dedicated to the neighborhood

Barry and Judy Schneider began their decades of service on the Upper East Side with an empty lot. Specifically, one at the southeast corner of East 63rd Street and Second Avenue, MTA property that decades ago was staging ground for construction at the Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street station and that the authority later wanted to turn into a parking lot. “That’s how a group starts, with an issue,” Judy Schneider said. The Schneiders lobbied to use the space as a garden, which they did from about 1993 until 2000. The group they then created to continue servicing the area, the East Sixties Neighborhood Association (ESNA), just celebrated its 25th anniversary last fall. “We found that ... there are other issues in the community that need our attention, and that’s how we started,” Judy said.

Barry stressed the couple’s agreeable partnership as a main factor of their success. “I know many couples, the woman is very much involved and the husband just doesn’t have anything to do with it, or lots of times vice versa, but here we’re both involved in the same issues,” Barry said. “I think that’s what keeps us going and also keeps an association alive, because we do see eye to eye on almost every issue.” The Schneiders have three children and four grandchildren. They have lived on the Upper East Side for 50 years in the apartment they bought that was, at the time, in the first condo building in the city.

Before they dedicated their lives to the neighborhood, Barry worked at an ad agency and Judy was an architecture and design consultant. But after they started ESNA, they found that their old jobs didn’t mean as much as the community work they were doing. “When we could afford not to work, then we both kind of gave it up,” Judy said. The services for which the neighborhood association became known — like its annual directory of local businesses — eventually required their full attention.

But the Schneiders’ involvement doesn’t stop with ESNA. Judy is on the board of St. Katherine’s Park at First Avenue between 67th and 68th Streets, and both have been members of Community Board 8. They have fought in particular for more and better green space, leading tree trimmings in the warmer months, and they even organized a New York City Bridge Centennial Commission to celebrate the 100th birthdays of five major city bridges.

Barry and Judy aren’t shy about the effect their decades of work have had on the Upper East Side. Asked what makes the neighborhood great, they said, “We make it what it is.” However, they were quick to credit the elected officials and city agencies who have collaborated with them for so many years. Plus, they added, every amenity and form of entertainment is “within 10 minutes.”