Well, the best part is that it is not fashionable. There are long term, very middle class residents, young families, and newly minted grads. It feels like old time NY. Obviously it is not a magnet for the rich and famous. Our building is quiet and comfortable. As for crowds, are you kidding? Just enough people on the streets to keep it safe. No tourists. True the buildings are a sad homage to the legacy of Robert Moses, but all those new glass building are beginning to make the city look like a soulless Houston -- no great shakes either.
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I've always avoided this area like the plague. Grimy, ugly streets, congested and dirty. And sure, I suppose the nightlife is "lively" if your taste leans toward obnoxious bros in backwards baseball hats. Possibly the unhippest neighborhood in the city.
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Poor Rose Hill got squeezed out. Rose Hill had been the name for the neighborhood between Murray Hill and Gramercy Park area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Hill,_Manhattan
Murray Hill is a hill. The hill ends at 3rd Ave. There used to be an elevated subway on 3rd Ave. Often neighborhoods don't cross train tracks. So, in my opinion, Murray Hill only reaches to 3rd Ave.
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I lived at 34th and 2nd for a few years. Great studio apartment on the 34th floor for $750. Those were the days. I called it Murray Valley.
I have seen a few mentions, but I have to highlight Todaro Brothers. Way before there were 'gourmet' markets there was Todaro. PB
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I guess I should have looked at the slide show before commenting on Todaro. We called it To Die Brothers. PB
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Your front page online states that Kips Bay is one of the "city's" few genuinely middle-class neighborhoods. Not so--there are numerous areas in the city, only they are outside Manhattan. I suggest you visit the other boroughs.
Another micro-aggression perpetrated by the limousine crowd.
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The quote is "The least fashionable neighborhood in Manhattan" and "One of the few middle-class neighborhoods here anymore." The speaker wasn't addressing the city as a whole, but rather Manhattan in specific.
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I lived in Kips Bay for 9 years as a medical student and later house officer at NYU. It seemed like a neighborhood off the beaten path, which kept it nice and quiet even while it was easily accessible to the rest of Manhattan. I lived there when it had a Borders Bookstore next to the AMC and loved taking my son to Story Hour. Other than the subsequent loss of a bookstore, I found the neighborhood a wonderful place to live.
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$600,000 for a studio apartment and people think it's a middle-class neighborhood? I guess if you bought there 30 years ago then yes, otherwise you would need to be making at least $150K a year to afford it, and that's certainly not middle class...
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Here's the peculiar thing (and I'm NOT in this income category, I make much less....): I live in the Bay Area, which I think is somewhat analogous to Manhatten in terms of housing costs and income. In our area a just out of school nurse makes $100K with overtime, and a new fireman makes $90K-$110K. An IT professional (with just a couple of years of experience) makes $150K and a school teacher in many of our Districts make $80K-$90K. My point--$200K-$300K is middle class in our area! And that's what is holding up the housing market. These folks CAN afford to buy $1million starter homes. (Well, couples anyway....). Just a 100 miles away, middle class might be total household income of $80K, or even $100K. Middle class in high income areas operates on a unique scale.
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It's all relative. In Manhattan, YES, it's middle class. The upper class makes upwards of $400,000.
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Dover Street Market, Rose Bakery, Upland, Birch Coffee - all new businesses that have opened in the last few years and they are all bringing, finally, some style and taste to this part of town. The area also has the most handsome men in the city, maybe the world. $600K for a 400 sq. ft. studio sounds about right. Cheapest apartment in 88 & 90 Lex right now is asking $2.1M, for a one bedroom.
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Unless you live in a very expensive sound-proof skyscraper, you will be unable to sleep from the noise coming from bars like Tonic and the Banc Cafe (pictured in one of the 7 photos in this article). For example, the Banc Cafe has live acoustic music on Sunday nights from 10 pm until 1 am while people are trying to sleep to go to work or school the next day. Sirens continue throughout the day and night since ambulances are rushing to NYU hospital, and there's constant congested traffic to enter the FDR Drive. The construction noise is deafening. For the rents charged in Kips Bay, you will be surrounded by an abundance of mostly fast food dives, gangs near Kips Bay Towers on First Avenue, the men's homeless shelter on 30 Street & First Avenue where some of the men aggressively talk to women or become intimidating asking for money. The plus side is it's close to buses and other neighborhoods that are also priced too high for the average working New Yorker.
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I live there too and while I'm going to miss the proximity to Fairway and Trader Joe's, Todaro's and Dough Boys to name just a few, I count the days until I move out of the neighborhood where every day is Siren Day and Make Sure Your Horn Works Multiple Times Day. Weekends into the wee hours are punctuated by street fights spilling out from the many bars and because of the traffic heading into the Midtown Tunnel taxis often won't approach Third Avenue to drop me at home.
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Those are almost FiDi/TriBeCa/Battery Park prices. I'd rather pay around half that to live on the UWS (or pay exactly that to live in FiDi or the south Village).
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I have lived in this neighborhood, either on Lexington Avenue and 28th, or 3rd Avenue and 29th, since 1989. It used to be great 'pre-bro'. The only bar nearby when I moved in was a very straight un-friendly gay bar that made me leave before 10:00 p.m. How I miss those days! Now I live across the street from Tonic, where the Penn Staters never graduate. For the record, us old timers still refer to the neighborhood as "grey blob", as that is how it appeared on the old maps in the back of taxis.
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Ahem, lots of that is Rose Hill, not Kips Bay.
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Confirmed: NYC is insane. $599,000 for a studio? Over 1/2 millions dollars for 400 square feet? Sheeesh!
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Thanks for pointing out what these NYT's profiles always forget to mention: this neighborhood, like most in Manhattan, is only accessible to the wealthy (it's easier to give in to insanity when you have money to spare). As a bastion of liberalism, it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect the Times to slip in a reality check regarding growing income inequality and its face in NYC. Instead what you get are occasionally thoughtful articles discussing the issue in other parts of the paper, then pieces like this that normalize it.
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The New York Times has lived in this bubble for as long as I can remember.
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I lived on the Kips Bay/Flatiron border, on Lexington between 27 & 28, for two years, and absolutely loved it. 5 minutes from Madison Square Park, Eataly, the 6 and N/W trains, and now there's a Trader Joe's! Totally underappreciated neighborhood that is central and has everything you need at your doorstep.
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And a TOTAL absence of tourists. It's a lot like Manhattan was a few decades ago.
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I lived on 28th and Second in a walkup in the late 1990s, near that movie theater (same side). It was extremely depressing. There were homeless people camping in the vestibule and my 20 something neighbor shot himself to death (my roommate heard the gunshot). I couldn't get out fast enough. I still find it depressing 20 years later.
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Tgbfa - wow, sorry about that roommate, but are you conflating your opinion of depressing to his suicide? As if the neighborhood was so bad he killed himself??
6
Living in Kips Bay, with no mention of the extraordinary Waterside Plaza community???
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The best bet in that area in the 80’s and 90’s then Ravitz bought it from the Govt. And the prices went up and the maintainance did not. I have fond memories of Le Petite Auberge on Lex / 28th and Mon Parie on 29th and Mike’s Pizza 2nd / 25th SW corner. And the best bagel / lox Ess a Bagel, 2nd Ave / 20th ??
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I think that Ess a Bagel would be considered to be in a different neighborhood which I don't know the name of, even though I live in it myself. Below 23rd St. is not Kips Bay. Ess a Bagel is kind of in Stuy Town.
I had New Year's Eve dinner at La Petite Auberge, many years ago! We loved it, and mourned its closure.
2
my first apt in NYC
1977 studio at kips bay. paid $245 a month
It went condo not co-op in 1981
BOUGHT IT FOR $25,000
flipped it same day for $65,000
nice area
13
I live in Kips Bay, in the I.M Pei building Kips Bay Towers, and although I get a little defensive living in what is characterized as a very generic place, the benefits are many.
- The Kips Bay Towers offers large glass windows overlooking the condo's private park, and although the building is old, it has all the usual amenities and is very quiet, being concrete and directed away from the main streets.
- I have a 20 walk to work each morning to Grand Central - I work near 42nd and Madison - and part of the reason we chose midtown was my need for easy transportation back when I was a consultant, with easy access to Wall Street, Connecticut, Jersey City, and Midtown.
- Our building is near NYU Langone medical facilities, which make making appointments very easy, and it is literally half a block walk.
- Kips Bay Cinema is next door, and although not an art house theater, it plays high-quality movies is a nicely laid out setting.
- We get most of our groceries from FreshDirect, but can easily pop over to Trader Joe's or Fairway to pick up anything else, and even Todaro's.
- There is a high density of educated professionals and young college graduates, as well as seniors. Oddly, Kips Bay Towers is known as a NORC, naturally occurring retirements community, but also houses many medical professionals and UN personnel.
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I lived at Kips Bay for years
my complaints? Single pain windows,,,drafty and not sealed well
awful air cond. jut awful,,,
otherwise enjoy the view
3
The board has repeatedly floated the idea of replacements, but many tenants find the cost prohibitive. We'd jump at the chance.
The things I do not like:
- Facade and walkway upkeep
- Snow maintenance, when they put up signs and tape
- Always hated the windows - reminds me of grade school - but other tenants won't approve improvement to something eco-friendly
- Converting 32nd to a two-way street
- Other tenants' windows treatments. Some are very shabby to loo up at.
6
My first apt. was on 25th between 2-3rd. I remember Kip's Bay fondly (lived there for 5 years) and absotutely LOVED Todaro Bros. and HSF...so many great places are gone, glad to know that Todaro's still survives!
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