Then and Now: West 104th Street at Broadway, NYC

Broadway at 104th Street, Manhattan

Foodorama at 104th Street and Broadway, NYC, southeast corner, in 1980.

There is little question that the New York City of the mid-21st Century is more prosperous than that of the 1970s. No longer on the verge of bankruptcy, Manhattan as a whole has seen a surge of development and reinvigoration over those 40 years. When I came across the 1980 photo above, it reminded me of all the local grocery stores that once upon a time dotted the streets of Manhattan alongside the pizzerias and the dry cleaning stores and the electronic shops. The trash on the street also brings back those warm and fuzzy memories of a city on the verge of bankruptcy. But what does it look like today? Did they raze that run-down building, or is Foodorama still in operation about forty years later? To find out, I did a comparison of Broadway at West 104th Street, NYC, from 1980 to 2017.

 104th Street and Broadway, NYC, southeast corner, in October 2017 (Google Street View)

The location is very distinctive, so there's no question that we are in the right location. The building at 2710 Broadway was built in 1930 and is bigger than it looks, with 19,155 square feet. Next to it to the right, just visible in the 1980 photo, is 2708 Broadway. Completed in 1925, it, too, is unchanged, though something seems to have been going on with some of its windows in 1980. Back then, West 104th Street at Broadway was a fringe area, rather rundown and with a poor reputation. All that has changed by 2017, with unmistakable signs of gentrification abundance. This building itself shows how much things have changed in this portion of the Upper West Side. The apparently vacant third floor now is a yoga studio and the little supermarket has become a language center. Even the pizza joint on the corner is gone, replaced by a health care facility.

The east side of Broadway looking north between 103rd and 104th Streets in October 2017 (Google Street View). 

However, all is not lost for you food lovers! The Foodorama with its aggressive signs and downscale look has been transformed by a neat and tidy Gristedes just down the block. It's all very tasteful and subtle, the way upscale shoppers prefer. Subtle changes like that over time tell you a great deal about the changing mix of people in an area. Next to the Gristedes is a Santander Bank branch, similarly tasteful and low key. The parking meters are gone, the street now is relatively clean, there are little bike racks that actually are being used. Everything just looks tidier and more genteel. There probably wasn't a whole lot of demand for a yoga studio in this area back in 1980. The neighborhood has been transformed, and we didn't need to commission a $50,000 study to figure that out, just look at one street corner. It tells you all you need to know about the changing needs of the people who now walk the streets.

The southeast corner of Broadway at West 104th Street, NYC in December 2017 (Google Street View).

Now that we've made the case for how much the neighborhood has changed, let's not overstate it. The buildings themselves are virtually untouched aside from removing some unattractive brackets for signs. However, there's still that skeletal billboard structure on top of 2710 Broadway, still unused in December 2017. The people change, but the buildings remain the same. They're just repurposed for the changing needs of the neighborhood. The truly startling thing about this comparison is how little the scene has changed but how much the vibe has been altered over 40 years.

I hope you enjoyed this entry in our "the more things change, the more they stay the same" series. Love it or hate it, gentrification has changed a lot of New York neighborhoods since the 1970s, and the southeast corner of Broadway at West 104th Street is a tiny illustration of that. Please visit some of our other entries in this series!

2019