Charles Murray posted his “social bubble” quiz from Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010 on PBS.com to find the zip code most insulated from white working class zip code in America. While his sample sizes aren’t enormous, the winner seems pretty plausible:
Zip code 10023
As seen above from Central Park, this zip code is Manhattan’s Upper West Side between 59th St. and 76th St. The roof of The Dakota, where John Lennon was murdered in 1980, is peeking over the trees in the center-left. The twin tower apartment on the right is the San Remo, where composer Stephen Sondheim grew up.
It was started in 1929 and finished in the hard times of 1931.
I sometimes wonder what the styles of the 1930s would have looked like if the prosperity of the 1920s had continued. Judging by the handful of relics finished in the 1930s like the San Remo, the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, and Augusta National Golf Club, the answer is: amazing.
