Issue 01 July/August 2024
We actually live here
A guide to New York’s Upper East Side
by Ana Pelayo Connery

Locations

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Every New York neighborhood has its own vibe. And its diehard cheerleaders. But none surely resonates like the historic enclave of the Upper East Side. It’s classic and it’s classy. Renowned for elegance, sophistication and cultural institutions, the Upper East Side also owns the city’s best shopping and Michelin-star dining. According to its cheerleaders, of course. Are they right?

Let’s get to the heart of it. Turn left out of the Plaza Hotel (were you staying somewhere else?) and straight up 5th Avenue past Central Park Zoo, and you notice a prevailing soft quietness starting to grow under the greenery of trees overhanging streets and the grandeur of NYC’s canopied entrances with their white-gloved doormen.

Still a little south of Carnegie Hill, this elegant Lenox Hill pre-war residence is classic Upper East Side doorman territory. (Shutterstock)

Carnegie Hill

This is the neighborhood within the neighborhood. Carnegie Hill runs ten blocks north from 86th Street and west from 3rd Avenue to 5th Avenue. It’s named after the industrial steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie, who journeyed from his native Scotland to Pittsburgh and then to mega-wealth. This wasn’t a fashionable location in 1902 when Carnegie built his six-story Gilded Age mansion on 5th at 91st, but soon enough other families followed. Rockefellers, Astors, Vanderbilts put up their own palaces nearby. Carnegie Hill resident Edith Wharton lived at 884 Park Ave and, with her fellow socialites as subject matter, became the first female novelist to win the Pulitzer Prize (for The Age of Innocence, published in 1920).

The Arthur Ross Terrace and Garden at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum – formerly the Carnegie mansion. (Agaton Strom Photography/Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum)

The Carnegie mansion now houses the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, a Jackson Pollock or two up from that icon amongst architectural icons, the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. This tree-lined proximity to world-class museums and cultural institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art continues to attract new residents, while keeping older invested families close to their heritage touchstones. In between the lah-di-dah, you don’t have to be Annie Hall to live here, but it helps.

Families valued

Tucked between the classic storefronts, stately pre-war buildings and tidy rows of “tony” townhomes (adj. US, upscale, fashionable) are new luxury boutique buildings such as The 74 on 74th Street. They brim with amenities like Pilates studios, 24-hour concierges, pet spas and (because who doesn’t need one in every city?) putting greens. “A younger crowd has definitely moved in,” says Stuart Orfuss, a real estate professional who grew up in the Upper East Side and still calls the neighborhood home.

The area’s maintained its charm and has always been family friendly, with great schools.

It’s a place for families too. Lyss Stern is a best-selling author of books such as If You Give a Mom a Martini and the founder of Diva Moms, an events company catering to well-heeled mothers. With her finger on the meta-vibrating upscale pulse of the neighborhood, she and her husband are raising their three children in the Upper East Side, in part because it’s so welcoming to young and old alike. “The area’s maintained its charm and has always been family friendly, with great schools,” she says. Another plus is the mix of independent shops here. Need a hardware store? Check. A children’s boutique? Chic check. Park, Madison and Lexington avenues are bountiful shopping destinations, and the side streets of smaller shops always spring a surprise.

Cocktail hour

Peter Morris, an Upper East Side resident for 34 years, has a favorite spot. The Carlyle, that legendary landmark hotel, is so beloved by dignitaries and celebrities that Netflix made a star-studded documentary about it called Always at The Carlyle. As is Peter Morris. “That’s the thing about New York,” he says. “You can go to places like Bemelmans Bar for cocktails and you never know who you might see.” George Clooney is a regular when he’s in town. Rumor has it that JFK conducted an affair with Marilyn Monroe there. And most Monday nights from 1997 until recently, Woody Allen would have been found behind a clarinet, as his jazz band joyfully recreates New York City’s golden years at Café Carlyle.

Cafe Carlyle. Keeper of secret Upper East Side stories since 1955. (The Carlyle Hotel)

The Carlyle towers above its Upper East Side neighbors – in a neighborly way. (Justin Bare)

Around the corner is The Mark Hotel, where Morris went for haircuts from the famed stylist Frédéric Fekkai for years. At dinner one night in The Mark Restaurant by chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Morris noticed Mick Jagger sitting at the table next to him. Next time it was the actress Rita Wilson. “You just run into people like that in this part of New York.”

But don’t let all the marquee names fool you. This is still New York, where neighborhood restaurants are cherished by residents, and many of the owners are on first-name terms with locals. Antonucci Cafe on East 81st Street has retained a lot of the same wait staff for the past 20 years, and that speaks of the feel of the neighborhood as a whole.

Go figure

Starchitects and designers like Pelli Clarke and Rafael de Càrdenas, both of The 74, continue to usher outstanding buildings into the Upper East Side. “Even the newer buildings fit in, yet it feels so historic here still,” says Stuart Orfuss. “The rest of New York is great, but in the Upper East Side you see a lot of the same friendly faces. Plus the real estate prices are more stable here than in the trendier downtown neighborhoods.”

Indeed the area is recognised as one of the most solid investments you can make in Manhattan. The proof is in the numbers. With a median sales price of $1.3 million, the average price per square foot for a typical two- or three-bedroom penthouse in the Upper East Side is around $1,380. That’s an increase of 22 percent from this time last year. Classic.

Main image: iStock

Topics in this article

  • Reporter: Ana Pelayo Connery
  • Ana Pelayo Connery is a journalist whose editorial work has appeared in CNN, USA Today, Travel + Leisure, Real Simple, House Beautiful, HGTV and Better Homes & Gardens.