Read Between the Lines: How to Fall Even Harder for the Upper West Side

by Yvonne Vávra

We often experience “our” city as if it began the day we arrived. A place inherited mid-sentence. We come to love and determined to protect it because of the way it has us in it. But beneath the surface of “our” New York is everyone else’s New York — layers of lives, loves, businesses, and histories we rarely notice.

Take the corner of 74th and Columbus, for instance.

To many, this is just where the TikTok-famous cookies are. But before Crumbl, this was a flower shop run by Greek immigrants in the early 1900s and later a place called “Cheese’n-Things.” This was way before my time, but come on, “Cheese’n-Things”? I couldn’t be sadder it’s gone. According to Landmark West!, the building was also the site of a dramatic love story — complete with rooftop carrier pigeons used to plot an elopement that ended with the bride’s furious mom trying to have the groom arrested for abduction. When that didn’t fly, she locked her daughter in a room while the groom went off to get a summons to reclaim his wife. By the time he returned, however, the whole family had vanished, and not even the pigeons knew where.

Do you feel it? That corner has layers — and knowing them just makes it all a little richer. The cookie smell will hit different next time you walk by.

My own Upper West Side began on screen, like so many first encounters with New York do. I was an ocean away but already loved those brownstone-lined streets where something romantic is always happening. The old lanterns in the park, ballerinas on the sidewalks, couples bickering on benches  — it was, and still is, all part of my picture, no matter how the neighborhood has changed. My Upper West Side is a feeling. In my version, people are still wearing shoulder pads and angular haircuts.

While your Upper West Side might be very different from mine, chances are we’re sharing the feeling. After all, we’re moving through the same streets, same magic. And knowing why it all looks and flows the way it does? That’s when the real love story begins. The more you learn, the deeper you’re in.

So next time you can’t make it across Broadway in one green light and find yourself stuck on the median, enjoy the Parisian flair around you. After the Civil War, New York had a bit of a crush on Europe, especially Paris. City planners wanted New York to feel like a grand European capital, with elegant boulevards and leafy promenades. Inspired by Baron Haussmann’s redesign of Paris and his Champs-Élysées, Commissioner Andrew Haswell Green laid out what would eventually be named Broadway in 1899, following the path of the old Bloomingdale Road — then still a dusty country highway running through muddy, undeveloped land. He widened it, added a planted mall down the middle, and voilà: that’s why you can now sit under trees on benches and enjoy the winds of uptown and downtown traffic.

I learned all this from Tom Delgado — comedian, writer, tour guide and the kind of person who makes history feel like a great story you actually want to hear. He’s currently hosting the “New York Hysterical” stand-up comedy show at the recently rebranded New York Historical, and he believes local stories don’t just entertain us — they raise the stakes of living here. “Knowing the past of a place gives people a sense of belonging and ownership,” he told me. “If you’re touched by history, you’ll care when a developer wants to tear something down. You have pride in your community.”

On the Upper West Side, that connection between place and identity seems to work especially well. “It has a lot to do with the pillars of the community,” Tom says. “It’s easy to overlook the role that long-standing businesses like Zabar’s play in keeping people attached. Once someone becomes an Upper West Sider, they tend to stick around, and that creates a kind of neighborhood feeling that’s pretty rare in the city.”

The sheer beauty around us doesn’t hurt, either. Strolling along the Dorilton-Ansonia-Apthorp parade and all the other Beaux-Arts stunners nearby, you wonder how something so tall can be so pretty. Europe has its share of majestic buildings, but anything over five stories usually leans a little more … generic. Not here. These massive UWS showstoppers are bursting with ornamentation —  and with stories. The Ansonia alone gives you tales of 500 chickens and a bear on the roof, a swingers’ club in the basement, and the Black Sox scandal. Not to mention Bette Midler becoming a star singing to towel-clad men at a gay cruising spot in the underground pool area.

 Many good things rise from underground — like, say, the entire Upper West Side. It only exists because of the subway. When it opened in 1904, developers quickly turned farmland and rubble into residential heaven. How young the neighborhood is! Your oldest grandparents might remember it from the days when goats still roamed around. Forgive the exaggeration, but I’m working with a mind blown by the fact that we went from mud puddle to architectural grandeur and bagel paradise in just 120 years. “It’s impressive that the Upper West Side feels so old, when it’s not,” Tom says. “It came about in a flash — a blink in the history of New York. And yet it feels so rich and so homey and lived in.”

That’s the magic: a place that came together in a New York minute, yet somehow feels like it’s always been waiting for you. We may have arrived mid-sentence, but if we don’t just keep talking but instead look back a page or two, the story gets better, and we become the kind of Upper West Siders who shape what’s next.

Yvonne Vávra is a magazine writer and author of the German book 111 Gründe New York zu lieben (111 Reasons to Love New York). Born a Berliner but an aspiring Upper West Sider since the 1990s (thanks, Nora Ephron), she came to New York in 2010 and seven years later made her Upper West Side dreams come true. She’s been obsessively walking the neighborhood ever since.

“New York Hysterical”: Friday, May 16, 6 – 7 p.m., at The New York Historical, 170 Central Park West (77th Street). Free with pay-as-you-wish admission.

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