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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. |