Yorkville, Manhattan

A section of Yorkville as seen from a high rise on East 86th Street and Second Avenue

Yorkville is an affluent neighborhood in the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. Carl Schurz Park, Gracie Mansion, Sotheby's, the prestigious Lycée Français de New York and lastly Henderson Place all call Yorkville home. Yorkville is known for being a family and animal friendly neighborhood with a large French and Italian population.

History

Kolping House, 88th St

For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, Yorkville was a middle- to working-class neighborhood, inhabited by many people of Czech, Slovak, Irish, Polish, German, Hungarian and Lebanese descent.

Many of Yorkville's original German residents moved to Yorkville and other neighborhoods from "Kleindeutschland" (Little Germany) on the Lower East Side of Manhattan after the General Slocum disaster on June 15, 1904. The ship caught fire in the East River just off the shores of Yorkville. Most of the passengers on the ship were German.

The Irish were scattered throughout Yorkville.^{[citation needed]} They attended mass at such churches as St. Ignatius Loyola on 84th St. and Park Avenue, Our Lady of Good Counsel (90th St.) and the Church of St. Joseph (87th St).^{[citation needed]} There were many Irish bars including Finnegan's Wake, Dorrian's Red Hand Restaurant, Ireland's 32, Carrol's Hideaway, O'Brien's and Kinsale Tavern.^{[citation needed]} Until the late 1990s, New York's St. Patrick's Day Parade ended at 86th Street and Third Avenue, the historical center of Yorkville.^{[citation needed]}

At the turn of the 21st century, East 82nd Street was co-named / renamed St. Stephen of Hungary Wa.^{[citation needed]} The area 79th Street north to 83rd Street, spanning approximately four blocks east-west is colloquially known as Little Hungary.^{[citation needed]}

Zion-St Mark's German Evangelical Church

In the 1930s, the neighborhood was the home base of Fritz Kuhn's German American Bund, the most notorious pro-Nazi group in 1930s America. The neighborhood is the site of the annual Steuben Parade, a large German-American celebration.

Prominent locations

Yorkville includes Gracie Mansion, the official home of the mayor of New York City, and Carl Schurz Park. And Yorkville is also the birthplace of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, circa 1920, founded by 11 local businessmen.

Student housing

Fordham Graduate Housing is located on 81st street between York and East End. Although the Fordham Graduate Schools are located on the West Side, the university purchased the buildings on 81st street to provide a safe area for graduate students. In fact, because it is isolated from the subway, east Yorkville is quite affordable, and many young people live between 1st avenue and East End Avenue. It has jokingly been called the "Dorm District" by some young residents, due to the large amount of students living in the same apartment buildings because of their inability to receive housing in a college dormitory. Many of the students attend the nearby Hunter College, but the low rents, safe neighborhood and close proximity to Central Park attracts students from colleges such as Berkeley College, Rockefeller University, Cornell Medical College, New York Film Academy, Baruch College, Hunter College, and American Academy of Dramatic Arts.^{[citation needed]}

Education

The New York City Department of Education operates public schools.

The City University of New York has its administrative offices in Yorkville.

Notable residents

Residents of Yorkville have included:

• Robert F. Wagner (1877–1953), U.S. Senator
• Bob Cousy (born 1928), professional basketball player
• James Cagney (1899–1986), actor, grew up in the neighborhood.
• Lou Gehrig (1903–1941), Major League Baseball player, was born on 93rd Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues. A plaque on the wall stands on the north side of the street to the left of The Mount Sinai Medical Center, 309 East 94th Street.
• The Marx Brothers, comedians, lived at 179 East 93rd Street.
• President Barack Obama (born 1961), lived in the early 1980s at 339 East 94th Street, before and after his graduation from Columbia University.
• Louise Fitzhugh (1928–1974), author, lived on East 85th Street, between East End and York Avenues
• Macaulay Culkin (born 1980), actor, was born in Yorkville and lived there during his early childhood.
• Bonnie Bedelia (born 1948), actress, was born and grew up at 419 East 76th Street between 1st and York Avenues
• Norma Kamali (born 1945), fashion designer, grew up and went to school in Yorkville

In popular culture

In the novels The Godfather Returns and The Godfather's Revenge by Mark Winegardner, Michael Corleone's penthouse is in Yorkville.

See also

• Upper East Side
• Manhattan Hungarian network

External links

• The Yorkville Kleindeutschland Historical Society
• German Traces NYC from the Goethe-Institut
• 2006 New York Observer article on changes in Yorkville
• NYC East 91st Waste Facility