Beloved West Side Kids to Close After 44 Years

Owner Jenny Bergman cites rising costs, online shopping, and tariffs as the ultimate factors in the decision. The store, a beloved Upper West Side fixture, will undoubtedly be missed by children and parents alike.

| 09 Jul 2025 | 02:51

After 44 years of hard work, bright windows, and neighborhood magic, UWS community-driven staple West Side Kids is closing its doors for good.

Founded by Alice Bergman on September 15, 1981, the toy store quickly became a beloved after-school hangout for children in the community. Now, Jenny Bergman, the daughter and current owner, said her efforts to find a buyer came to naught and she announced the closure in a recent open letter to the community that embraced the store for over four decades.

Jenny’s mother, Alice, was a teacher in Bed-Stuy in the 1960s, where she realized classroom materials didn’t serve as adequate representations of the children she taught. Seeking to change this, she began creating toys and puppets featuring diverse characters and modeling real local kids.

Eventually, this passion turned into West Side Kids, which opened in 1981 as a small children’s shop. However, it rapidly grew into a neighborhood landmark. Jenny said she remembers working at the store as a teenager helping her mother grow the business into a community icon.

“I was 14 when the store opened,” Jenny said. “I used to work here on weekends. The neighborhood was very different. It was a much more diverse and middle-class class, and we catered to everyone in the neighborhood.”

In the following years, the shop would become an ever-dependable spot for birthday presents and after-school wandering, encouraging imagination and diversity over trends and stereotypes. Even as the UWS changed around it, the store’s mission remained unchanged: welcoming every child, regardless of their background or budget.

“I think that we were always a community-based store that we always welcome everybody, that we never judge,” Jenny said. “If you had 10 cents to spend or $1,000 to spend, you were equally important.”

However, despite a hyper-local and incredibly loyal following, West Side Kids was not able to withstand the pressure of rising costs, the shift to online shopping that accelerated during the pandemic and has not abated since and the uncertainty created by tariffs.

“It was an accumulation,” Jenny said. “Just looking at figures and saying, Okay, how much longer can I do it? People are upset that stores are closing and that we have all these empty storefronts, but that’s because [of how] people are shopping. So, if you shop online, you’re complicit, but at the same time, I understand why people shop [online].”

She explained that to keep up, she had to carry more merchandise than ever. “Before, people would come in and buy what we had,” she said. “Now, if I don’t have lavender or orange or some exact shade, they just buy it online. I can’t compete with that.”

Before the painful decision to close, she made an effort to sell the store to new owners. Both got cold feet amid economic uncertainty. The talks started in January and subsequently fell apart, leaving Jenny to juggle frantic price changes, shipping delays, and vendor emails. Jenny labeled the process as “two months of insanity.” By June, there was nothing left for Jenny to do.

“The political climate is just compounding, and it’s not the reason, but the tariffs are insane, and he [Donald J. Trump] is just creating so much unknown,” Jenny continued.

Today, though the closure of West Side Kids will undoubtedly leave a gaping hole in the community, Jenny remains proud of the store’s unwavering philosophy on inclusivity and fairness, a mission started by her mother and carried on through every toy sold.

Jenny said her mother was steadfast about carrying non-gendered, diverse toys, something that ensured there were children of color, boys, and girls on every box. For Jenny, that commitment was what mattered most.

Though West Side Kids is closing, Jenny does not plan to retire.

“I’m 58 years old and gonna have to keep working, but I’m going to take the rest of the summer off and sort of figure it out,” Jenny said. “I want to travel some more. But I’m not retiring. I have to keep working.”

Even as her chapter in West Side Kids comes to a close, Jenny’s warmth, honesty, and unwavering commitment to her community will always shine through, a testament to the legacy she and her mother built together on the Upper West Side.