96th Street is a major two-way street on the

Upper East Side The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the we ...

and Upper West Side sections of the

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

borough A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle Ag ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

. It runs in two major sections: between the

FDR Drive The Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive, commonly called the FDR Drive for short, is a limited-access parkway on the east side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It starts near South and Broad Streets, just north of the Battery Par ...

and

Fifth Avenue Fifth Avenue is a major and prominent thoroughfare in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It stretches north from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village to West 143rd Street in Harlem. It is one of the most expensive shopping ...

on the Upper East Side, and between Central Park West and

Henry Hudson Parkway The Henry Hudson Parkway is a parkway in New York City. The southern terminus is in Manhattan at 72nd Street, where the parkway continues south as the West Side Highway. It is often erroneously referred to as the West Side Highway throughout its ...

on the Upper West Side. The two segments are connected by the 97th Street transverse across

Central Park Central Park is an urban park in New York City located between the Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan. It is the fifth-largest park in the city, covering . It is the most visited urban park in the United States, with an estimated ...

, which links the disconnected segments of 96th and 97th Streets on each side. 96th Street is one of the 15 hundred-foot-wide () crosstown streets mapped out in the Commissioner's Plan of 1811 that established the numbered street grid in Manhattan. On Manhattan's West Side, 96th Street is the northern boundary of the

New York City steam system The New York City steam systems include Con Edison's Steam Operations, and other smaller systems that provide steam to New York University and Columbia University. Many individual buildings in New York have their own steam systems. Con Ed ...

, the largest such system in the world, which pumps 30 billion pounds of steam into 100,000 buildings south of the street. (The northern boundary on the East Side is 89th Street.)

East 96th Street

From the FDR Drive to First Avenue, 96th Street is the northern border of Zone A, a flood evacuation zone. When Hurricane Sandy hit New York City in 2012, residents on neighboring blocks found out they, too, were in a flood zone, and the city revised its zone borders outward. Residents of the public housing projects as well as high rise apartments in the zone were left without power, although it was restored to most of the area after a day or two. 96th Street rises after Second Avenue, and climbs from

Third Avenue Third Avenue is a north-south thoroughfare on the East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan, as well as in the center portion of the Bronx. Its southern end is at Astor Place and St. Mark's Place. It transitions into Cooper Squ ...

Lexington Avenue Lexington Avenue, often colloquially abbreviated as "Lex", is an avenue on the East Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City that carries southbound one-way traffic from East 131st Street to Gramercy Park at East 21st Street. Along i ...

– called " Carnegie Hill" – before leveling off at Central Park. The street is the traditional dividing line between Yorkville and the

to the south and

Spanish Harlem East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem or and historically known as Italian Harlem, is a neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City, roughly encompassing the area north of the Upper East Side and bounded by 96th Street to the south, Fi ...

East Harlem East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem or and historically known as Italian Harlem, is a neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City, roughly encompassing the area north of the Upper East Side and bounded by 96th Street to the south, ...

to the north. East 96th Street, particularly near Second and Third Avenues, underwent significant

gentrification Gentrification is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more affluent residents and businesses. It is a common and controversial topic in urban politics and planning. Gentrification often increases the ...

in the late 1980s. By 2005, a wave of speculation for Harlem real estate pushed a corridor of luxury condos and co-ops up First Avenue from 96th Street as well. The

construction Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form objects, systems, or organizations,"Construction" def. 1.a. 1.b. and 1.c. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Press 2009 and ...

of the Second Avenue Subway, which built a station on the street, disrupted lives and businesses along 96th Street, but its opening in January, 2017, was expected to further increase residential and commercial development in East Harlem, as well as increasing housing value in Yorkville. The

Islamic Cultural Center of New York The Islamic Cultural Center of New York is a mosque and an Islamic cultural center in East Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, United States. It is located at 1711 Third Avenue, between East 96th and 97th Streets. The Islamic Cultural Center was ...

opened at Third Avenue and East 96th Street in 1991. Like all

mosque A mosque (; from ar, مَسْجِد, masjid, ; literally "place of ritual prostration"), also called masjid, is a place of prayer for Muslims. Mosques are usually covered buildings, but can be any place where prayers ( sujud) are performed, ...

s, it is

oriented In mathematics, orientability is a property of some topological spaces such as real vector spaces, Euclidean spaces, surfaces, and more generally manifolds that allows a consistent definition of "clockwise" and "counterclockwise". A space i ...

toward

Mecca Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow v ...

, which required a slight shift in orientation from the neighboring buildings. The East 96th Street gate to Central Park is called "Woodmans Gate". East 96th Street is the southern boundary of the area where green taxis may be hailed by passengers.

West 96th Street

On the West Side, 96th Street runs through a natural valley passing under Riverside Drive and leading down to the former Stryker's Bay. It is regarded as the southern border of the nearby Manhattan Valley area. Broadway at West 96th Street was home to two ornate theaters – the Riverside and the Riviera / Japanese Gardens – each designed in the early 20th century, and both gone by 1976. In the mid 1980s, parts of West 96th Street began to convert from rental units to cooperative housing. At the time, crime remained a problem. As late as the early 1990s, drug dealing was rampant on 96th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, and Larry Hogue, a homeless crack addict known as the "Wild Man of 96th Street" terrorized the street for several years until being forced into treatment and extended state custody. In 2009, Hogue escaped from custody and returned briefly to West 96th Street before being found and returned to treatment. The decision by the city to continue locating homeless and frequently drug addicted residents in large former Single Room Occupancy hotels (SROs) within a several block radius of West 96th Street and Broadway continues to be controversial.Panero, James
"Upper West Side Madness"
'' City Journal'' (August 8, 2012) The rapid development of Columbus Avenue from 96th to 100th Street around 2009 resulted in a burgeoning concentration of large, national chain stores. The West 96th Street gate to Central Park is called "Gate of All Saints".

Gallery

File:Islamic Cultural Center E96 jeh.JPG, The Islamic Cultural Center at

(1991) File:Crenshaw Christian Center East from below.jpg, The Crenshaw Christian Center East, formerly the First Church of Christ, Scientist (1899-1903) at 1 West 96th Street and Central Park West File:34-42 West 96th Street.jpg,

Row house In architecture and city planning, a terrace or terraced house ( UK) or townhouse ( US) is a form of medium-density housing that originated in Europe in the 16th century, whereby a row of attached dwellings share side walls. In the United Sta ...

s at 13-42 West 96th Street were built in 1897 and designed by

George F. Pelham George Frederick Pelham (1867 – February 7, 1937) was an American architect and the son of George Brown Pelham, who was also an architect. Life and career Pelham was born in Ottawa, Ontario, coming to New York City when his father open ...

in the

Renaissance Revival style Renaissance Revival architecture (sometimes referred to as "Neo-Renaissance") is a group of 19th century architectural revival styles which were neither Greek Revival nor Gothic Revival but which instead drew inspiration from a wide range o ...

File:Cliff Dwelling 243 Riverside Drive top.jpg, The "Cliff Dwelling", at the intersection with Riverside Drive, was designed by Herman Lee Meader and built in 1914.

Transportation

New York City Subway The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, an affiliate agency of the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Opened on October ...

service is available at these stations: * 96th Street, serving the at Broadway * 96th Street, serving the at Central Park West * 96th Street, serving the at

* 96th Street, serving the at Second Avenue The M96 bus line serves a majority of the street, and the M106 serves the western portion of the street and connects it with East 106th Street.

In popular culture

In the 1989 film '' When Harry Met Sally...'', Harry and Sally are seen buying their Christmas tree from The Plant Shed, a long-established neighborhood store on West 96th Street, near Broadway. A year later, no longer a couple, Sally is seen buying her tree there and trudging home alone with the tree dragging behind her. In the ''

How I Met Your Mother ''How I Met Your Mother'' (often abbreviated as ''HIMYM'') is an American sitcom, created by Craig Thomas (screenwriter), Craig Thomas and Carter Bays for CBS. The series, which aired from September 19, 2005 to March 31, 2014, follows the main c ...

'' episode " Last Time in New York", Ted references some misspelled graffiti on the intersection of 96th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. The graffiti read, "YOUR A P***S", which Ted then corrects to "YOU'RE A P***S". In the 2008 musical " In the Heights"' opening song ''In the Heights'', Usnavi references 96th street when he breaks the fourth wall, while describing how to get to Washington Heights, Manhattan. In the 1973 movie '' The Seven-Ups'' a famous car chase scene with actor Roy Scheider includes a sequence filmed on West 96th Street from Central Park West to West End Avenue. The chase repeats the same intersections on 96th street several times, specifically the dramatic drop from Amsterdam to Broadway and West End Avenue which makes the cars appear to go aloft as they plunge down the hill. In Saul Bellow's 1969 novel, ''

Mr. Sammler's Planet ''Mr. Sammler's Planet'' is a 1970 novel by the American author Saul Bellow. It won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1971. References External linksat the Nobel Prize websiteSaul Bellow Society {{DEFAULTSORT:Mister Sammler's Plane ...

'', Bellow says of the intersection with Broadway "...Ninety-sixth Street tilted at all four corners, the kiosks and movie houses, the ramparts of wire fastened newspaper bundles, and the colors of panic waving."

References

Notes

External links

* {{Streets of Manhattan , West =

, East =

, state=collapsed 096