Amsterdam Avenue, Manhattan NYC — Upper West Side Life
Amsterdam Ave is the Upper West Side's neighborhood spine. Restaurants, Columbia area, local feel. Block-level quality scores.
Livability score
Grade C+, livability 58 out of 100.
Calm 39, ranked against major corridors. Access 93, ranked against every street in the city. More complaints per home than most major corridors, but a lot within a walk.
That puts Amsterdam Avenue in the top 28% of scored streets citywide.
Strongest on infrastructure (74) and tree cover (100). Housing (11) is the weak spot.
On the record
Heat and hot water is the most-filed complaint on Amsterdam Avenue, with 2,471 reports. Across every category, 11,371 reports sit on this street's 311 file, and 22% of them name heat and hot water. After that the file runs to street/sidewalk noise (1,854 reports) and illegal parking (1,079). Reports on Amsterdam Avenue span 126 distinct 311 categories. About 59 reports per 100 homes sit on Amsterdam Avenue, counting every category.
The HPD file on Amsterdam Avenue carries 1,790 Class C violations, the most serious of the three classes an inspector can write, about 9 per 100 homes on file. Pests is what HPD writes up most on Amsterdam Avenue, 1,080 violations of it. Paint and lead accounts for 1,051 more, and structure for 684. The housing file lists 450 residential buildings on Amsterdam Avenue holding 19,162 homes, with 314 walk-ups and 89 elevator buildings among them. Across those buildings the average is about 43 homes each.
Since 2021, 666 people have been injured in reported crashes here.
Against major corridors, parking comes in at 67, with cleanliness at 12. That 12 on cleanliness puts Amsterdam Avenue in the weakest quarter of major corridors. The card also puts traffic safety at 58 and quietness at 14 among major corridors. Food nearby ranks 92 and transit 90, both against every street in the city rather than inside the band. Amsterdam Avenue ranks 100 on tree cover, the best of its three citywide measures. The band those ranks are drawn from holds about 190 major corridors.
The strongest band-ranked measure on Amsterdam Avenue is infrastructure, at 74.
The housing file puts 25% of the 19,162 homes on Amsterdam Avenue in rent stabilization, 4,797 homes in all.
Scores are built from 311 complaints, HPD violations, NYPD crash records, NYPD felony complaint records, MTA stop locations, DOHMH food permits, and the street tree census, divided by the homes and businesses on the street, updated weekly. Read the scoring method or the data sources.
Nearest streets in Manhattan
- W 92 Street, Manhattan
- W 90 Street, Manhattan
- W 84 Street, Manhattan
- W 88 Street, Manhattan
- W 91 Street, Manhattan
- W 89 Street, Manhattan
Amsterdam Avenue runs through Upper West Side, Washington Heights and Hamilton Heights, where every scored street in the neighborhood is ranked beside it.
Every scored street in Manhattan, the citywide rankings of all 5,700+ graded streets, or Manhattan vs Brooklyn: How the Two Boroughs Score (2026 Data).