and also more secretive.
Midtown East. Manhattan's business center and the world's largest department store. One of the districts where New York has best expressed its gigantism, power and excess. This is where the greatest institutions, the most elegant boutiques and the most audacious buildings are all located.Department stores, art galleries, fashion boutiques, restaurants, hotels and international companies all line Madison, Park, Lexington and 5th Avenue. Fifth Avenue is home to New York's second-tallest skyscraper, the Empire State Building.
Murray Hill, Flatiron District and Gramercy. All the way to the east, the enclaves of Murray Hill, but especially Sutton and Tudor, bring together some of New York's most exclusive and exclusive properties. Gramercy, Flatiron District and Murray Hill: these three little neighborhoods that have sprung up east of 6th Avenue, between 14th and 40th Streets, are remarkably consistent. Always well-heeled (without being snobbish), they boast a remarkable wealth of architecture, symbolized by two of New York's most beautiful (if not newest) buildings: the Chrysler Building and the Flatiron. Even more attractive, Gramercy Park, where Lexington Avenue begins between 21st and 22nd Streets, is lined with very elegant buildings and private homes that are abominably expensive (the median price of an apartment is $1.225 million!). It's the only private park in Manhattan: only owners with a key have access. This oasis spreads its tranquility over the whole neighborhood, and lovers of beauty and hipness will opt for the European-style Gramercy Park Hotel. Another explanation for this un-New York atmosphere is the absence of a subway. This is where many authors have found refuge - John Steinbeck, Oscar Wilde, Edward Sheldon - and where a few celebrities still reside, seeking the little peace and quiet New York has to offer, including actress Uma Thurman and Big Bang Theory star Jim Parsons.
Midtown West. If you turn sharply westward, between 45th and 55th Streets and 6th and 8th Avenues, Midtown becomes another city, with its tall office buildings, huge hotels, visitor restaurants, bars, electronics stores, cinemas, music-hall theaters, porn stores, nightclubs, peep-shows and "I love New York" souvenir stores. The 7th and 8th avenues are very noisy and incredibly brightly lit, day and night. The 9th and 10th are simple residential neighborhoods with nothing much to see.
Further east, the legendary Rockefeller Center, in the heart of Midtown, is an immense complex of twenty-one skyscrapers located between 46th Street and 50th Street and between 6th Avenue and 7th Avenue. At the end of each year, a gigantic Christmas tree lights up in the central square, and the central esplanade becomes an ice-skating rink. A little further south is Korea Town, with its Korean restaurants and karaoke bars.
Times Square. Neon lights! New York's most emblematic district, made a pedestrian zone in 2009, this temple of music-hall and shopping is internationally renowned. Located between 40th Street and 57th Street (between 6th Avenue and 8th Avenue), in the 1970s it was the universal symbol of American vice. Who doesn't remember the hot night scenes seen from Robert De Niro's cab in Taxi Driver? Corruption and crime reigned here, and things have changed. Times Square is also Broadway and the Theater District, with over fifty theaters located on Broadway and the surrounding streets. Every year-end, the famous musicals sell out every night. The district owes its name to the New York Times. In 1904, the renowned daily newspaper set up its offices on the south side of the square, then in its infancy (today, the brand-new New York Times tower stands on 41st Street). But it's impossible to visit New York for the first time without taking a dip in the crowd of onlookers!
hell's Kitchen. Towards 10th Avenue, between 34th and 46th Streets, lies the area formerly known as Hell's Kitchen (HK, "the kitchen of hell"), famous for its poverty, violence and crime in the early 20th century: a district now filled with small, cheap, ethnic eateries, imbued with quite an atmosphere. Times are changing faster than anywhere else in New York, and it won't be long before the neighborhood becomes one of the world's next hot spots. The signs are already there: the weekend flea market has moved from Chelsea to HK (on 39th Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues) and the small Turkish, African and Moroccan restaurants on 46th Street are attracting more and more people. Fairly quiet during the day, the neighborhood transforms itself at dusk, and is never as noisy as around 10pm, when the Broadway crowd emerges from the theaters and flocks to the restaurants.
To the south of the district, the gigantic Hudson Yards complex has sprung up to revitalize the area between Hell's Kitchen and Chelsea. It features huge office and apartment towers (including 30 Hudson Yards, home to the Edge observatory), a shopping center (The Shops & Restaurants at Hudson Yards) and The Vessel structure.
Chelsea. Chelsea begins south of Hell's Kitchen at 34th Street, west of the Flatiron District, and stretches twenty blocks to 14th Street, north of Greenwich Village. Its western section runs along the Hudson River. Over the past few decades, this peaceful neighborhood has seen a massive influx of art galleries - fleeing the high rents of SoHo - and of the gay community, increasingly present outside Greenwich Village. Today, it's one of the best places to live, with the most diverse population in terms of age, origin and social background. Chelsea is the place to be for the High Line, of course, and for its galleries, restaurants and clubs (with a gay vibe on 8th Avenue): most of the galleries are located between 10th and 11th Avenues and between 21st and 27th Streets. For a spot of shopping, take a trip to Chelsea Market, housed in a curious Art Deco building between 15th and 16th Streets on 9th Avenue. Finally, the immense Chelsea Piers complex, on the banks of the Hudson River, attracts many of the city's sports enthusiasts. A stroll along the Hudson at sunset is a moment of pure relaxation.
Upper West Side and Central Park
Upper Manhattan begins at the important 57th Street, New York's suburb of Saint-Honoré, and divides across Central Park, like the two arms of an urban river, into two huge entities: the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side. Once you've exhausted the pleasures of Downtown, don't hesitate to embark on the Upper West Side. You'll discover a lesser-known, but no less captivating Manhattan. And when your legs can't take it anymore, you'll always have the option of lying down on a Central Park lawn... A favorite neighborhood of the New York intelligentsia, it is nonetheless so complex and heterogeneous that one could spend a lifetime decoding it. There is no neighborhood like the Upper West Side, where the sublime Excelsior Hotel sits next to the no less sublime Mayflower in an unparalleled alchemy with one of the most qualitative concentrations of budget hotels in New York. Without a doubt the most complex, but also among the most interesting and pleasant neighborhoods in New York, the Upper West Side is a world apart with its fans, who would not want to live anywhere else for anything in the world. The notion of the block still exists here, so much so that from one street to the next, the atmosphere can change dramatically. In this territory, as vast as it is hybrid, which resembles a 16th arrondissement in Paris with a touch of the 11th, luxury and poverty are never very far apart. Here, artists, students, writers, professionals, actors (many), musicians, yuppies, millionaires, retirees, workers and homeless people (no less numerous) live side by side.
The Upper West Side stretches from Lincoln Center in the south to Morningside Heights in the north, from the territory of Columbia University and Central Park on its eastern flank to Riverside Park in the west, beyond the enormous West End Avenue. For the record, Lincoln Center was built on the site of the working-class neighborhood that is the setting for the movie West Side Story. Of all the prestigious buildings that flank Central Park West, and whose panorama can be admired from the park, the Dakota Building is not the highest, but it is the oldest. It is at the foot of this palatial fortress of neo-Germanic Renaissance style, built in 1884 and whose apartments originally had up to twenty rooms, that John Lennon was murdered, it is in this large dark building that Polanski's film Rosemary's Baby was shot, and it is still here that Lauren Bacall or the former mayor of New York, John V. Lindsay. A building that, with its glamour, luxury and drama, belongs to the mythology of New York. At the very beginning of the 20th century, 20 years after the construction of the Dakota, which stood alone in front of Central Park, the opening of the subway would stimulate the urbanization of the Upper West Side. Many wealthy Jews (even today, the Upper West Side is the main Jewish neighborhood in Manhattan) found themselves cramped on the Lower East Side and remained persona non grata on the Upper East Side, the neighborhood of wealthy WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants). They had money and ambition and settled on the west side of Manhattan, giving it a tremendous economic boost and drawing architectural inspiration from the Gothic and Baroque styles, but especially from the Haussmann style. And this is what will strike you on the side of 72nd Street and Broadway: the New York excessiveness of a familiar style. That's why the Upper West Side, too little visited by tourists, keeps such a European air. In the early 1920s, Broadway wanted to compete with the Champs-Élysées. Fashion did not follow. Now Columbus Avenue, located between 70th and 80th Streets (near the Museum of Natural History), takes center stage, with its stores, romantic Village-style restaurants, bars and cafés full of young people and regulars. And don't forget to look up to see the beautiful architecture of the roofs of some of the old buildings, with their gargoyles, little dungeons and sculptures. If you're looking for a sort of Downtown revisited, but Uptown, we definitely recommend the Upper West Side.
While visiting the Upper West Side, don't forget to go up to 110th Street to discover the beautiful campus of the prestigious Columbia University. The campus is pedestrian only and therefore very quiet, but it is open to the public. You will discover all the clichés of the campus seen in American TV shows: students sitting on the lawn studying, others chatting on the steps of the library (some rooms are open to non-students), Starbucks on every corner, etc.
Upper East Side
For as long as New York has existed, it has been the chic district par excellence. The one of the big families, the economic and intellectual dynasties, and the traditional values. The small groups of children in school uniforms or the building guards in parade gabardine and hats who welcome the owners and turn away the unannounced intruders are proof of this. A wealthy and traditional neighborhood, the upper class Upper East Side, located in the northeastern part of Manhattan, between Central Park East and the East River, brings together along Central Park some of the most majestic hotels in New York, the height of tasteful urban luxury. On the Upper East Side, where the avenues are more or less elegant according to their distance from Central Park, the blocks express the real prestige of a situation. This is where the Astors, the Carnegies, the Whitneys, the Fricks, the Morgans, the four hundred names of the New York aristocracy, their emulators and prestigious outsiders settled in the 1880s. Here live or lived Greta Garbo (450 East 52nd Street), Paul Newman (230 East 50th Street), Shirley MacLaine (400 East 52nd Street), Lillian Gish (430 East 57th Street), Marylin Monroe (444 East 57th Street), Montgomery Clift (217 East 61st Street), Tallulah Bankhead (230 East 62nd Street), Joan Crawford (2 East 70th Street), Pola Negri (907 5th Avenue), Gloria Swanson (920 5th Avenue), Marlene Dietrich (993 Park Avenue), Woody Allen, Robert Redford, Liza Minelli, Madonna and many more.. You will certainly be seduced by the string of noble buildings that line the eastern side of Central Park. With its mansions, small elegant apartment buildings or bourgeois fortresses dominating the majestic Park Avenue, the equivalent of the Avenue Foch, the Upper East Side is a pleasure for the eye of shapes and perspectives. On the side of 60th and 65th Streets and Madison, one is in Neuilly; elsewhere, at 90th, in Passy: pretty private houses border shaded streets in summer. From the privileged terraces, the view of Central Park is sublime. To the east, between 79th and 96th Streets, streets of massive buildings line up: this is the Yorkville neighborhood, with its persistent German influence - its restaurants, its pastry shops, its local festivals smell of Bavaria. In summer, the benches of Carl Schurz Park at the end of 84th Street (to 89th Street), very quiet and well oriented to the east, allow you to picnic while watching the boats pass by on the East River. The Upper East Side is a mix of the 16th and 8th arrondissements of Paris: on Madison, you'll find the most elegant American, European and Japanese fashion boutiques, the most expensive antique shops, the most select restaurants, the most secret hotels and the best kept secrets. For the Upper East Side shows itself, it does not reveal itself. It is not a young neighborhood, although the installation of yuppies and golden boys (Wall Street is on the direct line of the subway) has changed the landscape. During the week, diners flock to the restaurants that follow one another on 2nd and 3rd Avenues, between 70th and 75th Streets. On weekends, the interesting 86th Street serves as a rallying point for commuters. It's all about neighborliness and being a good neighbor. The Upper East Side is also home to New York's elite museums, along one of the most fabulous cultural routes on the planet: the Museum Mile. One of the densest too. On 5th Avenue, from 82nd to 104th Street, there are more than a dozen museums as diverse as the Museo del Barrio, the Museum of the City of New York, the Jewish Museum, the Guggenheim, the Neue Galerie and the Metropolitan. It's an exhilarating feeling to string together the world's most sublime museums in a few steps. So many places where collections are synonymous with excellence..
Harlem and the North
Harlem. The name Harlem comes from the Dutch Nieuw Haarlem or "New Haarlem", Haarlem being a city in the Netherlands. Urbanized from 1880, the district was initially the place of residence and resort of a rather well-to-do class of immigrants from Northern and Eastern Europe. It is really from 1910, following the expansion of the city, that the Black Americans begin to settle in this district. It became both the center of the struggle for equal civil rights and the home of Afro-American culture: characteristics that make it world famous today. The boundaries of Harlem are delimited to the south by 96th Street and Washington Heights. However, the area is unofficially bounded by 110th Street to the south and 155th Street to the north. Long considered a ghetto, Harlem is now more vibrant than ever. The fact that Bill Clinton chose to set up his offices there in 2001, on the emblematic 125th Street - 5 minutes away from the Apollo - is a good illustration of this urban transformation. Crossing 96th Street north, on foot, by car or by bus, still gives the sensation of crossing a social frontier. However, Harlem has become much more relaxed with the "Zero Tolerance" years and the rise in rents. Many buildings, left abandoned for two decades (broken windows, burned down stairwells, cut off electricity), have been rehabilitated, and the white bourgeoisie is rediscovering the charm of its old brownstones and its tree-lined residential neighborhoods... But, with the change in the names of the avenues, Harlem remains the symbol and the memory of the turbulent history of black Americans. From the housing projects of East Harlem to the brownstones of Striver's Row, you will feel the raw aesthetics of a neighborhood where everything is harder and more beautiful. From the Apollo Theatre to the Schomburg Centre, you'll see beautiful scars and experience the splendor of blood, sweat and tears. Harlem is both a symbol of America's racial discontent, a geographic and mental boundary that white New Yorkers are still reluctant to cross, and a popular tourist attraction for visitors from all over the world, much to the surprise of Americans. Weekends and daytime are therefore the best times for an individual excursion, and organized tours remain excellent opportunities to see what is worth seeing, appreciating, loving and guessing. The ideal program: a Sunday gospel concert around 11am, lunch at Amy Ruth's or Sylvia's, a stroll around Columbia University - even if the campus is busier during the week -, followed by an evening at Bill's Place, one of the city's most authentic jazz clubs. A somewhat well-trodden path, but perhaps one of the best ways to experience the magic of this neighborhood..
Washington Heights and Inwood. North of Harlem, above 155th Street, is Washington Heights. The neighborhood was named after Fort Washington, a fortified building located on the highest point of Manhattan. Built by the army during the Revolution, the fort was designed to provide a distant view of possible English fleets. The neighborhood has hosted successive waves of immigration. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Irish settled there, soon replaced by European Jews fleeing Nazism in the 1930s and 40s. Greek and then Dominican immigrants then settled in Washington Heights. The latter still populate the neighborhood to a large extent. A tourist attraction worth visiting in Washington Heights is The Cloisters, an enclosure built with fragments of French cloisters that houses medieval works of art from Europe, particularly France. Note that films are regularly shot in this neighborhood, as the streets are quite sparsely populated and it is much easier and cheaper to close an entire block of Washington Heights than SoHo. Among the films shot in the neighborhood, A Day in Hell and American Gangster. The northernmost neighborhood on Manhattan Island is Inwood. Like Washington Heights, Inwood is now home to a very strong Dominican community.
