Our Community
As our congregation’s name announces, we are “in the city of New York,” and more specially, “Manhattan’s Upper West Side.” The nation’s largest metropolis – a hub of the worldwide financial, media, academic, and commercial networks -- is a sophisticated city, where one may spot on the street a delegate to the United Nations, a globetrotting opera star, or a television anchor. It has long aroused a gamut of emotions, from stage-struck awe to the classic tourist reply, “Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.”
Yet it is also a city of distinct neighborhoods, and today’s Upper West Side is heir to over a century of history as home to urban townhouse gentry, then to aspiring creative people in the modest apartments carved out of brownstones during the Depression, and later the German Jewish refugees of World War II and post-war Latino arrivals. And now the new wave of millennial immigration by young, high-bracket urban professionals is forcing out elements of the old neighborhood while raising economic life. Even before the recent decades of gentrification began raising housing costs throughout the UWS and the city, the storied apartment towers that flank Fourth Universalist along Central Park West were among the city’s most prestigious and expensive; in the 1980s, prominent residents of the apartment building next door to us spearheaded a fundraising campaign to help us with repairs and gaining landmark status. But on the side streets and commercial avenues of the area, you can still pick up milk at a Korean bodega where they’ll let you pay next time, schmooze with the Russian immigrant clerk at the independent drug store, and spot friends passing through leafy little Verdi Square on their way to the subway. Across the street from the church Central Park, the vast historic oasis of greenery and recreation among the city’s tightly packed spires. Manhattan has the distinctive advantages of a dense and active urban center, as well as the inconveniences and challenges that accompany that intensity. More importantly, no matter what your pleasures and concerns -- from cooking to history to social action and theological disputation – there’s a critical mass of others who share your interests and will welcome your participation. Much like the membership of our congregation, diverse people flock to New York to create their distinctive selves, to make or do something useful and important, to be an actor rather than a bystander in life. At the opposite pole from the city’s national and international focus, the UWS has always been a family-friendly neighborhood, with streets roped o for periodic street fairs, block parties, and Halloween gatherings. Residents have available in the area some of the best public schools in the city as well as a number of quality private schools of all types. Our congregation serves a wide geographic area, with members joining us from across the five boroughs, NJ, and Westchester County. Our staff and clergy likewise live across the metropolitan area, benefiting from high quality public transit. Whether you put down roots on the UWS, or another neighborhood (or state!) entirely, you will be welcomed with open arms. |