MURRAY BAY — DNAinfo asked readers to draw on a map of where they think the borders of their neighborhoods are, and the results are finally here, revealing a simmering border war between Murray Hill and Kips Bay.
The most hotly contested area between the two neighborhoods lies in the battlefields of the low 30s, to which residents of Kips Bay and Murray Hill each appear to lay claim.
About 70 percent of self-declared Murray Hill residents who drew their neighborhood on DNAinfo's map — 146 out of 208 — claimed the neighborhood’s southern border extends to 31st street.
A smaller but still significant 89 respondents put the southern extreme of Murray Hill down on East 28th Street. And another contingent of 40 Murray Hill residents claimed their borders extend all the way to East 23rd Street.
A majority of the denizens of Kips Bay, meanwhile, put that neighborhood’s northern border at East 34th Street, giving the area between East 31st and East 34th something of an identity crisis. Twenty or so land-hungry respondents claimed as far north as East 36th Street and one hopeful put the northern extreme of Kips Bay at East 46th Street.
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Readers were able to agree more on what lies at the hearts of the two neighborhoods. Kips Bay respondents were nearly unanimous in counting the corridor between First and Second avenues and stretching from East 26th Street to East 33rd Street as the neighborhood’s heartland, with between 146 and 161 respondents counting this area as Kips Bay.
For Murray Hill, the consensus appears to center on the corridor of East 37th Street between Park and Third avenues, where the respondents unanimously counted the area as their own.
The eastern borders of the two neighborhoods are relatively uncontested thanks to the East River, and compared to the north/south battlefield, respondents were much more uniform in drawing the western boundaries. With the insignificant exception of two readers, nary a Murray Hill respondent claimed any territory west of Fifth Avenue, but the group was split, with a small majority pulling the borders east to Madison Avenue and a more conservative minority holding fast at Park Avenue South.
The vast majority of respondents, 108 out of 165 in Kips Bay and 118 out of 208 in Murray Hill, were newcomers with 0-5 years in the neighborhoods under their belts, making it somewhat difficult to find meaningful variances between older and newer residents.
But the veteran residents who did respond appeared to draw more conservative borders than their newer neighbors. Going by the opinions of Murray Hill residents with more than 20 years in the area, the southern border lands squarely on East 30th Street, while Kips Bay die-hards drew a hard line at East 34th Street.
