The heart of the Upper West Side is 72nd Street and Broadway, not only because it has the best architecture, but also because it has an express subway station in the middle of the intersection of Broadway and Amsterdam Avenues.

This section of the Upper West Side is a marvelous mix of cultures, ages and income groups, all with "attitude", character and lots of personality in what many consider the feistiest and perhaps the most classic of all New York communities. It may not have as many "swells" as the celebrities of Central Park West’s great towers, nor culture-crazed tourists as the Lincoln Center district, nor academics as Morningside, but it has an aroused citizenry that cares about its environment, looks carefully at its fruit stands and pours over the racks of its newsstands and sidewalk book vendors and knows well the smell of good cooking and the best stores for discounts and sales and its politicians and everyday it confronts the myriad realities of being a New Yorker.

With its tree-lined center strip, Broadway has always been envisioned as the grand boulevard of the Upper West Side. Unfortunately, its redevelopment with mid-rise apartment towers was interrupted by the Depression and many gaps of underdeveloped properties were left that marred the integrity of the street, especially in comparison with the far more completed and more consistent West End Avenue and Riverside Drive. Still, several very fine buildings were completed on Broadway including the famous, full-block courtyard buildings known as the Apthorp and the Belnord, on the west side between 78th and 79th Streets and on the east side between 86th and 87th Streets, respectively.

Living along Broadway in the Upper West Side can be very exciting. There is always something happening. There is no need to travel more than two blocks for anything you will need, as Broadway is loaded with everything. From deli supermarkets, numerous coffee shops and bookstores to upscale restaurants and boutiques, it offers everything for every occasion. Whatever your taste is the neighborhood surrounding Broadway is full of so many choices you’re sure to find what you like and what you want.

The intersection of Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue has a small park, Verdi Square, with a statue of the composer by Pasquale Civiletti, on its north side and this intersection has some of the Upper West Side’s most glorious buildings.

The most famous of these is the Ansonia at 2109 Broadway on the northwest corner at 73rd Street, the second most famous building on the Upper West Side after the Dakota at 72nd Street and Central Park West.

The Ansonia, developed by William Earle Dodge Stokes, an active developer on the Upper West Side and an heir to a copper fortune, and designed by Paul E. M. Duboy of Graves & Duboy, is the most Parisian of all New York buildings with its ornate balconies, rounded corners, oval rooms, and turrets, which are now missing their tall finials as is the lobby fountain with live seals, according to Peter Salwen, author of the delightful book, "Upper West Side Story, A History and Guide," (Abbeville Press, 1989). Its tenants have included sportsmen Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey and many great musicians, drawn to its superior soundproofing, such as Arturo Toscanini, Igor Stravinsky, Yehudi Menuhin, showmen Florenz Ziegfield and Sol Hurok, and writers Elmer Rice, Moss Hart and Theodore Dreiser. The building was originally planned to have a central tower, which was never built. After the Depression, it fell on hard times. Its former steamrooms were converted in the 1970’s to the Continental Baths where Bette Midler often performed and they later were converted into one of the city’s wildest sex clubs, Plato’s Retreat, was located in the Ansonia. In a Child’s Restaurant that once occupied one of its storefronts, famed bank robber Willie Sutton was nabbed by the police. In the late 1990’s, it underwent a restoration and conversion to a condominium. Directly across from the Ansonia is the great former Central Savings Bank building at 2100 Broadway, designed by York & Sawyer and built in 1928 with great ironwork by Samuel Yellin. The same architects designed the great Federal Reserve Bank Building in Lower Manhattan and the two buildings are supremely impressive and imposing with the Italian-Renaissance-palazzo style architecture. Part of the bank’s site was previously occupied by Reuben’s Pure Food Shop on Amsterdam Avenue, which invented the famous, huge Reuben sandwich but later moved to 59th Street east of Fifth Avenue before it went out of business.

One of the finest Post-Modern buildings in the city is the Alexandria apartment house on the northwest corner of Broadway and 72nd Street that was built by William Zeckendorf Jr.

The northeast corner of Broadway and 70th Street is the Dorilton at 171 West 71st Street, one of the city’s most exuberantly designed residential buildings, completed in 1900 and designed by Janes & Leo. The building was described by Andrew Dolkart in the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission’s "Guide to New York City Landmarks, Second Edition, 1998, as "perhaps the most flamboyant apartment house in New York, the Dorilton is an enormous Beaux-Arts pile with striking French-inspired sculptural decoration and an iron gate reminiscent of those that guard French palaces."

West 72nd Street, between West End and Amsterdam avenues, is the major cross-town retail strip on the Upper West Side.

Broadway, of course, is the main commercial strip of the Upper West Side and in this area it is anchored by Zabar’s, the famous food and kitchen supply store, at 80th Street, the Barnes & Noble bookstore at 82nd Street, and the cineplex at 83rd Street. Broadway, Amsterdam and Columbus all abound in restaurants and the latter has many boutiques as well particularly between 72nd and 77th Streets.

With its tree-lined center strip, Broadway has always been envisioned as the grand boulevard of the Upper West Side. Unfortunately, its redevelopment with mid-rise apartment towers was interrupted by the Depression and many gaps of underdeveloped properties were left that marred the integrity of the street, especially in comparison with the far more completed and more consistent West End Avenue and Riverside Drive. Still, several very fine buildings were completed on Broadway including the famous, full-block courtyard buildings known as the Apthorp and the Belnord, on the west side between 78th and 79th Streets and on the east side between 86th and 87th Streets, respectively. The Apthorp, designed by Clinton & Russell and completed in 1908, is the most luxurious and distinguished of the two, but both are exceedingly impressive, surpassed in desirability as courtyard buildings only by the Dakota at 1 West 72nd Street. The Belnord was designed by H. Hobart Weekes and completed also in 1908. In their fine book, "The A.I.A. Guide to New York City," (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), Elliot Willensky and Norval White described the Belnord as "brilliant but boring," and the Apthorp as "unusually grand" and "handsome."

Broadway also suffered considerably from the poor signage of much of its retail that jarringly clashed with the often noble architecture of the upper portion of many of its buildings. Although the Upper West Side’s development at the start of the 20th Century was mostly aimed at middle- and upper-income families, the area declined in popularity during the Depression and after World War II, which was exacerbated by the city’s allowance of "single room occupancy" housing in 1939 in anticipation of the World’s Fair. Such housing significantly increased the number of people living in much of the area’s housing and many brownstones, townhouses and tenements were converted to rooming houses that quickly filled up. The "Elevated" Ninth Avenue line was torn down only in 1939 and Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues were filled with many tenement buildings that housed people who worked for the well-to-do in the "luxury" buildings along Central Park West, Riverside Drive and West End Avenue.

While the Upper West Side’s most famous cultural facility is the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, this section also has the Beacon Theater in the base of the Beacon Hotel building at 2124 Broadway at 74th Street, designed by Walter W. Ahlschlager and completed in 1928. The Beacon, with its very ornate interiors and about 3,000 seats, was designed as a movie theater, and was typical of many neighborhood movie palaces, and now serves as a major concert venue. The theater was one of Samuel "Roxy" Rothapfel’s, projects, the most famous of which was the great Roxy Theater that rivaled Radio City Music Hall until it was demolished as one of the city’s most lavish and celebrated theaters.

One of the more famous Upper West Side institutions is the Claremont Riding Academy at 175 West 89th Street, designed by Frank A. Rooke and completed in 1892. This is where one rents horses for rides in Central Park. (Another stable, Durland’s, now demolished, was on Columbus Circle.)

Two of the city’s finest and the nation’s oldest schools are also in this area: Trinity School, which was founded in 1709, at 139 West 91st Street, and Collegiate School, which was founded in 1638 but closed for a few years during the American Revolution, on 77th Street near West End Avenue.

The Hotel Belleclaire at 250 West 77th Street was one of the early commissions of architect Emery Roth who would later design such skyscraper masterpieces as the San Remo and the Beresford on Central Park West. The Belleclaire was completed in 1901 and is reminiscent of many Belle Ipoque buildings in Paris, but also has motifs inspired by the Secessionist movement in Europe. It also had a popular roof garden with views up the Hudson River. Writer Maxim Gorky entertained such luminaries as Mark Twain and William Dean Howells when he stayed at the Belleclaire.

Pomander Walk is a quaint landmark residential enclave of 16 two-story, neo-Tudor-style houses that face on a private walk between 94th and 95th Streets between Broadway and West End Avenue and 11 other houses on the sidestreets. It was developed by Thomas Healey in 1921 and designed by King & Campbell to recreate the village atmosphere in "Pomander Walk," a play by Lewis Parker. Other interesting properties in this area include the eclectic First Baptist Church designed by George Keister on the northwest corner of Broadway and 79th Street, the modern and stylish small building designed as a community day-care center at 223 West 80th Street by Kaminsky & Shiffer and completed in 1972, the small apartment building with sinuous balconies at 100 West 81st Street designed by Marvin Meltzer and completed in 1981, and the great studio apartment building, designed by Harde & Short and completed in 1909, at 44 West 77th Street facing the great south facade of the American Museum of Natural History.

Also of note are the fine, slender, red-brick apartment tower, the Park Belvedere, developed by William Zeckendorf Jr., at 101 West 79th Street on the northwest corner of Columbus Avenue, designed by Frank Williams & Associates and completed in 1985, the robust and dignified former Hotel Endicott, designed by Edward L. Angell, on the northwest corner of Columbus Avenue and 81st Street that was converted to apartments, designed by Stephen B. Jacobs & Associates in 1984, and the Bromley apartment building at 225 West 83rd Street that was designed by Costas Kondylis of Philip Birnbaum & Associates on the northeast corner at Broadway with numerous circular windows (oculi) and many terraces, and the attractive twin-towered Montana apartment building at 247 West 87th Street at Broadway, designed by the Gruzen Partnership and completed in 1986.

Ninth and Tenth Avenues were renamed Columbus and Amsterdam avenues, respectively in 1890, ten years after 11th Avenue had been renamed West End Avenue above 59th Street.

This area’s intellectual and artistic history is staggering. According to author Peter Salwen, Hannah Arendt, the historian, lived at 317 West 95th Street, Irving Berlin, the composer, lived at 235 West 71st Street, Madeline Carroll and Gloria Swanson, the actresses, lived on Pomander Walk, Miles Davis, the great jazz musician and trumpeter, lived at 312 West 78th Street, Jack "Legs" Diamond, the gangster, lived at the Dorilton, Oscar Hammerstein II, the lyricist, lived at 60 West 76th Street, Billie Holiday, the great jazz singer, lived at 26 West 87th Street, Norman Mailer, the writer, lived at 250 West 94th Street, Richard Rogers, the composer, lived at 161 West 86th Street, Damon Runyon, the writer, lived at 251 West 95th Street, Lillian Russell, the actress, lived at 318 West 77th Street, J. D. Salinger, the writer, lived at 221 West 82nd Street, and General William Tecumseh Sherman lived at 75 West 71st Street.

In the 1980’s, the city enacted new zoning to encourage contextual new development along Broadway and many new apartment buildings were erected that filled in many of the boulevard’s "gaps," especially above 86th Street. Many of these new buildings featured some "studio" type apartments and were architectural a major improvement over most post-war residential construction in the city.

This section of the Upper West Side is a marvelous mix of cultures and ages and income groups, all with "attitude" and character and lots of personality in what many consider the feistiest and perhaps the most classic of all New York communities. It may not have as many "swells" as the celebrities of Central Park West’s great towers, nor culture-crazed tourists as the Lincoln Center district, nor academics as Morningside, but it has an aroused citizenry that cares about its environment, looks carefully at its fruit stands and pours over the racks of its newsstands and sidewalk book vendors and knows well the smell of good cooking and the best stores for discounts and sales and its politicians and everyday it confronts the myriad realities of being a New Yorker.