An enclave for the wealthy and fashionable, the Upper  East Side represents a broad cross section of New York neighborhoods and contains an impressive concentration of restaurants. In the area that stretches from Fifth Avenue to the East River, and from 60th street to 97th Street, you'll find food to please every palate, from Austrian cuisine to vegetarian fare.

Rimming the east edge of the park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Guggenheim Museum, the Jewish Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Frick Collection, the Neue Galerie, and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum are collectively known as Museum Mile.

An impressive concentration of galleries, along with elegant shops, upscale restaurants, clubs, exclusive private schools and fabulous residences grace this area as well. East of Lexington Avenue, where there's a significant population of single people, the atmosphere becomes more casual. Here modern high-rise apartments dominate, sharing space with a variety of pubs, sports bars and pizza joints.

A BIT OF HISTORY

In the 19th century, rich industrialists including Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick began building mansions on the large lots along Fifth Ave, abutting Central Park. One of the first sections to be developed was around 86th Street, where several prominent families of German descent, including the Schermerhorns, the Astors and the Rhinelanders built country estates. Yorkville as it was known, soon moved east past Lexington Avenue and became a suburb of middle-class Germans, many of whom worked in nearby piano factories and breweries-although hardly a rathskeller survives today.

In the 1950's, waves of immigrants from Hungary and Eastern Europe established their own communities, only to disappear as gentrification set in a couple of decades ago.

Over the years, the posh East Side has been a magnet for celebrities- Greta Garbo, Andy Warhol, Richard Nixon and Woody Allen among them. Today, Fifth Avenue remains the neighborhood's most impressive thoroughfare, Madison Avenue is a chock-a-block with chi-chi shops and art galleries; and Park avenue is an elegant residential boulevard.