West Side Story and The Upper West Side

The Upper West Side is an affluent and residential neighborhood in Manhattan, New York City, that lies between Central Park and the Hudson River and stretches from West 59th Street to West 110th Street. It is one of New York City’s wealthiest neighborhoods. But it wasn’t always so. The Upper West Side used to be a scary place. And just like most of the United States, the Upper West Side, abbreviated UWS, has been shaped and molded by the continuous influx and exodus of immigrants.

In the beginning, the Upper West Side was inhabited by the Lenape people who have since then been pushed to Oklahoma by the Europeans. By the eighteenth century the Upper West Side, not yet named so, from 96th to 110th, was a rising influential colonial New York neighborhood inhabited by Dutch settlers. It was named Bloomingdale District. At first Bloomingdale went from 96th street to 110th but it expanded from 23rd to 125th. The area was comprised of villages and farms.  By the late nineteenth century, UWS was an industrial area. During the mid-century, Central Park was created pushing people back and creating unsavory environments. However, change came to UWS at the beginning of the twentieth century. The opening of the first subway line in 1904 triggered residential expansion. Which leads to our movie.

In the 1950s and 60s immigrants from Eastern Europe and the Caribbean settled in the neighborhood. 67th Street, inhabited by African Americans, was a rough neighborhood in the 50s. Its tenement housing was used to shoot West Side Story before they were demolished. Lincoln Center and Lincoln Towers now lie there.

In “West Side Story”, which is a modern take on “Romeo and Juliet”, two gangs are feuding over a neighborhood.  One gang is made up of white teenagers and the other gang is made up of Puerto Ricans teens. This highlights the racial tension of the mid twentieth century and the roughness of the UWS. An interview with an Upper West Side resident whose father lived in the neighborhood for decades gives us some insight into how the neighborhood has transformed.

Our interviewee is named Pristine. She is an 18-year-old college student. Pristine is Filipina and has only lived in the neighborhood for two years. In our interview she talks a lot about her stepfather, a white man, who has lived on the Upper West Side for decades. Here’s a segment of our conversation:

J: Has the neighborhood changed in any way since you moved in?

P: Yeah, they paved the street. So now it’s better.   But it hasn’t really changed- oh, businesses are closing now because rent is rising. People are still the same. Their personalities haven’t really changed. At least from my perspective. But business-wise, it’s hard to maintain a business. It is a good neighborhood. It’s peaceful at night. When I’m sleeping at night, I don’t hear cars or other noise. The neighbors respect each other.  It’s not a super friendly neighborhood but we don’t bother each other. We just live our lives…But it’s really expensive.

J: So you said your father has lived here way longer?

P: Hm hm. He lived in this neighborhood with his family until he was about twenty. Then he moved out but he stayed about a block away haha. He had to learn Spanish to survive. He wanted to know what his Spanish enemies were talking about-

J: What do you mean by “Spanish enemies”?

P: Oh, hm. It’s like in West Side Story. He went to Saint Gregory [The Great School]. It’s a middle school on 90th Street and he made enemies in school. And like the state of the neighborhood at that time wasn’t so great.

J: Why wasn’t it great?

P: Hm, everyone wanted to kill each other. Everyone was very aggressive. But my dad always had his brothers to defend him when they got into fights. He always says he was exposed to death at a young age. He would see dead bodies all over. They were a lot of gangs. And drugs. My dad went to the Vietnam War because he was with his friends who were using drugs. He wasn’t doing it, he just got caught with them. They gave him the options to either go to jail, do community service or go to war. He went to war. He was a teenager, about 16, 17. He came back months later because he got shot.

J: Oh, sorry. My stepfather fought in the Vietnam War. Maybe they knew each other.

P: L-o-l maybe.

J: But, yes, then what?

P: Yeah, he came back. He got his GED, then a degree in engineering and after graduation he went to SUNY Syracuse. That’s where he got his medical degree. Then he spent a few years traveling and he took a lot of gap years during school. He started practicing about 15 years ago and went to the Philippines for a medical mission, I guess, where he met my mom.

J: So when did he settle back in the Upper West Side?

P: After he graduated but honestly my dad kept his house and just moved around. My dad is a veteran and he works for the V.A (Veteran Affairs) so he moves around a lot. We moved with him too. I lived in Saipan for about 2 years, then my country, then we came back here.

J: So you’re really cultured. What else can you tell me about living in the Upper West Side?

P: It’s a bit hectic because houses are really small. Especially our apartment. Our kitchen is really small; we have a single bathroom. It’s really cramped.  Everyone [in the neighborhood] keeps to themselves but in a way we all lookout for each other. If we hear the neighbors screaming, we’ll call the cops but we also give everyone their own space. It’s not like a friendly neighborhood when everyone knows each other personally and says hello all the time… Our neighborhood is very kid-friendly. We have a lot of playgrounds around… and my mom says our neighborhood is like a mall because there’s stores everywhere. It’s basically like an upper-middle-class area. It’s a lot of Jews here… but I think it’s diverse. It’s not just white people. I see Hispanics, African Americans and… it’s like about fifty percent of the people here are white and the other fifty percent is everybody else.

J: Bring me back to your dad growing up, what else can you tell me?

P: Okay, well, I’m saying right now that it’s a kid-friendly neighborhood but had you interviewed my dad forty years ago, he would have said the exact opposite. Like it was nothing, I mean nothing, like it is today. You would literally see bodies across alleys. It was bad…

J: Wow. Well, thank you for sharing so much with me, Pristine.

P: You’re welcome.

The experience Pristine’s father went through matches exactly the storyline of West Side Story. Her father, a white Irish man, was always feuding with Hispanics children in school. He fought constantly in packs with his brother against the “Spanish enemies” who also fought in packs. “West Side Story” didn’t show the real ugliness of the times, didn’t showcase the goriness, but it let us have an idea. It was bloody.

“He would see dead bodies all over.”    

 

Although the Upper West Side has changed in appearance from it “West Side Story” days, the appearance of its resident hasn’t changed much. According to NYC.GOV, as of 2015, the Upper West side has a population of 215, 329 people. 67 percent of the population is white, 15 percent is Hispanic, 8 percent is Asian, 7 percent is black and the last 2 percent is “other.” So Pristine was about right when she said the neighborhood was about 50 percent white and 50 percent “everybody else”. Pristine also mentioned that the neighborhood is kid-friendly which makes sense because 15 percent of the population is under 18. Young adults ranging from 18 to 24 make up 6 percent, adults from 25 to 44 make up 35 percent, middle-aged adults from 45 to 64 make up 27 percent, and seasoned adults 65 and up make up 18 percent.

The Upper West Side is no longer a neighborhood of first-generation immigrants as it was before. Only twenty-two percent of its inhabitants are foreign-born. Immigrants generally move to lower-income neighborhoods when they arrive in the United States and the Upper West Side is no longer that type of neighborhood. The life expectancy is also about 83.8 years which can be due to better healthcare and the lack of gang violence.

All of these statistics are quite similar to what they would have looked like in the 70s. In his article in Commentary Magazine, John Podhoretz mentions a study of the Upper West Side in the 60s. In 1966, UWS had 150,000 people residents. 105,000 (70%) of them were white and out of these, 40,000 of them were Jews. 26,000 (17%) of them were Hispanics, and 18,000 (12%) were black. The ethnic makeup of the neighborhood in the 60s is more or less what it is now. Except the people are wealthier and get along better.

From its native beginnings to its current status as a model neighborhood, the Upper West Side has seen many changes, it has been molded, tampered with and carved by different groups of people, each bringing their own cultures and customs, and leaving their imprints. The Upper West Side has improved in its course, in terms of race relations, gang activity and crime, and facade. The UWS is now friendlier, prettier, richer and by the same hand more expensive. The neighborhood that was plagued with crime and poverty has had a makeover and is now one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the City of New York.