Needle Park: The Wild, Wild West Side

It's hard to believe that the space at 72 St and Broadway which now contains the beautiful new IRT subway kiosk was known during the 70s as "Needle Park," due to the presence of so many junkies and drug dealers. But the area which we know call the Upper West Side (or Yuppie West Side) was not a bastion of gourmet markets, boutiques and sushi bars during that era.

A quick tour of the Upper West Side will reveal a lot of impressive architecture. Obviously, these buildings were constructed for folks with money, but a closer look will also reveal plenty of simple tenement buildings, especially on the side streets. There were also numerous hotels along Broadway, as far up as the Columbia University area. During the hard times which hit our town in past decades, there was a significant exodus of upper and middle class people from the area, although many did remain. Let's not forget that during the 60s and early 70s there was a prevailing sentiment that our town was going to hell in a bucket, and many people
decided to leave before we turned into another Detroit. The vacant space was rapidly occupied by poorer persons, as well as a large collection of drug addicts and other pillars of the community. Huge apartments were carved up into smaller units or single rooms. The hotels, which at one time served as clean, basic housing for single working people, soon became full of undesirables, as well as many former mental patients, and a few old folks who could not afford to leave. The mental patients were frequently there as part of the State's misguided plan to "de-institutionalize" patients from psychiatric hospitals by placing them in the community with "support services." Of course, many of the ex-patients could not handle life on the outside, and the "services" they were given were rarely adequate. As a result, there were many disturbed people hanging around the area. There were so many needy people in the area that the stretch of Amsterdam Avenue above 96th Street became known as a veritable social service shopping mall.

The area parallel to Broadway during the 70s was one of incredible contrasts. You did have some beautiful buildings, as well as some upscale shops such as Zabar's (which was only about 1/4 of its current size), but turn up a side street and things could change rapidly. There were many abandoned buildings, especially East of Broadway. In 1979 I visited a friend who was renovating a brownstone on 104 St and Manhattan Ave. Manhattan Ave still has something of a mixed reputation, but back then the whole area was downright frightening at night. I recall walking down the
middle of the street, looking both ways, through blocks consisting mostly of abandoned tenements. As for my friend's home, it was part of a row of once grand brownstones that had been built for physicians at a long-gone hospital. These had gone to seed, and several of the handsome structures were vacant.

What happened? As we've discussed before, the 70s was the decade when folks started re-discovering the good side of urban life (or the down side of suburbia). Adventurous souls in search of good housing, lots of space and cheap prices started moving into areas such as the Upper West Side, SoHo, etc. At the same time, changes in the tax and housing laws made it easier for owners to convert former hotels to apartment houses - and they did. (Some experts attribute much of the City's homeless problem to these policy changes).