- Upper West Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, New York City. It is located between Central Park and Hudson River and between West 59th Street and West 110th Street. It is an affluent, primarily residential area with many of its residents working within Manhattan. Columbia University and Barnard College are located on the North end of the neighborhood, and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts located at the South end.
- Riverside Park is a scenic waterfront public park on the Upper West Side of Manhattan Borough. It is a narrow 4-mile strip of land between the Hudson River and Riverside Drive. Riverside Park also contains part of the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway, which circles Manhattan’s waterfronts with car-free bike routes. Riverside Park was designed as a tree-lined drive curving around the valleys and rock outcroppings and overlooking the river. In 1910, architects and horticulturalists Calvert Vaux and Samuel Parsons laid out the area of park and roadway to create an English grade to give the appearance that the park was part of the Hudson River Valley. Decorative viaduct, castle-like retaining walls and grand entry points added to its mystique.
- The elegant tall apartment blocks on West End Avenue and the townhouses on the streets between Amsterdam Avenue and Riverside Drive, were all built before the depression. The large scale of these building has been the reason they are still there today.
- The apartment buildings along Central Park West facing the park are home to many celebrities who desire the lauded location sandwiched between two beautiful parks Central and Riverside with all the beautiful green spaces to walk along and Museums to visit. Also, the many restaurants and gourmet groceries to patronized makes this area one of the most desired residential locations in Manhattan.
- The Upper West Side is a large Jewish neighborhood, first populated with German Jews and Jewish refugees escaping Europe during Hitler’s rein. Now it is home to the largest community of young Orthodox Jews outside of Israel, but there are also a significant number of non-Orthodox Jews.
- Films, it seems to the locals, are always on location using up all of the available parking spaces in the neighborhood or on-site trailers with many coaxial cables spidering out over sidewalks- just makes for another day of life in the busy city. Some of the movies have become quite famous, such as Die Hard with a Vengeance, Elf, West Side Story and Ghostbusters.