Park Ave South, Murray Hill

Park Avenue is, generally, known as the fancy street in Manhattan, but Park Avenue south is more like the step child of fancy. It's very commercial in a business - oriented kind of way rather than a ritzy store and doorman apartment building kind of way. The Murray Hill part of Park Avenue South starts around 28th though the distinction between where Kip's Bay ends and Murray Hill begins is a little muddy. They're pretty similar aesthetically and energetically.
At 28th, there are a couple of moderately expensive, nothing-special kinds of apartment buildings and commercial towers. There's nothing that stands out amongst the architecture and the street has a very work oriented energy. One of Anthony Bourdain's restaurants is right here and it's almost overlooked because the block just has a suit sort of feel. The next block up has even more of a commercial feel with a little hotel, commercial high rises and a slew of little take out hole in the wall joints (basically, fast-food).
There are a couple of little shops and a health food store mixed in with the big buildings at 30th but it's not a block I ever stop on for anything. The street only starts to have a sort of Park Avenue personality just as it's ending at 32nd. There are a couple of cool commercial buildings with interesting details like an old street clock and bizarre sculptures. It's a very Manhattan looking street in the way you would imagine a city street to look but there's no neighborhood to it at all. And, there are a couple of restaurants and bars but not enough to do to entice me or anyone I know to live here. It's a business street by my measure.

When most people - New Yorkers and out-of-towners alike - think of Park Avenue, they're as likely as not to think of pearl-clad poodle-clutching ladies who lunch, wealthy society dames enjoying a life of leisure on the Upper East Side. But if Park Avenue (north) is quiet and idyllic, then Park Avenue South is fast-paced and exciting. A neighborhood made up largely of offices, stretching from Union Square to Grand Central Terminal, this thriving street is home to the husbands of those lunching ladies (and wives of lunching husbands). With a number of bars, hotels, and innovative upscale restaurants, mostly catering to a professional clientele, this stretch of Park Avenue offers the excitement and energy that uptown Park Avenue largely lacks, as well as a host of architecturally stunning Deco buildings. While prospective home-owners or renters are unlikely to find much on offer here, those employed in the area are lucky enough to have access to a number of the city's best-kept secrets, including Houston's Restaurant, I Trulli (on 27th Street), and the French standby Les Halles. Hotel 31, Hotel Giraffe, and plenty of other accommodation options are on offer here for savvy tourists and buisiness-trippers alike.