UPTOWNflavor

Time Out New York (TONY) created a list of the 50 Best Blocks in New York. Harlem (or A96 as Curbed likes to refer to it) made the list with the following:

#5 Convent Avenue between 143rd and 144th Streets, Sugar Hill

As Manhattan’s affordable middle-class neighborhoods rapidly become extinct, this block, with architecture that echoes the City College of New York’s Gothic Revival style, shines as a movie-perfect example of quiet excellence. Sunday afternoons find residents holding forth on stoops, talking with their pastors on the sidewalk or playing touch football on a side street, along with a varied mix of dog walkers. Catherine Boston has lived in an apartment building on 143rd for ten years. “It hasn’t changed that much,” she says about her stretch of Sugar Hill. “I love that I feel safe here at night and in the summer.” But earlier this month, Boston let her lease expire, because she can’t afford the rising rent. Given her experience, it looks like access to this area, like so many others before it, will soon become more limited. Bonus: +2 points. The grace of the Sugar Hill Historic District means the area still feels like part of the neighborhood that Duke Ellington, Thurgood Marshall and tap-dancing superstars the Nicholas Brothers once called home.

#13 West 106th Street between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive, Upper West Side

Despite its two-way traffic, this tony block is quiet and desirable; it runs up against a particularly green part of Riverside Drive that, when the leaves fall, offers spectacular views of the Hudson.

#16 West 139th Street between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard (Seventh Avenue) and Frederick Douglass Boulevard (Eighth Avenue), Harlem (Strivers’ Row)

It feels like a block out of a Spike Lee film: comfortably middle-class, yet close enough to the “street” that it’s not insulated. Bonus: +2 points for historical significance (the “striving” of African-Americans that gave the stretch its name) and the view of City College on the hill.

And we can’t forget about Inwood:

#27 Indian Road between 215th and 218th Streets, Inwood

On one of the more beautiful sites in the city, this block overlooks Inwood Hill Park, where the woodland is unspoiled and rocky cliffs lead down to Spuyten Duyvil. Bonus: +1 point for the scintillating view of bluffs and fields.

For the full list and the criteria used to judge visit TONY