The street runs westbound, even though even-numbered streets in Manhattan typically go east. Its eastern end on the Upper East Side at
York Avenue opposite
Rockefeller University. At
Fifth Avenue the street enters Central Park on the 66th Street transverse across the park, sharing it with eastbound traffic. West 66th Street runs through a subsection of the Upper West Side named
Lincoln Square. Once it crosses
West End Avenue, the street ends at Riverside Boulevard in the
Riverside South neighborhood.
45 East 66th Street is the site of a red-and-white French Gothic 10-story apartment house completed in 1908 for Charles F. Rodgers as designed by architects
Harde & Short.[4][5] The site was added to the
National Register of Historic Places in 1980.[6]
West Side
The block between Columbus Avenue and
Central Park West is the address for the
ABC News Headquarters and was co-named Peter Jennings Way in 2006 in honor of the late news anchor.[7] The
First Battery Armory is in the middle of the block at 56 West 66th Street.[8] The famed Manhattan restaurant
Tavern on the Green, which operated from 1934 to 2009, also was located off of West 66th Street, at Central Park West.
The
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts covers a 16.3-acre (6.6 ha) site located between Broadway and
Amsterdam Avenue, from West 60th to West 66th Street. The project, designed to consolidate many of the city's cultural institutions on a single site, was constructed on the site of the
San Juan Hill neighborhood as part of the "Lincoln Square Renewal Project" during
Robert Moses' program of urban renewal in the 1960s. The first structure completed and occupied as part of this renewal was the
Fordham University School of Law in 1962. The
Dauphin Hotel was among the structures demolished as part of the project.
In 1972, the
Chinese government purchased the 10-story Lincoln Square Motor Inn at Broadway for nearly $5 million, which was turned into the Chinese Mission to the
United Nations, including offices and residences for its delegation in New York. The location made it the only permanent headquarters of any country to be situated on the West Side of Manhattan.[10] In 1998, the Chinese government swapped the site for buildings located on
First Avenue and
34th Street, in order to be closer to the UN. The site was converted into a 100-apartment extension of the Phillips Club, an
extended stay hotel.[11]
Lincoln Towers is an apartment complex that consists of six buildings with eight addresses on a 20-acre (81,000 m2) campus, bounded on the south by West 66th Street, on the west by Freedom Place, on the north by West 70th Street, and on the east by Amsterdam Avenue.
The
West 65th and 66th Streets Block Association, founded in April 2018, seeks to promote neighborhood harmony, quality of life and safety through collaborative planning, community action, and policy advocacy. The Block Association has brought attention to larcenies at Duane Reade, lobbied for additional bike corrals for the street, and raised concern about
Extell's plans for a 775 ft tower at 36 West 66th Street.
Parks and recreation
Richard Tucker Park, covering 0.05 acres (200 m2) is located at the corner of Broadway and Columbus Avenue.[13][14] The park includes a bust of operatic tenor
Richard Tucker by sculptor
Milton Hebald dedicated on April 20, 1980, consisting of a larger-than-life size bronze sculpture on a 6-foot-high (1.8 m) granite pedestal.[15][16] The original 1978 proposal for a seven-foot statue of Tucker, depicted in the role of Des Grieux in the opera Manon Lescaut by
Giacomo Puccini, had been opposed by a member of
Manhattan Community Board 7, who felt that the piece should have been placed in the
Metropolitan Opera Hall of Fame, and not on public property.[17]
Notable residents
Notable current and former residents of 66th Street include:
Edward Streeter (1891–1976), author best known for his novel Father of the Bride, lived at 200 East 66th Street.[24]
Andy Warhol (1928–1987), central figure in the
Pop art movement, lived at 57 East 66th Street.[25]
Peter Jennings (1938–2005), journalist and longtime anchor of ABC's World News Tonight lived and worked in the area. A street that borders W 66th street at ABC News headquarters is named in his honor.
The
M66 provides crosstown bus service between West 66th Street and
West End Avenue on the Upper West Side and East 67th Street and
York Avenue on the
Upper East Side.[26] The route dates back to one established in 1935 by the Comprehensive Omnibus Corporation.[27]
^Gray, Christopher.
"Streetscapes:: Sidestreet Prestige; When Cachet Was Off 5th Ave.", The New York Times, September 20, 1992. Accessed August 20, 2008. "Henry Havemeyer, the sugar refiner, took 1 East 66th Street for his Romanesque-style mansion at the northeast corner of Fifth in the 1880s, and Andrew Carnegie chose 2 East 91st Street for his mansion, now the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, at the turn of the century."
^"Edward Streeter, Humorist, Dies at 84", The New York Times, April 2, 1976. Accessed August 20, 2008. "Edward Streeter, humorist and author of two best-selling novels, "Father of the Bride" and "Dere Mable," died Wednesday at Roosevelt Hospital. He was 84 years old and lived at 200 East 66th Street."
^Strausbaugh, John.
"In the Mansion Land of the ‘Fifth Avenoodles’", December 14, 2007. Accessed August 20, 2008. "By the time Brooke Astor, widow of Caroline’s grandson Vincent, died this year at the age of 105, the area had been home to generations of poor immigrants, and to the likes of Andy Warhol (57 East 66th Street, between Madison and Park Avenues)..."