YORKVILLE

Area: 59th St. on the south to 96th St. on the north; from Lexington Ave. east
to East River.

Popularly synonymous with the German quarter, Yorkville in reality is
a much more inclusive section. The names on newsstands, shop windows,
restaurants, bars, and many travel bureaus indicate that Czechs, Slovaks,
Hungarians, and Irish also live in this locality. However, in the vicinity
of East Eighty-sixth Street, Yorkville's Broadway, Germans and Austrians
overwhelmingly predominate.

German families have settled in Yorkville since the original hamlet was
established in the 1790'5. The village centered around the old Boston Post
Road (Third Avenue) between what is now Eighty-third and Eighty-ninth
Streets. In the vicinity were the river and country estates of Manhattan's
early aristocrats—the Astors, Primes, Rhinelanders. In 1834 the New York
and Harlem Railroad was extended to the village; a year later a stagecoach
line was established. These two events signalized the breaking up of the old
homesteads and accelerated the hamlet's development as a suburban com-
munity. During the 1880's and 1890's solid blocks of stereotyped brown-
stones were constructed as homes for the well-to-do; but they were rapidly
taken over by families who had moved away from the congested "Little
Germany" in Tompkins Square. In the years following, the Germans, un-
like many other foreign-born groups, adopted American mores, and York-
ville began to lose its Germanic quality. During the 1920's, however, the
postwar poverty of Germany together with the comparatively high German
immigration quota of the United States gave impetus to a new influx. The
district again became the home of New York's German colony.

First Avenue is the most central route through Yorkville. Marie Curie
Avenue and its extension, East End Avenue, skirt the district's water front.
Behind the Rockefeller Institute and the New York Hospital, Marie Curie
Avenue has a pleasant park-promenade to Seventieth Street, furnishing
a good view of the East River and Welfare Island. East End Avenue leads
to the charming Carl Schurz Park on the river bank between Eighty-fourth
and Eighty-ninth Streets. Beginning in the northern part of this district is
the East River Drive, which also has a walk along the water's edge.

The First Swedish Baptist Church, a block and a half west of First
Avenue at 250 East Sixty-first Street, is an interesting modern building
developed from Swedish architecture. Cornerstones of black granite con-
trast with the light brick facade. Doors, set at an angle to the street line,