<P> Its name was a derivation of the description given to the area by Dutch settlers to New Netherland, likely from Bloemendaal, a town in the tulip region . The Dutch Anglicized the name to "Bloomingdale" or "the Bloomingdale District", to the west side of Manhattan from about 23rd Street up to the Hollow Way (modern 125th Street). It consisted of farms and villages along a road (regularized in 1703) known as the Bloomingdale Road . Bloomingdale Road was renamed The Boulevard in 1868, as the farms and villages were divided into building lots and absorbed into the city . By the 18th century it contained numerous farms and country residences of many of the city's well - off, a major parcel of which was the Apthorp Farm . The main artery of this area was the Bloomingdale Road, which began north of where Broadway and the Bowery Lane (now Fourth Avenue) join (at modern Union Square) and wended its way northward up to about modern 116th Street in Morningside Heights, where the road further north was known as the Kingsbridge Road . Within the confines of the modern - day Upper West Side, the road passed through areas known as Harsenville, Strycker's Bay, and Bloomingdale Village . </P> <P> With the building of the Croton Aqueduct passing down the area between present day Amsterdam Avenue and Columbus Avenue in 1838--42, the northern reaches of the district became divided into Manhattan Valley to the east of the aqueduct and Bloomingdale to the west . Bloomingdale, in the latter half of the 19th century, was the name of a village that occupied the area just south of 110th street . </P> <P> Much of the riverfront of the Upper West Side was a shipping, transportation, and manufacturing corridor . The Hudson River Railroad line right - of - way was granted in the late 1830s to connect New York City to Albany, and soon ran along the riverbank . One major non-industrial development, the creation of Central Park in the 1850s and' 60s, caused many squatters to move their shacks into the Upper West Side . Parts of the neighborhood became a ragtag collection of squatters' housing, boarding houses, and rowdy taverns . </P> <P> As this development occurred, the old name of Bloomingdale Road was being chopped away and the name Broadway was progressively applied further northward to include what had been lower Bloomingdale Road . In 1868, the city began straightening and grading the section of the Bloomingdale Road from Harsenville north, and it became known as "Western Boulevard" or "The Boulevard". It retained that name until the end of the century, when the name Broadway finally supplanted it . </P>

Is central park on the east or west side