History of Yorkville

Yorkville is a neighborhood within the Upper East Side of the borough of Manhattan in the city of New York City. Roughly speaking, it is bound by 79th Street on the south, the East River on the east, 96th Street (i.e., Spanish Harlem) on the north, and Third Avenue on the west. The neighborhood's main artery, East 86th Street, was sometimes called the "German Broadway." Yorkville includes Gracie Mansion, the official home of the mayor of New York City, and Carl Schurz Park

For much of the twentieth century, Yorkville was inhabited by many people of German and Hungarian descent, with many German and Hungarian restaurants and bakeries. In the 1930s, the neighborhood was the home base of Fritz Kuhn's German-American Bund, the most notorious pro-Nazi group in 1930's America. As a result of their presence, Yorkville in this period was the scene of fierce street battles between pro- and anti-Nazi Germans and German-Americans. Today there are rare remnants of Yorkville's German origins (Schaller & Weber grocery shop, Elk Candy Company, Orwasher's bakery), but it has largely become an upper middle class residential neighborhood. Since the 1990s, Old World merchants, such as the Kleine Konditorei bakery and Bremen House market (both German), as well as the Rigo bakery and Mokka restaurant (Hungarian) have closed. The Steuben's Day Parade still windes it's way through the neighborhood, however.

Yorkville is the birthplace of baseball legend Lou Gehrig, in 1903. Actor James Cagney also grew up in the neighborhood.

And Yorkville is also the birthplace of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, circa 1920, founded by eleven local business men.

Yorkville was the home of the Marx Brothers at 179 East 93rd street.