Neighbors watched out for each other, and most of the people who lived there stayed for generations, and most of the stores were family-owned businesses.įast forward to 2013. The streets of my childhood were dirtier, and the people who lived there were poorer but I played on the street all day unsupervised by adults and we were safe. I lived on 79th street from 1976 to 2011 in the rent-stabilized apartment I grew up in, and over that time I have seen the neighborhood change drastically. Local artists sold their wares and the kids tried not to kill themselves in the slightly deflated Moon Bounce. Residents sold their used household goods at White Elephant tables, others grilled hotdogs and popped popcorn. Several times a year the 79th Block Association shut down the street and organized a street fair. The author (at right) and her twin sister in 1986.Īt the same time, community groups planted trees on every block and strove to make it all look nice. The doormen were alert and ready to menace unwelcome visitors with a baseball bat. Neighborhood volunteers took turns watching out their windows, reporting any crimes to the well-meaning, over-worked and understaffed local police precinct. Locals knew to be inside their locked apartments by nightfall and you were safe. The sidewalks teemed with alcoholic homeless – Vietnam Vets haunted by their own nightmares and hopelessness. People were afraid to ride the graffiti-streaked, crime soaked subways. But in 1976, when my parents moved to Broadway and 79th street with their three small children, no one in Manhattan lived above 72nd street if they could avoid it. The rental apartment upstairs from my mother, with the same layout was recently listed for $9900.00 a month. People have bidding wars over apartments that cost millions of dollars. Today the Upper West Side is considered one of the richest, cleanest, and most expensive places to live in New York City. Photo of storefronts on Columbus Avenue between 82d and 83rd streets in 1982 by Daniel Weeks. She shares some memories below, and asks for some of yours. Editor’s note: Lifelong Upper West Side resident Jeannine Jones is writing her graduate thesis on how the neighborhood has changed since she was born in 1976.