page_title: Manhattan Valley
section_title: Later years
hierarchical_section_title: Manhattan Valley / History / Later years
caption_attribution_description: English: Looking northeast across Amsterdam Avenue and 103d Street at Association Residence for Respectable Aged Indigent Females, now en:American Youth Hostels building, formerly Home for Indigent Females, on a cloudy late afternoon. NYCLPC designation 1983. ZIP 10025.
context_page_description: Manhattan Valley is a neighborhood in the northern part of Upper West Side in Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded by West 110th Street to the north, Central Park West to the east, West 96th Street to the south, and Broadway to the west. It was formerly known as the Bloomingdale District, a name still in occasional use.
context_section_description: By the 1950s and 1960s, the area went into decline, in line with a trend of general urban deterioration in Manhattan. As middle-class residents left for the suburbs, buildings were allowed to fall into disrepair and were divided into small units for new low-rent tenants, many of them originally from Puerto Rico. Urban renewal programs, headed by city planner Robert Moses, called for several city blocks to be demolished in order to construct the Frederick Douglass Houses in the superblock where they stand today. The development of the Douglass Houses greatly increased the density of low-income renters without providing much in the way of amenities (food shops, clubs, restaurants, and open space) for them to use. Rampant graft and corruption associated with the project blighted their opening and brought ill repute on the neighborhood, and the debacle contributed strongly to Moses's fall from power and ouster. Although community groups, such as the Manhattan Valley Development Corporation, tried to find alternative solutions for the housing shortage in the area, the city's 1976 fiscal crisis caused many of these alternate plans to be shelved.
  The crime rate in the area increased dramatically, along with drug use and poverty. By 1960, the Bloomingdale neighborhood had the highest juvenile delinquency rate in Manhattan and the second highest number of welfare cases per 1,000 residents. New investment came to the area in the 1980s. Soon, however, new investment was brought to a halt by wavering property prices in the late 1980s and early 1990s, combined with the rise of crack use and dealers in the area, which gave Manhattan Valley the reputation as one of the easiest places in the city to score a hit. In addition, there was a lot of violence on the streets of Manhattan Valley, especially at night, when gang wars were prevalent.
  With the Wall Street boom in the early 1980s, Manhattan as a whole experienced a sharp recovery. Seventy years after the Bloomingdale Asylum's closing, the provenance of the name was fading into obscurity, and residents and brokers alike began referring to the neighborhood by its present name. The new name and recovery were both much bolstered by the non-profit Manhattan Valley Development Corporation (MVDC), founded in 1968. It sought to differentiate itself from other community development organizations by opposing the demolition of pre-war buildings in favor of renovation, and seeking to promote small business and "prevent harassment by out-side management companies prevalent in low income 'minority' neighborhoods."
caption: American Youth Hostels building at Amsterdam and 103rd, formerly the Residence for Respectable Aged Indigent Females, is one of architect Richard Morris Hunt's few surviving projects in New York City.
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