Cultural Spaces of Immigrant Yorkville
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Cultural Immigrant Initiative

CULTURAL SPACES OF IMMIGRANT YORKVILLE

CULTURAL SPACES OF IMMIGRANT YORKVILLE is a project that highlights the history of Yorkville's immigrant architecture and culture by exploring the buildings, institutions and spaces for community that have served Yorkville's immigrant communities and have come together to forge the unique character and cultures that define the area.

In partnership with art historian and walking tour guide, Matt Postal, we created three thematic neighborhood walks. Our self-guided tour offers three thematic walks, each delving into a specific aspect of Yorkville's immigrant heritage:

Guided Tour 1. Educating Yorkville: Reading, Writing, and Psychoanalysis
Discover the intellectual and therapeutic spaces that have nurtured Yorkville's diverse communities. Explore schools, libraries, nurseries, and psychoanalytic institutions that played a crucial role in shaping the neighborhood's cultural landscape.

Guided Tour 2. Yorkville and the Arts
Discover the artistic heritage of the Yorkville on this self-guided walking tour. Explore the residences and studios of renowned American artists, entertainers, and writers while admiring public murals, mosaics, and sculptures that showcase the neighborhood's rich cultural history.

Guided Tour 3. A "Working" Tour of Yorkville
Uncover the rich commercial history of Yorkville on this self-guided walking tour. Explore historic stores, signage, banks, loft buildings, and two of New York City's earliest surviving parking garages, and learn about the structures that once employed and represented workers in this vibrant neighborhood.

Each walk features a carefully curated list of a dozen sites, accompanied by detailed descriptions and historical context. Take your time, explore at your own pace, and discover the fascinating stories behind Yorkville's immigrant heritage. To download the addresses and map of each walking tour please click HERE.


This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

 

GUIDED TOUR 1

Reading, Writing, and Psychoanalysis
This thematic walking tour visits often overlooked buildings where immigrants took their first steps to become New Yorkers. Here, new arrivals learned to read and write English, do math, and pursue their American dreams. Yorkville’s eastern blocks contain a noteworthy group of mostly early 20th century structures, with public and private institutions that were designed by skilled architects in a succession of fashionable styles. Our itinerary, which takes us from East 79th to 91st Street, includes a dozen educational structures that were built or serve as day nurseries, public and private elementary schools, industrial schools, a Carnegie library, and an institute of higher learning. Though their initial purpose and mission may have changed, or evolved, these mid-block buildings continue to reflect and express the important role education played in Yorkville’s working class community.

GUIDED TOUR 2: YORKVILLE & THE ARTS

For more than a century, Yorkville has left a mark on the arts. The Upper East Side is known for museums, but the neighborhood is often overlooked as a place where the creative class live and work, and where art can be viewed on streets and in subway stations. The tour includes the homes and studios of prominent American artists, entertainers and writers, as well as subway art, public sculpture, and a whimsical mural.

GUIDED TOUR 3: A "WORKING" TOUR OF YORKVILLE

Yorkville has many commercial structures, places where local residents opened businesses, shopped, and found employment. The tour includes a varied group of sites including buildings where firefighters marked time and labor unions organized, as well as where locals dined, danced, and celebrated personal milestones.

CULTURAL SPACES

FRIENDS of the Upper East Side 2020