Upper West Side, Unexplored: The Blocks We Never Walk

By Yvonne Vávra

I have a friend, Matt Green, who walked every single block in New York City. Every street and avenue, alley, path, bridge, and any other place you can put your feet, in all five boroughs.

When I first met him in 2012, he thought it would take two years. By his seventh year, he had given up on timelines. Last year, after more than 12 years and nearly 10,000 miles, he finally finished his project. He had reached his goal, which was never about anything other than meeting New York and getting close enough to know her like someone you no longer need to figure out.

I’m not on Matt’s level, but I’m a voracious walker, too. For hours on end and with no particular destination, I walk off the madness that is my love for New York and for the Upper West Side in particular. Luckily, my dog shares the passion. So we’re out there, covering every inch of our neighborhood and beyond.

Or so I thought.

Thinking about Matt the other day, I realized to my horror that I’m not even close to knowing the little patch of the city I call home. Here I am, thinking I understand how the Upper West Side is holding itself, and us, together, when in fact, I’ve been ignoring lots of it. There’s a whole alternate Upper West Side I’ve never seen!

I assume you have your frequently traveled paths, too. Especially on the blocks closest to home, when we’re on autopilot getting things done rather than exploring, we get particular and settle into routines. From subway to apartment, park to coffee shop, drugstore to gym. Always 94th, never 95th. 62nd yes. 63rd no. When I still lived on West 75th Street, I’d turn north on Columbus, west on 76th, and north again on Broadway to get to the CVS on the corner of 77th. 77th, the street? No idea what’s happening there.

Now I live on West 72nd, and when I think about my daily routes, I realize I never have any reason to be on 74th. My everyday life flows around it. I know the corners, but 74th and I are strangers. Can you relate? Do you leave a mark on 88th but never 89th? Make a dent on 101st, but never grace 102nd?

It seems to be something living creatures just do. Many animals travel the same paths, creating routes that generations after them still follow. When I recently attended a course at New York City’s Rat Academy, I learned that rats are such stubborn commuters, they stick to their favorite paths like glue — so much so that they leave behind slimy sebum trails. If you spot a dark, greasy line along a wall or surface, you’ve found your neighborhood rats’ favorite runway.

Slimy trails? Hard pass. Time to break free. So off I went on a grand adventure to 74th Street.

And what a welcome I received, setting out on Central Park West. With the San Remo and the Langham as my gate, I entered a stretch of stately Neo-Georgian townhouses that made me feel like I should be wearing something tailored, with an hourglass silhouette, definitely a hat. Something elaborate. Not even the broken buzzer somewhere nearby, insistently calling for attention, could spoil the impression that this might be one of the most elegant blocks in the whole city. Then came not one but two cookie shops, the sound of tap dancing from the studio above Fairway, and before 74th hits Riverside, a quaint block of charming row houses, building up to a splendid mansion at the very end.

It tells the story of showgirl Guinevere Sinclair, who lived here at 323 W 74th Street in the 1910s. The house was a gift from her lover, multimillionaire George Jay Gould, president of the Manhattan Railway Company and 20 years her senior. His wife, according to author and historian Tom Miller, had become obese and tried to win back her husband’s interest by dieting and wearing a suffocatingly tight rubber suit under her clothes. She was wearing it when she died of a heart attack while golfing. Not long after, George married Guinevere. A year later, he was dead, too.

Guinevere went on to become Lady Dunsford, marrying into English nobility. Her eldest son with George? He became the father of the first wife of actor Eddie Redmayne’s father. Don’t ask me to diagram that. But somehow it all traces back to 74th Street.

Even a small detour is a reminder that there’s always more to everything we think we know. Shaking up your routine invites unpredictability in manageable doses, a chance to practice being surprised. When you step into unfamiliar territory, you pay attention. You notice things. You wonder. Before long, you might even crave that feeling — not just on the streets, but in life: the freedom of being open to surprise, and to enjoy not knowing exactly where it might all lead.

So go ahead and add a few more pictures to your Upper West Side gallery. You don’t have to walk every block like Matt did. Just one new one might be enough to meet the neighborhood. She might be waiting to show you something.

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.

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