Friday, September 4, 2026 · No. 25
Good morning, Yorkville. The Upper East Side lost Gloria Steinem this week, and the flowers started arriving outside her East 73rd Street building before the obituaries finished posting. Also today: property owners are voting on a new Business Improvement District for the East 80s, a Bushwick record shop is headed our way, and a 1901 townhouse near Carl Schurz Park is our listing of note.
The Lead
Gloria Steinem, a half-century Upper East Sider, dies at 92
Gloria Steinem died September 2 at her home in New York at 92, her family announced; no cause was given. By Thursday afternoon, mourners had left about ten bouquets outside her longtime home — the East 73rd Street building where she lived for decades — per Gothamist. She co-founded Ms. magazine in 1971. That block is a little south of our patch, and a couple of avenues west of it, but Upper East Site's remembrance calls her what she was: a longtime Upper East Sider, mourned up and down the avenues. The Washington Post and NPR carried full obituaries.
via Gothamist
Around the Neighborhood
Property owners are voting on a new Business Improvement District for the East 80s
A steering committee backed by local elected officials and major landlords — with Carnegie Hill Neighbors and the East 86th Street Association among the groups involved, and city Small Business Services support — is collecting ballots from property owners on forming a Business Improvement District under the name the East 80s Yorkville Alliance, per East Side Feed; Upper East Site has also covered the effort, and the campaign posts its case at e80syorkville.org. A BID would tax member properties to fund extra sanitation, safety and streetscape services plus a marketing arm. As we reported August 21, the Alliance describes the footprint as a twenty-block rectangle from First to Park between 84th and 88th — which reaches west of Third Avenue, outside the boundary we hold ourselves to — on an initial budget of about $900,000; the per-owner assessment formula and the ballot deadline are still unpinned. And this is at least the third attempt: a 1988 effort was withdrawn in 2001 and another push surfaced in 2018. We'll follow the balloting.
via East Side Feed
After 90 years, Marymount Manhattan is now Northeastern's New York campus
The signs have come down at 221 East 71st Street — a little south of us — but the school didn't close: Marymount Manhattan College's merger into Northeastern University was finalized this summer after the U.S. Department of Education's July 9 approval, and the campus now operates as Northeastern University – New York City, per Northeastern's own announcement. Upper East Site marked the end of the 90-year-old name; CBS New York reports the roughly 1,000 enrolled students continue under Northeastern with existing aid honored, and the performing-arts programs — including dance — stay.
via Upper East Site
Listing of note: a 20-foot-wide 1901 townhouse off Carl Schurz Park
412 East 89th Street — a four-story, 20-foot-wide townhouse built in 1901, with an ivy-clad gated forecourt, two blocks from Carl Schurz Park — is asking $5.25 million per Brown Harris Stevens's listing; 6sqft's writeup pegs it at $5 million, and we're going with the broker's own page until one of them moves. It's configured as a legal three-family, which the listing frames as the pitch: rental income now, single-family conversion later, or somewhere in between.
via Brown Harris Stevens
Openings & Closings
A Bushwick vinyl shop is coming to Yorkville
Human Head Records — the Bushwick record shop at 289 Meserole Street — is expanding to the neighborhood, per Upper East Site. The piece doesn't give an address or an opening date, and we couldn't pin either down yesterday, so consider this a heads-up rather than directions: crate-diggers, your commute is about to shrink. We'll print the address when there is one.
via Upper East Site
This Week
Asphalt Green's pools stay closed through Labor Day
If the long weekend had you eyeing a swim at East 90th Street: per Asphalt Green's own schedule pages, both its pools have been closed for annual cleaning and maintenance since mid-August and reopen Tuesday, September 8 — the rest of the facility stays open. John Jay Pool — just south of our line at 77th and Cherokee Place — has free outdoor swim through September 13, per NYC Parks.
via Asphalt Green
Yorkville, Remembered
Yorkville kids grew up at the RKO on Lexington and 86th
For four decades, a 3,160-seat movie palace at 1284 Lexington Avenue, at 86th Street — a block west of our Third Avenue line, but Yorkville's in every way that mattered — was one of the neighborhood's great social institutions. It opened May 16, 1927 with vaudeville on stage, Rin Tin Tin's 'Tracked by the Police' on the screen, and a Wurlitzer theater organ in the pit; RKO took over the house in 1929. By the 1950s and '60s the RKO 86th Street Theatre was where generations of Yorkville kids spent their Saturdays. It closed in October 1968, was demolished in early 1969, and gave way to a Gimbels department store on the site.
source: Cinema Treasures
One more thing: between the record bins headed uptown and the 3,160-seat movie palace in today's history corner, the neighborhood's entertainment has a way of going around again. Maybe don't sell the turntable at the stoop sale this weekend.