One of the most common questions someone has when moving to Manhattan for the first time is should I live uptown or downtown. The two neighborhoods definitely have their distinct differences, and depending upon what you are looking to get out of your NYC life, you will find either uptown or downtown living suits you better! We have come up with some important topics to consider when choosing to live uptown or downtown, whether that be restaurants, night life, museums or easy access out of NYC! Keep reading to hear our opinion!

Uptown Living

Uptown living (considered above 57th Street) is great for families or anyone who wants to experience NYC and all its delights in a slightly more quiet manner! Uptown has something for everyone, great shops, restaurants, and residential areas that are close to parks, museums and excellent private schools! Glenwood has 16 buildings in uptown Manhattan. If you are set on living uptown but can’t decide between the upper east side versus the upper west side, click here to read a blog post we wrote about the differences between the two neighborhoods! If you are interested in Glenwood’s uptown buildings click here for the east side and here for the west side.

Downtown Living

Living downtown (considered below 14th Street) is a very lively choice filled with different neighborhoods, each having their own distinct personalities! If you are looking for more of a neighborhood, tight community feel in the big city–downtown living might be for you! If you want the hustle and bustle of stores, restaurants, and nightlife soho is a great option! The west village is quaint with great neighborhood coffee shop and beautiful townhouses! If you want to live downtown in a neighborhood that is very family try Tribeca where you can live, work and play all in the same neighborhood! Glenwood has 3 buildings downtown. If you are interested in Glenwood downtown buildings click here!

Let’s Dive Into It:

Restaurants

Both uptown and downtown Manhattan have great food options!

If you want to try a restaurant that is a little more trendy with often a festive vibe, downtown spots may be more favorable to you! Downtown restaurants are always packed with foodies trying the new and best spots! A 9pm table is not considered a late table, and if you love being able to walk to great restaurants downtown may be more favorable to you! Don’t forget Little Italy and Chinatown are so close to all the downtown neighborhoods, which ads a really fun dining element if you are a foodie! Some great spots to try are Lure Fishbar (in soho), Bondst Sushi (in soho), Mamos (in soho), Bodega Negra (in chelsea) and Morimoto (in chelsea). These are all great spots for Glenwood downtown residents to try!

Don’t be fooled by the fact that you hear it is impossible to get a dinner reservation downtown, if you want a table at a popular restaurant uptown,  you need a reservation weeks in advance as well! Uptown dining has endless options as well with all different cuisine types too! If you are looking for a more classic restaurant with a little more of a docile atmosphere that is still lively, uptown restaurants may be up your alley! With great spots like Omars, Le Colonial, Bar Italia,  Avra, Kappa Masa  (all on the upper east side), RedFarm (on the west side), and Red Rooster (in harlem)  there are definitely diverse cuisine types with great ambiances that is just a little more relaxed than many downtown spots come the later hours! Glenwood uptown east side and west side residents should try these great spots!

The Seaport has several restaurants all walking distance of Glenwood’s Liberty Plaza! 

Which Neighborhood Would You Live In?

Looking for endless dining options, high end shops, and parks that are within walking distance?

UPTOWN

Looking for an energetic atmosphere with historic landmarks and riverside views?

DOWNTOWN

Night Life

If you ask a New Yorker where the best nightlife is in Manhattan, most will definitely tell you downtown! And, if you are looking to live close to very lively, trendy, hot spots that can be walking distance from each other, downtown living is definitely for you. Downtown is packed with options in all of its neighborhoods like soho, the meatpacking district, and china town! There are also great late night activities in downtown Manhattan  like The Magician at The Nomad Hotel or Sleep No More at The McKittrick Hotel.

If you want to live in a quieter area, but occasionally want to frequent great nightlife and don’t mind hopping on a subway or taking a 20minute cab ride to get there, then uptown living will suite you! Uptown has some great bars too like the Mark Hotel’s Bar, The Regency Bar, the bar at Avra Madison, the bar at Omars (all upper east side), or Vanguard Wine Bar (upper west side). These are more lounge type of casual vibes that are great if you just want to enjoy a drink out on the town.

Parks

If parks are very important to you, this is a big consideration when deciding if you want to live uptown or downtown. Uptown has so many great parks like Central Park, Morning Side Park, Riverside Park, Carl Shurz Park, and Fort Tyron Park. These are larger, more traditional parks with more emphasis on the greenery! If you love taking a morning jog around the reservoir, uptown eastside and westside are perfect for you!

Downtown parks are often smaller with a bit more concrete, but  have a lot of lively entertainment like at Washington Square Park! If you like to stroll after dinner and find some nice entertainment–from the occasional live music to performances, downtown parks are for you! Don’t forget about the High Line! This 1.45 mile park runs on what were old railroad tracks on the lower west side through the Meat Packing District and Chelsea.

Battery Park and Rockefeller Park are just steps from Glenwood’s Tribeca Bridge Tower!

Museums

There are great museums both uptown and downtown in Manhattan. You can’t go wrong visiting any of them! Here are a list of some of the top museums in each of the areas.

Uptown

East Side:

• The Met
• Met Cloisters
• The Met Bruier
• The Frick
• The Guggenheim
• The Cooper Hewitt Museum

West Side:

• The American Museum of Natural History
• The New-York Historical Society
• The Children’s Museum of Manhattan

Downtown:

• 911 Memorial
• Whitney Museum of American Art
• New Museum
• New York City Fire Museum

The Art Scene

There are definitely good museums and galleries both uptown and downtown. But, if you are a an art gallery lover, downtown has so many different options to pop into that frequently are displaying new works!

A couple of great art galleries uptown:

• Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue
• David Zwirner
• Almine Rech Galler

There are just so many great art galleries downtown, if you walk in Chelsea you are sure to stumble upon numerous  but to name a few:

• Andrew Kreps Gallery
• Mary Boone Gallery
• Gladstone Gallery
• Pace Gallery
• Hauser & Wirth New York
• Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea
• Taglialatella Gallery
• Chase Contemporary Gallery
• David Zwirner in Chelsea
• Click here to see a map of downtown galleries!

The Ease Of Leaving Manhattan

If you like to leave Manhattan either for some fun weekend exploration or for a work commute, it is important to choose where you live! If you love to go to Brooklyn and explore areas like Vinegar Hill or Dumbo, then living in Glenwood downtown buildings is much more convenient for you!

If you work or like to visit Long Island, Westchster or Connecticut on the weekends, living uptown will largely reduce the time spent in your car if you are driving!

What are your favorite reasons you live uptown or downtown? Let us know on Facebook and Twitter!

The post Uptown NYC vs Downtown NYC appeared first on NYC Luxury Apartments for Rent | Glenwood Management.

The Living Pyramid

The Socrates Sculpture Park Spring/Summer show is dominated by two huge new attention-getting pieces. First, there is The Living Pyramid by Agnes Denes, a magnificent earth work that's thirty feet wide at its base and narrows to a point thirty feet high in the air. That's about three stories tall! And the most interesting part is that this mammoth structure is, as advertised, a living, growing thing, constructed of soil and planted grasses and wildflowers. So it looks imposing and magisterial from a distance, and then utterly changes, and softens, when you get close up. By the way, this is the artist's first major public work in NYC since her iconic Wheatfield of 1982, when she planted exactly that in the landfill that would become Battery Park City.

Suspect Terrain

The other major work here at Socrates Sculpture Park is Heidi Fasnacht's Suspect Terrain, an affecting portrait of a pretty little house getting sucked into sinkhole. Fasnacht was apparently inspired by several recent enormous sinkholes around the world–in China and Guatamala, in particular–but a friend of mine from Japan found the piece almost unbearable to view, based on her experience with the devastation there in 2011. Of course, Suspect Terrain taps into one of our most primal fears, being buried alive, but it also evokes a kind "revenge of Mother Earth" scenario, getting back at those (us) who have nearly killed it. Of the other sculptures in the exhibition, I liked Gabriela Albergaria's franken-trees chained to a concrete wall–it's called Two Trees In Balance, but clearly the whole thing's out of whack–as well as IK Studio's winning entry in this year's early career architects and designers competition, the floral-looking Torquing Spheres.

When & Where To Go

Socrates Sculpture Park is located at 32-01 Vernon Boulevard in Long Island City, Queens, at the western end of Broadway. The park is open every day from 10:00 a.m. until sunset (except for movie nights, when it's open well after dark), and current exhibition will be in place through August 30.  

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First, it's important to note that you don't have to "do" anything to enjoy virtually any one of New York City's more than 1,700 public parks, stretching out over 28,000 acres across the five boroughs (and that doesn't include the 18 miles of public beaches!). True, there are some spaces among that number that remain in a state of neglect, sad holdovers from the general decrepitude of 1970s and '80s, but for the most part NYC parks are in better shape, with more community activity, than they've ever been, certainly in my lifetime. And a big driver and consequence of all that renewal are the countless special events–often organized with the help of private organizations and commercial sponsors–that have become an integral part of the greener parts of the city's landscape. Here's a quick look at a tiny fraction of some of these upcoming or ongoing events and exhibitions.  

Hudson River Park: The Games!, June 13

If you didn't qualify to represent your country at next summer's Rio Olympics, Hudson River Park's epic competition The Games! is a not-bad consolation. Happening on June 13 at Piers 25, 26, and 40 (the first two are in Tribeca near North Moore; the latter across from Houston Street), and structured as fundraiser for the park, The Games! allows you to participate by joining one of the Team Pentathlon squads (competing in dodgeball, obstacle course races, kayak races, beach volleyball, and flag football), or by trying out something new through the "premium activities" programs, such as trapeze, boot camp, extreme pogosticking, and cardio kickboxing. And because no NYC event is complete with food these days, they've set up a Games Village at Pier 26 with a variety of vendors and even a "beer garden", which will just be a roped-off area with a temporary liquor license. 

Madison Square Park: Big Apple BBQ, June 13 and 14

The once-forlorn Madison Square Park has become sort of the poster child for how private enterprise can vastly improve your public experience. Case in point: the annual Big Apple Barbecue Block Party. Now in its 13th year, the Big Apple BBQ attracts huge crowds to the park, with smoked-meat lovers plunking down between $9 and $12 for a taste of some of the country's best 'cue. Pitmasters include Mike Emerson from Pappy's in St. Louis (his ribs are my personal favorite); Garry Roark from Ubon's in Yazoo City; Tim Love from The Woodshed in Dallas (serving Lamb Brisket this year); and Chris Lilly from Big Bob Gibson in Decauter. There's local talent as well, with Hometown, Blue Smoke, and Dinosaur among the NYC participants. I've been to this several times, and advise you to go early–like, right when it opens at 11:00–to avoid what can be torturous lines. 

Bryant Park: HBO Film Festival, June 22 – August 24

Midtown's Bryant Park is another huge success story, and a big part in its initial turnaround was the HBO Summer Film Festival. This is the 23nd year hundreds of movie buffs (and dinner-picnic lovers) have scrambled their way onto Bryant Park's big lawn at precisely 5:00 p.m. to secure a spot for an evening of eating, (surreptitious) drinking, hanging with friends, and watching a classic. The line-up this summer includes opener Ghostbusters (6/22), the original huge-cast disaster movie The Poseidon Adventure (7/6), the cornily exuberant Footloose (7/27), and series closer Back to the Future (8/24). This is crazy popular–a NYC bucket list sort of thing, even–so don't wander over near showtime and expect to find a place for your blanket.

Damrosch Park: Midnight Summer Night Swing, June 23 – July 11

On the Upper West Side, once again taking over the southwest corner of the Lincoln Center campus, one of the city's best dance parties is rolling out the hardwood for the 27th year starting in a few weeks. Midsummer Night Swing's lineup this summer is, as usual, filled with genuine stars inspiring a packed dance floor to get all sweaty and giggly and wild to a wide variety of dance styles, including mambo, big band swing, disco, funk, tango, salsa, and jump blues. As always, a $17 ticket gets you onto the floor itself (where you can really see the band), as well as a dance lesson prior to the party, but your should know that hundreds of people always show up to watch and listen and dance on the sidelines. Really feels like a block party.

Brooklyn Bridge Park: Smorgasburg (Sundays) and Please Touch the Art (everyday)

There are dozens of reasons Brooklyn Bridge Park has become something of a destination among New Yorkers, and these two recent additions only add to wealth of fun and food you'll find here. First, the magnificent Smorgasburg is back every Sunday, with 100 vendors sprawled across the uplands of Pier 5. In addition to all the old favorites (Ramen Burger, People's Pops, Milk Truck, Mighty Quinn's, Red Hook Lobster Pound, etc), newcomers of note include Big Mozz and their injected-with-pesto Mozz Bombs; Best Buds, serving amazing "San Diego style" burritos, with french fries instead of rice; and Rise and Swine, whose French Toast breakfast sandwiches are a hangover must. And to work off all those calories, walk the length of park playing on Jeppe Hein's 18 new artworks, including all kinds of crazy benches, a mirror labyrinth, and a water sculpture called Appearing Rooms, pictured at top, which uses high-powered water jets to construct and take down the "walls" to four separate chambers.

Central Park: Philharmonic, Shakespeare, SummerStage

Finally, as is its custom, Central Park is playing host to their usual bounty of summertime cultural events and performances. The New York Philharmonic is coming to the park on back-to-back nights, June 17 and 18, performing on the Great Lawn to presumably tens of thousands of blanket-loungers. This season's run of Free Shakespeare in the Park is already under way at the Delacorte Theater with The Tempest, starring Sam Waterston and Jesse Tyler Ferguson in the leads (through July 5), followed by the fairy tale Cymbeline, featuring Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater, which runs from July 23 to August 23. And, of course, there's the premier concert series SummerStage, now celebrating its 30th season of free shows with a full slate at Rumsey Playfield.

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