Upper East Side Historic District

Stretching east from Central Park between 59th and 79th Streets, this Manhattan district takes in fifty-seven blocks and 1,044 buildings. Low-scale rowhouses fill the cross streets, some dating from the 1870s and 1880s and many from the early 1900s, while the avenues carry tall apartment houses, institutions and commercial buildings. The earliest surviving house, at 129 East 70th Street, dates from 1862-63. Brownstone rows in Italianate, neo-Grec and Queen Anne styles gave way to Beaux-Arts and neo-Renaissance mansions by architects such as Richard H. Hunt, Delano & Aldrich and McKim, Mead & White. Clubs, churches, stables and the Seventh Regiment Armory add variety, and luxury apartment houses rose mainly in the 1920s. Madison Avenue's rowhouses were converted to shops with storefronts added from 1904 onward. The district was listed because it records the architectural development of this part of the city from the later nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, and it retains a strong sense of place. Ninety-two buildings, including several modern designs, are noted as non-contributing.