Kips Bay, or Kip's Bay, is a neighborhood on the east side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by 34th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 23rd Street to the south, and Third Avenue to the west.
Kips Bay is part of Manhattan Community District 6, and its primary ZIP Codes are 10010 and 10016. It is patrolled by the 13th and 17th Precincts of the New York City Police Department.
Geography
According to The Encyclopedia of New York City and the New York City Department of City Planning, Kips Bay proper is generally bounded by East 34th Street to the north, the East River to the east, East 27th Street to the south, and Third Avenue to the west. City documents have also used New York City census tract 70 (from 29th to 34th streets, First to Third avenues) as an approximation for Kips Bay, and referred to tract 66, immediately below it, as "Bellevue South".Stuyvesant Cove 197-a Plan , spring 1997See also NYC NEIGHBORHOODS for "Kips Bay" and "Bellevue Area"See also Draft Scoping Document for an Environmental Impact Statement for DSNY East 25th Street Manhattan Districts 6/6A/8 Garage for "Bellevue area"
The American Guide Series defines the combined Kip's Bay–Turtle Bay area as running from 27th Street north to 59th Street, and from Third Avenue to the East River, excluding the neighborhoods of Beekman Place and Sutton Place.
For its entry on Kips Bay, the American Institute of Architects' AIA Guide to New York City uses the area from 23rd Street north to roughly 38th Street, and from the East River west to just past Second Avenue. In AIA Guide, Kips Bay is adjacent to Tudor City and the United Nations/Turtle Bay area on the north, Murray Hill and Rose Hill on the west, and the Stuyvesant Square area and Peter Cooper Village on the south.
Other popular definitions of the neighborhood, such as that by The New York Times, include 23rd Street to the south, 34th Street to the north, Lexington Avenue to the west, and the East River to the east. To the north is Murray Hill; to the west is Madison Square, NoMad, and/or Rose Hill; and to the south is the Bellevue area or the Gramercy Park neighborhood and Peter Cooper Village.
History
Colonial settlement
Kips Bay was an inlet of the East River running from what is now 32nd Street to 37th Street. The bay extended into Manhattan Island to just west of what is now First Avenue and had two streams that drained into it. Although the bay later became reclaimed land, Kips Bay remained the name of the area.
The bay was named after New Netherland Dutch settler Jacobus Hendrickson Kip (1631–1690); son of Hendrick Hendricksen Kip), whose farm ran north of present-day 30th Street along the East River. "Kip's Bay Farm" comprised a much wider area than the present neighbourhood and four properties established by early Dutch settlers: "Pieter van der Linde's Plantation", an area originally granted to Teunis Cray, "Gregorys Plantation" (probably in or near Midtown East) and "Schepmoes Plantation" (the northernmost, possibly in the vicinity of Lenox Hill).Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes (1915), The Iconography of Manhattan Island, Vol. 1; New York, Robert H. Dodd (publisher); p. 112. In 1655, Jacobus Kip built a large brick and stone house, near the modern intersection of Second Avenue and East 35th Street. The house was expanded more than once during the next two centuries, When the house was demolished (1851), it was the last farmhouse from New Amsterdam remaining in Manhattan. Iron figures fixed into the gable-end brickwork commemorated the year of its first construction. Its orchard was famous, and, when first President George Washington was presented with a specimen of its Rosa gallica during his first administration (1789–1793), when New York was serving as the first national capital city, it was claimed to have been the first garden to have grown it in the Thirteen Colonies.
Kips Bay was the site of the Landing at Kip's Bay, an episode of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) and part of the New York and New Jersey campaign. About 4,000 British Army troops under General William Howe landed at Kips Bay on September 15, 1776, near what is now the foot of East 33rd Street off the East River from a Royal Navy fleet which had first landed earlier on Staten Island, then Long Island for the pivotal Battle of Brooklyn (also known as the Battle of Long Island) the previous month. Howe's forces defeated about 500 American militiamen stationed at Kips Bay by Washington and commanded by Colonel William Douglas. The American forces immediately retreated, and the British occupied New York Town at the south point of the island, soon afterward forcing General Washington to retreat northward to the Harlem River.
A single survivor of the late 18th or early 19th century in the neighborhood is the simple vernacular white clapboard house, much rebuilt, at 203 East 29th Street. The house, standing gable-end to the street, is one of a mere handful of wooden houses that remain on Manhattan Island. Its date of construction is unknown but has been variously dated from around 1790 to as late as 1870; currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the house is privately owned and not open to the public.
South of the Kips Bay Farm stood the substantial Federal-style villa erected facing the East River by Henry A. Coster,The engraved illustration in Mrs Martha Joanna Lamb and Mrs Burton Harrison, History of the City of New York: its origin, rise and progress, vol. 3 p. 522, though called "more of a Grecian type of architecture", shows characteristic Federal architecture in its balustraded roofline, its half-oval fanlight in the central pediment, and the widely spaced slender columns of the portico; see also Eliza Greatorex drawing (New York Public Library) . in the thirty-acre estate that was purchased in 1835 by Anson Greene Phelps; towards the city, the Bull's Head cattle market fronting the Boston Post Road extended southwards from 27th Street to 23rd Street, affording a distinctly less rural aspect;"After leaving Twenty-seventh Street and Third Avenue the traveller was in the country. There was no other settlement until Yorkville was reached, nearly two miles beyond. Scattered farm-houses, distant villas, green fields, and bits of woodland made up the landscape." recalled the writer of "Old Days In Yorkville and Harlem", 1893 , recalling the route up Third Avenue in the 1850s the villa was removed to make way for row houses in the 1860s and the cattle market was moved farther out of town, to 42nd Street.
Later development
The neighborhood has been rebuilt in patches, featuring both new high-rise structures often set back from the street, and a multitude of exposed party walls that were never meant to be seen in public. A nearly forgotten feature is the private alley called Broadway Alley, between 26th and 27th streets, halfway between Lexington and Third avenues, reputedly the last unpaved street in Manhattan (by 2024, the alley has been paved with asphalt); it is not known what this alley is named after, since it is not near the main Broadway.
In 1940 the Madison Square Boys (and later Girls) Club, which previously had been located on East 30th Street just east of Second Avenue, built its own facilities on East 29th Street (back-to-back with its older facility). In the 1990s, the Club sold its building to the Churchill School and Center, and moved its office in the Empire State Building.
In the 1960s and 1970s, several high-rise apartment complexes were constructed between First and Second avenues as a result of urban renewal. Located between East 30th and 33rd streets, the NYU-Bellevue urban renewal project resulted in the development of Kips Bay Towers, a 1,112-unit apartment complex designed by architect I. M. Pei and completed in 1963. The Bellevue South urban renewal project, located between 23rd and 30th streets, resulted in multiple housing developments, including East Midtown Plaza and Phipps Plaza (named after 19th century industrialist and philanthropist Henry Phipps).
Waterside Plaza is a residential and business complex built on a pier above the East River between East 25th and 30th streets which is adjacent to another deck over the river constructed for the United Nations International School. There were plans to build River Walk, a development with additional above-water apartments, offices, and a hotel in the 1980s, but environmental concerns and community opposition doomed the project. Today, the waterfront south of Waterside Plaza is Stuyvesant Cove Park. The park includes a small man-made brownfield land mass extending out into the East River, which was created from excess concrete dumped into the river when the site was a ready-mix plant.
Demographics For census purposes, the New York City government classifies Kips Bay as part of a larger neighborhood tabulation area called Murray Hill-Kips Bay.New York City Neighborhood Tabulation Areas*, 2010 , Population Division - New York City Department of City Planning, February 2012. Accessed June 16, 2016. Based on data from the 2010 United States census, the population of Murray Hill-Kips Bay was 50,742, a change of 2,323 (4.6%) from the 48,419 counted in 2000. Covering an area of , the neighborhood had a population density of .Table PL-P5 NTA: Total Population and Persons Per Acre - New York City Neighborhood Tabulation Areas*, 2010 , Population Division - New York City Department of City Planning, February 2012. Accessed June 16, 2016. The racial makeup of the neighborhood was 66.6% (33,818) White, 4.8% (2,423) African American, 0.1% (55) Native American, 16.2% (8,233) Asian, 0% (16) Pacific Islander, 0.4% (181) from other races, and 2% (1,008) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 9.9% (5,008) of the population.Table PL-P3A NTA: Total Population by Mutually Exclusive Race and Hispanic Origin - New York City Neighborhood Tabulation Areas*, 2010 , Population Division - New York City Department of City Planning, March 29, 2011. Accessed June 14, 2016.
The entirety of Community District 6, which comprises Kips Bay and East Midtown, had 53,120 inhabitants as of NYC Health's 2018 Community Health Profile, with an average life expectancy of 84.8 years. This is higher than the median life expectancy of 81.2 for all New York City neighborhoods. Most inhabitants are adults: a plurality (45%) are between the ages of 25 and 44, while 22% are between 45 and 64, and 13% are 65 or older. The ratio of youth and college-aged residents was lower, at 7% and 12% respectively.
As of 2017, the median household income in Community District 6 was $112,383. In 2018, an estimated 10% of Kips Bay and East Midtown residents lived in poverty, compared to 14% in all of Manhattan and 20% in all of New York City. One in twenty-five residents (4%) were unemployed, compared to 7% in Manhattan and 9% in New York City. Rent burden, or the percentage of residents who have difficulty paying their rent, is 42% in Kips Bay and East Midtown, compared to the boroughwide and citywide rates of 45% and 51% respectively. Based on this calculation, , Kips Bay and East Midtown are considered to be high-income relative to the rest of the city and not gentrifying.
Structures Within Kips Bay, the area along First Avenue is dominated by the institutional buildings of New York University, including Tisch Hospital, NYU College of Dentistry, NYU School of Medicine, and Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine; Bellevue Hospital Center teaching hospital, including Hunter College's Brookdale Health Sciences Center and the Alexandria Center for the Life Sciences; and the Margaret Cochran Corbin Campus, a VA Hospital for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Further north on First Avenue, in Murray Hill between East 37th and 38th streets, is the former Kips Bay Brewing Company, originally constructed in 1895 and now occupied by offices.