The West 90s: An Increasingly Upscale Area Between Two Parks

NEW YORK — Edward Soloway was impressed by the quiet of the three-bedroom, 3 1/2-bathroom apartment that he and his wife, Marcie, found 26 years ago on Riverside Drive near West 94th Street. “It had double-paned windows,” he said. “You couldn’t hear a thing.”

It was a far cry from the old factory building they had been living in with their daughters, then 5 and 7, near Union Square. “We’re in a real residential building,” he said. “It makes all the difference in the world.”

Edward Soloway, who is now 60, still has quiet in his apartment — a condo for which they paid less than $1 million, he said — and on his street, across from Riverside Park, where he walks the dog. But change is brewing elsewhere in the West 90s.

“Within four blocks of my building, there are six new buildings going up,” said Edward Soloway, who runs Marcie Designs, a product development and design firm he owns with his wife, who is also a painter.

Along with other recent developments, the new buildings are bringing a more upscale tone to the neighborhood, but he isn’t worried that they will ruin its charms. He thinks the new apartments could attract more young families — perhaps some who are moving from downtown to a “calmer residential neighborhood” sandwiched between two parks, as his family did years ago.

Those qualities appealed to James Panero, an art and cultural critic and executive editor of The New Criterion, and his wife, Dara Mandle, a middle-school English teacher, both 44. In 2010, when their daughter, now 9, was born, they moved from a one-bedroom apartment in the Gramercy area into a two-bedroom, two-bathroom co-op on Riverside Drive, for which they paid a little over $1 million. (They now have a 5-year-old son, too.)

“It reminded me of the city of my youth,” said Panero, who grew up around Lincoln Center. “It’s quiet, it’s not flashy, it’s family-friendly, and it’s neighborly. It’s a place where you see your neighbors and say hello every day.”

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There are many community groups and a “spirit of volunteerism,” he said, that he took part in when he became a founding member of the Joan of Arc Statue Committee. So far, the group has raised about $500,000 in public and private funds, through the Riverside Park Conservancy, to refurbish and maintain the area around the historic bronze statue at Riverside Park and West 93rd Street. “Joan wasn’t getting the attention she needed,” Panero said.

The city Parks Department keeps the statue in good shape, he added, “but the park surrounding it needed help” — including repaving paths, fixing stairways and creating new grading for wheelchairs and strollers. In 2017, he said, “we created an annual festival for Joan,” complete with a French band and plates of macarons; this year, La Fête de Jeanne d’Arc is scheduled for May 30.

Panero’s family takes advantage of the neighborhood in other ways, too. He and his wife train for the New York City Marathon in Riverside Park and in Central Park, he said, and he often bicycles to work through Riverside Park. Their son enjoys the park’s Hippo and Dinosaur playgrounds, while their daughter bicycles with her father on weekends.

“This is a neighborhood where people arrive and really want to stay put,” Panero said.

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What You’ll Find

The West 90s are diverse. Broadway is the busiest street, lined with a changing array of stores. But historic designations protect most of the regal buildings along Riverside Drive, West End Avenue and Central Park West, along with some other pockets — including Pomander Walk, a quaint Tudor-style complex in the block west of Broadway between 94th and 95th streets.

The outward appearance of those buildings is unlikely to change, although their uses occasionally do: The Children’s Museum of Manhattan is scheduled to move into a former church at Central Park West and West 96th Street in 2023.

Elsewhere, the landscape is getting taller and fancier. The new buildings going up around the Soloways’ home include a proposed 22-story mixed-use tower planned for the corner of Broadway and West 96th Street, now a hole in the ground but formerly the site of a Gristedes supermarket and a Chase bank. A 23-story tower with affordable apartments and microunits intended to appeal to seniors is proposed for the area next to it, on West 96th Street between West End and Broadway. It would replace an unused MTA electrical substation, a Salvation Army store and a branch of the NAACP.

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Among other building sites are a former synagogue on West 93rd Street, where construction of a condo with space for the synagogue is underway; and a former garage on West 95th Street, where a condo with 38 apartments and loads of amenities is nearing completion. A former Salvation Army home for seniors on West End Avenue is scheduled to become another luxury condo.

Columbus Avenue has gotten livelier in recent years, said Susan Fishman, an agent with Warburg Realty, who has lived in or near the West 90s for 20 years. A Trader Joe’s that opened in May 2018 at Columbus and West 93rd “attracts a younger crowd and families,” she said, and has benefited nearby buildings with what she calls “the Trader Joe’s bump” in selling prices.

The grocery was preceded about 10 years ago by a Whole Foods Market and other stores in a high-rise rental complex around West 97th Street, and it will be joined soon by another mall across Columbus Avenue that is built but not yet open. The new commercial areas, Fishman said, are the result of replacing open plazas that were built when the area was filled with middle-class subsidized housing.

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What You’ll Pay

In early February, there were just under 125 apartments for sale in the West 90s (excluding duplicates, incomplete listings and those with rent-controlled tenants in place), said Constantine Valhouli, director of research for NeighborhoodX, a real estate data and analytics company. Asking prices for studios ranged from $369,000 (for a fourth-floor co-op on Riverside Drive with an elevator and a live-in super) to $825,000, with an average of $551,000. All the co-ops were listed for under $400,000, Valhouli said, while condos were asking $725,000 to $825,000.

One-bedrooms ranged from $449,000 to $2.95 million; two-bedrooms, from $600,000 to $3.5 million; and three-bedrooms, from $1.645 million to $4.225 million (for a 16th-floor apartment, no longer on the market, in a new amenities-rich condo on West 95th Street).

At the high end of the market, Valhouli said, apartments are not moving quickly, partly because of the mansion tax. However, at the entry level, he said, “we’re seeing prices remain strong, as people want to get a foothold in the New York City real estate market.”

Rentals ranged from $1,650 a month for a studio (on the fifth floor of a multifamily town house on West 90th Street, with no elevator and no stove) to $27,500 for a six-bedroom, 4 1/2-bathroom, 15th-floor corner apartment in a West 99th Street condo (with a library, a dining room, a media room and a communal swimming pool).

The Vibe

A growing number of restaurants and shopping options have made the West 90s more comfortable in recent years, said Edward Joseph, an associate broker at Christie’s International Real Estate, who has lived in the area for more than 35 years and is now on Central Park West. “The ethnic diversity is phenomenal, and it’s not as congested as the 70s and 80s,” he said.

That feeling of “a lot more space to walk around in” extends to the northern end of Central Park, he added, where he runs or walks around the Reservoir and enjoys the neighboring woods, ponds and streams: “It’s very idyllic. You feel like you’re in western Connecticut.”

Favorite restaurants mentioned by residents include Gennaro (Italian), Pio Pio (Peruvian), Awadh (Indian) and Kouzan (Japanese).

The major cultural center is Symphony Space, on Broadway at 95th Street, presenting music, film, literature, comedy and children’s programs. A recent addition is Bar Thalia, which has an entrance on 95th Street and offers free jazz and other programs most nights of the week.

The Schools

Private and public schools abound, including PS 333 Manhattan School for Children, which has 691 students in kindergarten through eighth grade. According to the 2018-19 School Quality Snapshot, 70% of students met state standards on the state English test, compared with 47% citywide, and 69% met the state standards in math, compared with 46% citywide.

At PS 75 Emily Dickinson, which has 534 students in kindergarten through fifth grade, 46% met state standards in English versus 48% citywide, and 52% met the math standards versus 50% citywide.

The Commute

The 1, 2 and 3 lines stop at Broadway and West 96th Street (in a glass-domed station that opened after a renovation in 2010), and B and C trains stop at Central Park West and West 96th Street. Getting to Times Square on the express 2 or 3 can take less than 10 minutes. Buses include the M5, M7, M10, M11, M96 and M104. Commuting by bicycle is also popular.

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The History

During the 18th and 19th centuries, a pretty area of the Hudson River called Striker’s Bay Cove attracted boaters and other visitors, according to “Upper West Side Story: A History and Guide,” by Peter Salwen, and the Riverside-West End Historic District Extension II Designation Report. The riverfront farmland that bordered the cove, near present-day West 96th Street, was bought in the 1700s by Gerrit Striker (also spelled Stryker and Strycker). Later, it became the site of a resort hotel. Now the cove is gone, filled in with a busy complex of roads that provide access to the Henry Hudson Parkway.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .