86th Street (Manhattan)
A building at the corner of 86th Street and Lexington Avenue, which has since been demolished
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| Other name(s) | German Broadway |
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| Maintained by | NYCDOT |
| Length | 1.6 mi (2.6 km) |
| Width | 100 feet (30.48 m) |
| Location | Manhattan |
| Postal code | 10024 (west), 10028 (east) |
| Coordinates | 40°46′40″N 73°57′06″W / 40.777877°N 73.951741°WCoordinates: 40°46′40″N 73°57′06″W / 40.777877°N 73.951741°W |
| West end | Riverside Drive in Upper West Side |
| East end | East End Avenue in Yorkville |
| North | 87th Street |
| South | 85th Street |
| Construction | |
| Commissioned | 1811 |
86th Street is a major two-way street in the Upper East Side and Upper West Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan.
On the West Side its continuous cliff-wall of apartment blocks including The Belnord is broken by two contrasting landmarked churches at prominent corner sites, the Tuscan Renaissance Saints Paul and Andrew United Methodist Church at the corner of West End Avenue, and the rusticated brownstone Romanesque Revival West-Park Presbyterian Church at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue.
The street was designated by the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 as one of 15 east-west streets that would be 100 feet (30 m) in width (while other streets were designated as 60 feet (18 m) in width).
Until the years following World War II, Yorkville on the East Side was a predominantly German community, and East 86th Street was nicknamed the German Broadway. The early settlement originally clustered around the 86th Street stop of the New York and Harlem Railroad. Since the late 1980s, nearly all distinctly German shops have disappeared, apart from a few restaurants on Second Avenue. The street was commonly considered a boundary for public utilities. For example, different telephone exchanges at East 79th and 97th Streets served the north and south sides of the street. Local number portability in the early 21st century allowed transferring phone numbers to either side.
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