A wide crosstown street of 1811, traditionally dividing Yorkville from East Harlem.
96th Street is one of fifteen 100-foot-wide crosstown streets mapped in the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811. It is the traditional dividing line between Yorkville and the Upper East Side to the south and Spanish Harlem, or East Harlem, to the north. Between Third and Lexington Avenues it climbs along the edge of Carnegie Hill, the neighbourhood named after Andrew Carnegie’s mansion at Fifth Avenue and 91st Street.