Kips Bay, Manhattan

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The Kips Bay neighborhood of Manhattan is the area between 23rd Street and 34th Street extending from the East River to Third Avenue.

Kips Bay was named after a 17th century Dutch farmer, Jacobus Kip. His farm ran from Second Avenue and 35th street to the East River. At that time, the river formed a bay which was named for him. This bay was later filled in, yet remains in the name of the area.

Kips Bay was also the site of a battle of the American Revolutionary War that left New York City in the hands of the British. The British army landed at Kips Bay on September 15th 1776.

Like other neighborhoods in New York City, the boundaries of Kip's Bay are somewhat vague. Often, Kips Bay is linked to neighboring regions like Murray Hill/Kips Bay or Kips Bay/Midtown East.

There are two large apartment buildings in the neighborhood named Kips Bay Towers (designed by architect I.M. Pei) and many businesses in the neighborhood use the moniker (e.g. Kips Bay Cinemas, Kips Bay Cleaners, Kips Bay branch of the New York Public Library). Built on a pier above the East River at 23rd Street are the Waterside Towers and the UN International School. There were plans to build additional above-water apartment towers in the 1980s, but environmental concerns doomed them. Today, the waterfront south of the Waterside Towers is Stuyvesant Cove Park.

The area is dominated by the institutional buildings of New York University's (NYU) medical school and its hospitals, Rusk, Tisch, Bellevue, and the Manhattan VA Hospital.