By Peter Malbin, The New York Times
WITH street signs naming blocks after George Balanchine and Leonard Bernstein, and a renowned performing arts center, the vibrant Lincoln Square neighborhood abounds with cultural and entertainment opportunities.
At its heart is Lincoln Center, a mecca for opera, ballet, classical music, theater and film audiences. On summer nights, jazz and salsa get the crowd swinging on the Fountain Plaza at Lincoln Center.
The 13-screen Sony Lincoln Square at Broadway and 68th Street attracts large audiences nightly, and the latest foreign films may be seen a few blocks south at the six-screen Lincoln Plaza Cinemas.
O’Neal’s, Fiorello’s and Josephina are among the longstanding restaurants catering to the theater set. Cafe des Artistes attracts prominent people from the arts and media to its tables.
Neighborhood stores like 67 Wine & Spirits and Soutine’s Bakery are part of the mix on or near Columbus Avenue. A 24-hour Food Emporium at 68th Street and Broadway and the recently expanded Fairway market on Broadway at 74th Street deliver to many busy homes in the area.
”The neighborhood is incredibly convenient,” said Arlene Simon, the president of Landmark West, an Upper West Side preservation group, who has lived with her family on West 67th Street for 29 years. ”Central Park is our front lawn.”
The slides at Adventure Playground at Central Park at West 67th Street are a magnet for children, and the flea market in the schoolyard on Columbus and 76th Street, which showcases collectibles, is a popular weekend meeting place.
In the last four years, Lincoln Square has increasingly become a shopping destination. Among the large chain stores are Barnes & Noble, Tower Records, Pottery Barn, Eddie Bauer and the Disney Store. Gracious Home, the upscale housewares store, is coming this fall.
ABC has its headquarters in the neighborhood and there are also a number of associations near Lincoln Square, which is zoned for mixed-use residential, entertainment and commercial development. In 1969, the City Planning Commission created the Special Lincoln Square District to encourage development from West 60th to 68th Street between Amsterdam Avenue and parts of Central Park West. The city amended its zoning for the district in 1994, restricting the height of buildings on Broadway to 25 to 30 stories, depending on various factors.
”The neighborhood has changed enormously,” said Barry Rosenberg, a of Community Board 7 member who has lived on West 67th Street 30 years. ”We are becoming more like Times Square North and less like a mixed-use residential community.”
DENNIS ROONEY, a producer in the music business, and his wife, Jacqueline Jones, who works at the Metropolitan Opera, have just paid $275,000 for a 900-square-foot, two-bedroom, one-bath co-op with a terrace on West 66th Street near West End Avenue.
”Public transportation is convenient, and for my wife it’s walking distance to the Met,” Mr. Rooney said. ”One thing we will enjoy being close to is the Walter Reade Theater.” The theater, which is part of Lincoln Center, specializes in film festivals, retrospectives and international movies.
In the 1990’s, the Lincoln Center area has become one of the city’s prime condominium settings, said Jeff Sholeen, a broker with the Corcoran Group. There are about 20 condominium buildings in the West 60’s; the most luxurious is the 52-story Trump International Tower at One Central Park West. Following closely are three Millennium Partners towers, from 66th to 68th Streets and from Broadway to Columbus Avenue.
Opera stars, television talk-show hosts and athletes are some of the residents of the 27- to 56-story Millennium buildings, which were constructed in the last five years with retail spaces as their lower floors. Their 1,000-square-foot one-bedrooms sell for about $500,000, and 1,600-square-foot two-bedrooms fetch about $800,000, said Gayle Porigow, a broker with Vandenberg Real Estate, which specializes in the area.
Central Park West in the 60’s is all co-op except for two condominiums, Trump International and, at No. 25, the Century. On the low-rise side streets between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West is a mixture of single-family town houses, brownstone apartment buildings and rental and co-op apartment houses.
AT the nearly completed Trump Place rental building at 180 Riverside Boulevard, the first building in the contentious 16-building Riverside South development in the former Penn Yards site to the west of Lincoln Center, available studios rent for $1,650 to $1,780, one bedrooms for $2,275 to $3,200 and two-bedrooms for $4,000 to $6,000. West End Towers at 75 West End Avenue rents studios for $1,400 to $1,600, one-bedrooms for $1,700 to $2,100 and two-bedrooms for $2,800 to $3,200.
A five-bedroom, five-story town house on West 68th Street sold for $2.7 million in June. Many properties on West 67th Street between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West were built as artists’ studios in the early 20th century and are now three-bedroom duplex co-ops with double-height ceilings that sell for more than $1 million.
The extension of the Ninth Avenue Elevated Railway in 1879, which ran from 53d to 145th Streets, spurred residential construction in the area. The affluent settled on Central Park West and the middle class moved into row houses on 68th Street and above. Tenements on Ninth (Columbus) and 10th (Amsterdam) Avenues and the side streets in between housed many working class immigrants.
In 1908, a 55-foot Statue of Liberty was installed on the roof of the Liberty Warehouse Building, now the site of O’Neal’s restaurant at 43 West 64th Street. Before World War I, the Lincoln Square Theater was one of several vaudeville houses in the area. The artists Raphael Soyer and George Bellows had studios in the Lincoln Arcade building at Broadway and West 65th Street, now the site of the Juilliard School.
Amsterdam Avenue between 56th and 69th Streets, a deteriorating area with a high crime rate, became known as San Juan Hill. In 1957 city officials designated an 18-block area as the Lincoln Square Urban Renewal Project. The construction of Lincoln Center, a branch of Fordham University and public schools from 1959 to 1969 helped to restore confidence in the neighborhood.
Tenements in the neighborhood were demolished and families were relocated. Parts of the 1961 movie ”West Side Story” were filmed in streets in the area, with abandoned tenements as backdrops, noted Peter Salwen, the author of ”Upper West Side Story.”
About 2,400 people live in the New York City Housing Authority’s 13-building Amsterdam Houses, bounded by 61st and 64th Streets and Amsterdam and West End Avenues. The average income of the families living there is $14,978.
The neighborhood, which is in Community School District 3, has three public elementary schools. Liz Sostre, district spokeswoman, said that the pre-k through grade 5 P.S. 191 had ”a strong focus on literacy” and that the k-5 P.S. 199 focused on science. The k-3 Special Music School of America at 129 West 67th Street is a public elementary school for musically gifted children.
Parents may apply to any middle school in District 3. The 5-8 Center School at 270 West 70th Street focuses on theater arts. The 6-8 Lincoln Academy at 210 West 61st Street, with 180 children, provides a small, supportive learning environment.
The five-year-old, 700-student Beacon High School at 227-243 West 61st Street has a rigorous academic curriculum and sends about 80 percent of its graduates on to higher education. Some advanced students are able to take classes at the nearby Fordham campus. The other neighborhood secondary school is the Martin Luther King Jr. High School at 122 Amsterdam Avenue.
ADMISSION to the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music, Art and Performing Arts at 108 Amsterdam Avenue is by audition. In addition to the academic program, students spend several hours in an arts studio.
The private Ethical Culture School at 33 Central Park West educates about 510 students in pre-K through grade 6. The school was founded in 1878 by Felix Adler, a humanist philosopher. Tuition ranges from $15,475 to $16,625, depending on grade.
About 200 students attend the grade 4-to-12 Professional Children’s School at 132 West 60th Street. Tuition ranges from $13,000 to $15,000. At the college-level Juilliard School, for music, dance and drama, the tuition is $15,200. Admission is by audition and only 9 percent of applicants are accepted, a school spokeswoman said.
The West Side Y.M.C.A. at 63d Street has preschool classes, day-care and a nursery school for children aged 2 1/2 to 5. Annual tuition ranges from $3,800 to $7,000. The Y offers a gym, two pools, basketball, squash, racquetball, as well as classes in self-defense, tai chi, yoga and aerobics. Working out, networking and celebrity-spotting are all possible at the Reebok Sports Club on Columbus Avenue, where the initiation fee is $1,175 and monthly dues are $170.
Community and preservation groups are concerned that the Trump project, which is eventually to have 5,700 apartments, as well as the proposed development of the Coliseum site at Columbus Circle, will add to the congestion in the area.
”It’s a wonderful neighborhood, but sometimes you can barely walk on the street because it is so crowded,” said Councilwoman Ronnie Eldridge, a Democrat, who lives in the area.
