Манхэттен алқабы (Блумингдейл)

Neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City

Manhattan Valley (also known as Bloomingdale) is a neighborhood in the northern part of the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by West 110th Street to the north, Central Park West to the east, West 96th Street to the south, and Broadway to the west. The area is located on a gentle slope between West 96th Street, and W. 110th Street. By the 18th century it contained numerous farms and country residences of many of the city's well off, a major parcel of which was the Apthorp Farm. The main artery was the Bloomingdale Road, which began north of where Broadway and the Bowery Lane (now Fourth Avenue) join (at modern Union Square) and wended its way northward to about modern 116th Street in Morningside Heights, where the road farther north was known as the Kingsbridge Road. Within the confines of the modern day Upper West Side, the road passed through the hamlets of Harsenville, bounded by 68th Street, 81st Street, Central Park West, and the Hudson River; Strycker's Bay, located on a now infilled inlet between 86th and 96th Streets; and Bloomingdale Village, a place near the current Columbia University campus. In the early 1800s, John Clendening owned a farm that covered much of the valley, roughly from the Bloomingdale Road to 8th Avenue between 99th and 105th Streets, with a large mansion near Amsterdam and 104th Streets. The area was known as the "Clendening Valley". Although the Clendening estate was divided and sold in 1845, the Clendening Valley name persisted until the 1880s, and a Clendening Hotel existed into the early 20th century. Early development in the 1870s and 1880s focused on institutional care for the sick or aged, and included the Hebrew Home for the Aged, the Catholic Old Age Home, the Home for Respectable Aged Indigent Females, and the Towers Nursing Home constructed as a cancer ward by John Jacob Astor III in 1884. Also located in Manhattan Valley at the time was the New York Cancer Hospital, which was built in 1887 at 455 Central Park West. These, together with the Lion Brewery, gave the area its earliest landmarks. The neighborhood began to fill out residentially at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, when the New York City Subway's IRT Ninth Avenue Line in 1870 and the IRT Broadway – Seventh Avenue Line in 1904 allowed the public ready access to uptown Manhattan. Columbia's purchase of the Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum at around the same time as the subway's arrival naturally made the neighborhood more attractive as well. Young boys and girls took advantage of Central Park and Riverside Drive or played stick ball and roller hockey in the streets. The 1950s saw many migrants from Puerto Rico take up residence in the Upper West Side, and a proposed project to eliminate the older brownstone apartments began to drive earlier residents to the suburbs.

By the 1950s and 1960s, the area went into decline, in line with a trend of general urban deterioration in Manhattan. Urban renewal programs, headed by city planner Robert Moses, called for several city blocks to be demolished in order to construct the Frederick Douglass Houses in the superblock where they stand today. The development of the Douglass Houses greatly increased the density of low income renters without providing much in the way of amenities (food shops, clubs, restaurants, and open space) for them to use. By 1960, the Bloomingdale neighborhood had the highest juvenile delinquency rate in Manhattan and the second highest number of welfare cases per 1,000 residents. New investment came to the area in the 1980s. Soon, however, new investment was brought to a halt by wavering property prices in the late 1980s and early 1990s, combined with the rise of crack use and dealers in the area, which gave Manhattan Valley the reputation as one of the easiest places in the city to score a hit. In addition, there was a lot of violence on the streets of Manhattan Valley, especially at night, when gang wars were prevalent. The new name and recovery were both much bolstered by the non profit Manhattan Valley Development Corporation (MVDC), founded in 1968. It sought to differentiate itself from other community development organizations by opposing the demolition of pre war buildings in favor of renovation and seeking to promote small business and "prevent harassment by out side management companies prevalent in low income 'minority' neighborhoods." With this gentrification, rents in the area rose. The estimated population of Latino residents was fast dwindling by 1987. In 2005, brokers estimated that properties in the area were approximately 30% less expensive than comparable properties in the adjacent south. The neighborhood's proximity to the much valued Central Park as well as to three separate subway lines make it attractive to young commuters, and, as of 2006, prices were rising dramatically as New Yorkers were tipped off by their brokers.

According to the 2000 United States Census (in which Manhattan Valley's census tracts are 187, 189, 191, 193, and 195), 48,983 people live in the community. Of the population, 44% are of Latino origin, 32% are African Americans, and 24% are Asians, whites, and other races. Fifty five percent of the residents are of very low income (below 50% of the area's median family income, which is $13,854). In 2009, the more affluent families resided west of Broadway and east of Manhattan Avenue. Of the Manhattan Valley population, 20.76% had income from Social Security and 23% relied on public assistance.

Ira Cohen, the poet, lived in an apartment at 106th Street and Broadway. Barack Obama, the future U. S. president, rented an apartment at 142 West 109th Street, between Columbus Avenue and Amsterdam Avenue, while a student at Columbia University.