Upper West Side Map

The Upper West Side (including Morningside Heights) covers a large area in upper Manhattan bounded by 59th Street on the south, 125th Street on the north, the Hudson River on the west, and Central Park and Morningside Park on the east. The area encompasses four distinct Manhattan neighborhoods – the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights, Bloomingdale, and Manhattan Valley – and includes one of its finest parks, Riverside Park, which including Riverside South runs along the river all the way from 59th Street to 158th Street.

Often called the city's quintessential neighborhood, the area includes delightful residential streets, the twin-towered facades of the old apartment hotels on Central Park West and Riverside Drive, two of the city's best-known markets (Zabar's and Fairway), one of its major museums (the American Museum of Natural History) and several smaller ones. Morningside Heights has an Ivy League university (Columbia University), and the Neo-Gothic Cathedral of St. John the Divine and Riverside Church. The area is an architectural historian's delight with many of its buildings (especially in Morningside Heights) built before the Second World War and quite a few built before the First World War, though many new and large condominium buildings have been built south of 110th Street.

The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, running from 62nd Street to 66th Street, contains the Metropolitan Opera; the David H. Koch Theater, home of the New York City Ballet; Geffen Hall, the home of the New York Philharmonic; the Juilliard School; and the New York Public Library's Library for the Performing Arts, among other institutions.