The Upper West Side: A Neighborhood for Independent Minds

by Yvonne Vávra

Yesterday, we celebrated Independence Day, and for many, it might have felt a little strange to be cheering our freedom from a king. The Declaration of Independence lays out three fundamental truths: that we’re all created equal and have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that government exists to protect these rights; and that we’re free to speak up or even revolt if it fails to do so.

It’s fun to raise a glass and grill a burger in honor of these ideals. But I imagine for many of us, that sense of freedom lasted only as long as it took for the fireworks to flash, bang, and then make the sky dark again.

Still, even when many feel trapped, silenced, and powerless, one kind of freedom remains available to all of us: the freedom to think for ourselves. With inconceivable events unfolding at dizzying speed, it’s hard to believe anything can be done to stop them. But even if we don’t yet know what to do, we shouldn’t lose our minds — because in the mind, liberty endures. We’re free to question boldly and imagine something better. That kind of thinking might come in handy, once we’re ready.

 The Upper West Side has long been a hub for independent thinking and expression — a place that has attracted those unafraid to challenge norms, rethink assumptions, and explore new perspectives. This whole neighborhood, after all, got its start in large part because one man dared to think against the stream. In the late 19th century, no one believed New Yorkers with money would ever want to live in our part of Manhattan. But Edward Cabot Clark had his own mind. He built a luxurious apartment building to lure the wealthy out of their downtown mansions to the muddy grounds of what is now 72nd Street and Central Park West: into the Dakota. People called it “Clark’s folly.” After all, living door-to-door with other families wasn’t something the wealthy wished for at the time, especially not on dusty roads with goats and pigs strolling by.

Sure, Clark was chasing a real estate win. But what makes his move remarkable is that he was willing to bet on change no one else believed in. He trusted that social norms would shift and that people just didn’t know what they wanted yet. He was right. The Dakota helped make apartment living fashionable and kick-started the development of the Upper West Side into one of the city’s most desirable neighborhoods.

Clark’s boldness is part of the independent spirit that still defines this place. There’s a reason we can still buy bagels, sturgeon, books, and shoes from long-standing businesses that have resisted selling out. Independent minds tend to build independent places.

It takes courage and clarity to recognize that things don’t have to keep moving in the direction they’re going. Take one Upper West Side woman who loved New York — but hated that her windowsills were always coated with black soot. Marcy Benstock of West 100th Street didn’t believe that all that grime was just an inevitable part of big city life. So in 1971, she launched the Upper West Side Air Pollution Campaign, later renamed the Clean Air Campaign.

What truly lit a fire in her mind was the proposed Westway project, a massive covered highway that would run from the Battery to 42nd Street. Backed by every major decision maker — from labor unions and business elites, to the Mayor, the Governor, and even the President —  the highway seemed unstoppable. Benstock thought: But what if I could stop it?

She didn’t want more cars dumped onto Upper West Side streets. She didn’t want landfill pumped into the Hudson. And she didn’t think an expressway was the future New York needed. So private citizen Marcy Benstock went on a single-minded, fact-driven crusade that lasted more than a decade. She was a quiet, clean fighter who questioned dominant ideas, educated herself, and built a campaign on data and persistence that ultimately derailed the project. Even her opponents respected her tenacity: “I hope next time we will be on the same side,” Governor Mario Cuomo wrote in a telegram after giving up his Westway dreams.

We may not all take on a highway, but we can still tap into that same spirit of mental independence. The Upper West Side is a great place to reclaim our thoughts, even though it will be a challenge. These days, it’s hard to make conscious choices about what deserves space in our minds. We’ve let technologies engineered to hijack our attention come too close. Before we even notice, we’re pulled out of ourselves — distracted, scattered, elsewhere. And the more we get used to constant interruption, the harder it becomes to be alone — just us and our own thoughts.

But we can take our attention back — by going for a walk in the neighborhood. No phone. I dare you. Let these streets wipe your mind clean of the clutter our culture throws at you to keep you busy and away from yourself. You’re free to not care about what you never wanted to know in the first place. The attention economy can’t reach you out here. And with every step, you get better at not craving the interruption. Feels almost rebellious, doesn’t it? All you have to do is wander and wonder, let yourself be swept up in the Upper West Vibe, and let your own thoughts come home.

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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