Yorkville (Manhattan)
Yorkville is a district in New York City on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Location
The limits of Yorkville form the East River to the east, the Third Avenue on the west and 96th Street to the north. The southern border is seen in part on the 79th Street, partly on 72nd Street and occasionally pulled up to the 59th.
History
The development of the area of a suburb outlying to a central district of Manhattan began in the 1860s. The 1878 -built elevated railway on Third Avenue opened up the area and worked at the same time as the boundary between the petty-bourgeois middle- Yorkville and the west adjacent, more genteel parts of the Upper East Side to Central Park.
From 1880, Yorkville was the preferred residential area for ethnic German immigrants. The district took over the role of "Little Germany " located on the Lower East Side area around Tompkins Square. The trend of migration from there, poorer housing conditions according to Yorkville in 1900 was in full swing. The final push for the establishment of Yorkville as a center of German residents in Manhattan in 1904 was the sinking of the steamship General Slocum in the East River. Among the more than 1,000 people died, many members of the German Lutheran St. Mark's Church, the social backbone of the old "Little Germany " were. Many survivors left after the accident, the old quarter.
The center of Yorkville, the 86th Street, one of the great two-lane east-west streets in Manhattan, which was given the nickname " German Broadway " developed. German churches, theaters, clubs and restaurants gave the residents a piece of old home. In the blocks south of 86th street were living in 1890, born in Germany about 80,000 new New Yorker. However, Yorkville was characterized as German in no time, as had previously been the area around Tompkins Square. For one, also scored a large number of other nations to the resident population of Yorkville, including immigrants from Hungary and Bohemia, but also from Ireland. Second, the immigration went from Germany at the end of the 19th century heavily, so it lacked the constant influx of it as the Italian neighborhoods of New York for a long time made it possible to maintain a separate identity. After the First World War caused the USA entered the war in 1917 that " German " with the land and the language of the enemy was connected, which meant an increased pressure to assimilate to the German -born immigrants. In addition, the general trend is the move to the suburbs reduced the population in Manhattan; in 1930, lived most German families in Queens. The emigration of German refugees in the period of National Socialism brought Yorkville only temporarily back some of its old character. The degradation of the elevated train on Third Avenue mid-1950s eliminated the "natural" boundary of the district, vielgeschossige apartment buildings destroyed the closed appearance of the old block development.
German traces in Yorkville
At a German district remembered today in Yorkville only slightly. At the East River at the height of 86th Street is located in Carl Schurz Park, named after one of the most successful German immigrants, the Rhine " 1848 " revolutionary and later U.S. Senator Carl Schurz. Chance can still be shops and restaurants that advertise with German products and of which the deli Schaller & Weber on Second Avenue is the most known. In the German Ev. Lutheran Zion St. Mark's Church in the 84th street German -language church services are still held, as well as in the Catholic St. Joseph's, Yorkville, in the 87th street ( there, Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to the U.S. in April 2008 an ecumenical prayer time ). The Steuben Parade, held as a festive parade of ethnic German Americans since 1957, leads on Fifth Avenue up to 86th street and also the German Goethe Institute has to be there at the height of the 83rd Street New York office.
Sons and daughters of Yorkville
- Henry Miller ( * 1891-1980 ), American writer