96th Street is one of the 15 hundred-foot-wide (30 m) crosstown streets mapped out in the Commissioner's Plan of 1811 that established the numbered street grid in Manhattan.[2] On Manhattan's West Side, 96th Street is the northern boundary of the New York City steam system, the largest such system in the world, which pumps 30 billion pounds of steam into 100,000 buildings south of the street.[3] (The northern boundary on the East Side is 89th Street.[4])
East 96th Street
From the FDR Drive to First Avenue, 96th Street is the northern border of Zone A, a flood evacuation zone.[5] When Hurricane Sandy hit New York City in 2012, residents on neighboring blocks found out they, too, were in a flood zone, and the city revised its zone borders outward. Residents of the public housing projects as well as high rise apartments in the zone were left without power, although it was restored to most of the area after a day or two.
East 96th Street, particularly near Second and Third Avenues, underwent significant gentrification in the late 1980s. By 2005, a wave of speculation for Harlem real estate pushed a corridor of luxury condos and co-ops up First Avenue from 96th Street as well. The construction of the Second Avenue Subway, which built a station on the street, disrupted lives and businesses along 96th Street,[8] but its opening in January, 2017, was expected to further increase residential and commercial development in East Harlem, as well as increasing housing value in Yorkville.[9]
On the West Side, 96th Street runs through a natural valley passing under Riverside Drive and leading down to the former Stryker's Bay. It is regarded as the southern border of the nearby Manhattan Valley area.[11][12]
Broadway at West 96th Street was home to two ornate theaters – the Riverside and the Riviera / Japanese Gardens – each designed in the early 20th century, and both gone by 1976.[13]
In the mid 1980s, parts of West 96th Street began to convert from rental units to cooperative housing. At the time, crime remained a problem. As late as the early 1990s, drug dealing was rampant on 96th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, and Larry Hogue, a homeless crack addict known as the "Wild Man of 96th Street" terrorized the street for several years until being forced into treatment and extended state custody.[14] In 2009, Hogue escaped from custody and returned briefly to West 96th Street before being found and returned to treatment.[15] The decision by the city to continue locating homeless and frequently drug addicted residents in large former Single Room Occupancy hotels (SROs) within a several block radius of West 96th Street and Broadway continues to be controversial.[16]
The rapid development of Columbus Avenue from 96th to 100th Street around 2009 resulted in a burgeoning concentration of large, national chain stores.
The West 96th Street gate to Central Park is called "Gate of All Saints".
The M96 bus line serves a majority of the street, and the M106 serves the western portion of the street and connects it with East 106th Street.
In popular culture
In the 1989 film When Harry Met Sally..., Harry and Sally are seen buying their Christmas tree from The Plant Shed, a long-established neighborhood store on West 96th Street, near Broadway. A year later, no longer a couple, Sally is seen buying her tree there and trudging home alone with the tree dragging behind her.
In the How I Met Your Mother episode "Last Time in New York", Ted references some misspelled graffiti on the intersection of 96th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. The graffiti read, "YOUR A P***S", which Ted then corrects to "YOU'RE A P***S".
In the 2008 musical "In the Heights"' opening song In the Heights, Usnavi references 96th street when he breaks the fourth wall, while describing how to get to Washington Heights, Manhattan.
In the 1973 movie The Seven-Ups a famous car chase scene with actor Roy Scheider includes a sequence filmed on West 96th Street from Central Park West to West End Avenue. The chase repeats the same intersections on 96th street several times, specifically the dramatic drop from Amsterdam to Broadway and West End Avenue which makes the cars appear to go aloft as they plunge down the hill.
In Saul Bellow's 1969 novel, Mr. Sammler's Planet, Bellow says of the intersection with Broadway "...Ninety-sixth Street tilted at all four corners, the kiosks and movie houses, the ramparts of wire fastened newspaper bundles, and the colors of panic waving."
^"Remarks of the Commissioners for Laying out Streets and Roads in the City of New York, under the Act of April 3, 1807"Archived June 10, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, accessed May 2, 2007. "These streets are all sixty feet wide except fifteen, which are one hundred feet wide, viz.: Numbers fourteen, twenty-three, thirty-four, forty-two, fifty-seven, seventy-two, seventy-nine, eighty-six, ninety-six, one hundred and six, one hundred and sixteen, one hundred and twenty-five, one hundred and thirty-five, one hundred and forty-five, and one hundred and fifty-five—the block or space between them being in general about two hundred feet."
^Hinds, Michael DeCourcy (May 13, 1984). "Battling to Control E. 96th Growth". The New York Times. Retrieved December 5, 2007. East 96th Street is not just a dead piece of real estate – it is a socially important corridor,' said August Heckscher. 'With El Barrio to the north and Yorkville to the south, it could be the meeting place of two cultures, a river into which both flow.
NY 9A / Henry Hudson Parkway in Riverside Park
FDR Drive in East Harlem
