The East Village is a neighborhood on the
East Side of
Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with ...
in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
. It is roughly defined as the area east of the
Bowery
The Bowery () is a street and neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. The street runs from Chatham Square at Park Row, Worth Street, and Mott Street in the south to Cooper Square at 4th Street in the north.Jackson, Kenneth L. "B ...
and
Third Avenue
Third Avenue is a north-south thoroughfare on the East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan, as well as in the center portion of the Bronx. Its southern end is at Astor Place and St. Mark's Place. It transitions into Cooper Square ...
, between
14th Street on the north and
Houston Street
Houston Street ( ) is a major east–west thoroughfare in Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs the full width of the island of Manhattan, from FDR Drive along the East River in the east to the West Side Highway along the Hudson River in t ...
on the south.
The East Village contains three subsections:
Alphabet City
Alphabet City is a neighborhood located within the East Village in the New York City borough of Manhattan. Its name comes from Avenues A, B, C, and D, the only avenues in Manhattan to have single-letter names. It is bounded by Houston St ...
, in reference to the single-letter-named avenues that are located to the east of
First Avenue;
Little Ukraine, near
Second Avenue and 6th and 7th Streets; and the
Bowery
The Bowery () is a street and neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. The street runs from Chatham Square at Park Row, Worth Street, and Mott Street in the south to Cooper Square at 4th Street in the north.Jackson, Kenneth L. "B ...
, located around the street of the same name.
Initially the location of the present-day East Village was occupied by the
Lenape
The Lenape (, , or Lenape , del, Lënapeyok) also called the Leni Lenape, Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada. Their historical territory includ ...
Native Americans, and was then divided into plantations by Dutch settlers. During the early 19th century, the East Village contained many of the city's most opulent estates. By the middle of the century, it grew to include a large immigrant populationincluding what was once referred to as
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
's
Little Germanyand was considered part of the nearby
Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets.
Traditionally an im ...
. By the late 1960s, many artists, musicians, students and
hippie
A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...
s began to move into the area, and the East Village was given its own identity. Since at least the 2000s,
gentrification
Gentrification is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more Wealth, affluent residents and businesses. It is a common and controversial topic in urban politics and urban planning, planning. Gentrification ...
has changed the character of the neighborhood.
The East Village is part of
Manhattan Community District 3, and its primary
ZIP Codes are 10003 and 10009.
It is patrolled by the
9th Precinct of the
New York City Police Department
The New York City Police Department (NYPD), officially the City of New York Police Department, established on May 23, 1845, is the primary municipal law enforcement agency within the City of New York, the largest and one of the oldest in ...
.
History
Early development
The area that is today known as the East Village was originally occupied by the
Lenape
The Lenape (, , or Lenape , del, Lënapeyok) also called the Leni Lenape, Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada. Their historical territory includ ...
Native Americans. The Lenape relocated during different seasons, moving toward the shore to fish during the summers, and moving inland to hunt and grow crops during the fall and winter. Manhattan was purchased in 1626 by
Peter Minuit
Peter Minuit (between 1580 and 1585 – August 5, 1638) was a Wallonian merchant from Tournai, in present-day Belgium. He was the 3rd Director of the Dutch North American colony of New Netherland from 1626 until 1631, and 3rd Governor of New N ...
of the
Dutch West India Company
The Dutch West India Company ( nl, Geoctrooieerde Westindische Compagnie, ''WIC'' or ''GWC''; ; en, Chartered West India Company) was a chartered company of Dutch merchants as well as foreign investors. Among its founders was Willem Usselincx ( ...
, who served as director-general of
New Netherland
New Netherland ( nl, Nieuw Nederland; la, Novum Belgium or ) was a 17th-century colonial province of the Dutch Republic that was located on the East Coast of the United States, east coast of what is now the United States. The claimed territor ...
.
The population of the Dutch colony of
New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam ( nl, Nieuw Amsterdam, or ) was a 17th-century Dutch settlement established at the southern tip of Manhattan Island that served as the seat of the colonial government in New Netherland. The initial trading ''factory'' gave rise ...
was located primarily below the current
Fulton Street, while north of it were a number of small plantations and large farms that were then called ''bouwerij'' (anglicized to "boweries"; nl, label=modern
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
, boerderij). Around these farms were a number of enclaves of free or "half-free" Africans, which served as a buffer between the Dutch and the Native Americans. One of the largest of these was located along the modern
Bowery
The Bowery () is a street and neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. The street runs from Chatham Square at Park Row, Worth Street, and Mott Street in the south to Cooper Square at 4th Street in the north.Jackson, Kenneth L. "B ...
between Prince Street and
Astor Place
Astor Place is a one-block street in NoHo/ East Village, in the lower part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It runs from Broadway in the west (just below East 8th Street) to Lafayette Street. The street encompasses two plazas at th ...
, as well as the "only separate enclave" of this type within Manhattan. These black farmers were some of the earliest settlers of the area.
There were several "boweries" within what is now the East Village. Bowery no.2 passed through several inhabitants, before the eastern half of the land was subdivided and given to Harmen Smeeman in 1647.
Peter Stuyvesant
Peter Stuyvesant (; in Dutch also ''Pieter'' and ''Petrus'' Stuyvesant, ; 1610 – August 1672)Mooney, James E. "Stuyvesant, Peter" in p.1256 was a Dutch colonial officer who served as the last Dutch director-general of the colony of New Net ...
, the director-general of New Netherland, owned adjacent bowery no.1 and bought bowery no.2 in 1656 for
his farm. Stuyvesant's manor, also called Bowery, was near what is now 10th Street between Second and Third Avenues. Though the manor burned down in the 1770s, his family held onto the land for over seven generations, until a descendant began selling off parcels in the early 19th century.
Bowery no. 3 was located near today's 2nd Street between Second Avenue and the modern street named Bowery. It was owned by Gerrit Hendricksen in 1646 and later given to Philip Minthorne by 1732. The Minthorne and Stuyvesant families both owned slaves on their farms. According to an 1803 deed, Stuyvesant's slaves were to be buried in a cemetery plot at
St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery.
[ ; .]Re: ''
Valentine's Manual
The ''Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York'', commonly known as ''Valentine's Manual'', was published annually by the city's Common Council from 1841 to 1870, and is of historical interest today partly because of its statistics and li ...
''.
The Stuyvesants' estate later expanded to include two
Georgian
Georgian may refer to:
Common meanings
* Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country)
** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group
** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians
**Georgian scripts, three scrip ...
-style manors: the "Bowery House" to the south and "Petersfield" to the north.
Many of these farms had become wealthy country estates by the middle of the 18th century. The Stuyvesant, DeLancey, and Rutgers families would come to own most of the land on the Lower East Side, including the portions that would later become the East Village. By the late 18th century Lower Manhattan estate owners started having their lands surveyed to facilitate the future growth of Lower Manhattan into a
street grid
In urban planning, the grid plan, grid street plan, or gridiron plan is a type of city plan in which streets run at right angles to each other, forming a grid.
Two inherent characteristics of the grid plan, frequent intersections and orthogona ...
system. The Stuyvesant plot, surveyed in the 1780s or 1790s, was planned to be developed with a new grid around
Stuyvesant Street
Stuyvesant Street is one of the oldest streets in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It runs diagonally from 9th Street at Third Avenue to 10th Street near Second Avenue, all within the East Village, Manhattan, neighborhood. The majori ...
, a street that ran compass west–east. This contrasted with the grid system that was ultimately laid out under the
Commissioners' Plan of 1811
The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 was the original design for the streets of Manhattan above Houston Street and below 155th Street, which put in place the rectangular grid plan of streets and lots that has defined Manhattan on its march uptown u ...
, which is offset by 28.9 degrees clockwise. Stuyvesant Street formed the border between former boweries 1and 2, and the grid surrounding it included four north–south and nine west–east streets.
Because each landowner had done their own survey, there were different street grids that did not align with each other. Various state laws, passed in the 1790s, gave the city of New York the ability to plan out, open, and close streets. The final plan, published in 1811, resulted in the current street grid north of
Houston Street
Houston Street ( ) is a major east–west thoroughfare in Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs the full width of the island of Manhattan, from FDR Drive along the East River in the east to the West Side Highway along the Hudson River in t ...
and most of the streets in the modern East Villagewere conformed to this plan, except for Stuyvesant Street. The north–south avenues within the Lower East Side were finished in the 1810s, followed by the west–east streets in the 1820s.
Upscale neighborhood
The Commissioners' Plan and resulting street grid was the catalyst for the northward expansion of the city, and for a short period, the portion of the Lower East Side that is now the East Village was one of the wealthiest residential neighborhoods in the city.
Bond Street
Bond Street in the West End of London links Piccadilly in the south to Oxford Street in the north. Since the 18th century the street has housed many prestigious and upmarket fashion retailers. The southern section is Old Bond Street and the l ...
between the Bowery and Broadway, just west of the East Side within present-day
NoHo
NoHo, short for North of Houston Street (as contrasted with SoHo), is a primarily residential neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is bounded by Mercer Street to the west and the Bowery to the east, ...
, was considered the most upscale street address in the city by the 1830s, with structures such as the
Greek Revival
The Greek Revival was an architectural movement which began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States and Canada, but ...
-style
Colonnade Row
Colonnade Row, also known as LaGrange Terrace, on present-day Lafayette Street in New York City's NoHo neighborhood, is a landmarked series of Greek revival buildings originally built in the early 1830s. They are believed to have been built by Se ...
and
Federal
Federal or foederal (archaic) may refer to:
Politics
General
*Federal monarchy, a federation of monarchies
*Federation, or ''Federal state'' (federal system), a type of government characterized by both a central (federal) government and states or ...
-style
rowhouse
In architecture and city planning, a terrace or terraced house ( UK) or townhouse ( US) is a form of medium-density housing that originated in Europe in the 16th century, whereby a row of attached dwellings share side walls. In the United State ...
s. The neighborhood's prestigious nature could be attributed to several factors, including a rise in commerce and population following the
Erie Canal
The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east-west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, vastly reducing t ...
's opening in the 1820s.
Following the grading of the streets, development of rowhouses came to the East Side and NoHo by the early 1830s. One set of Federal-style rowhouses was built in the 1830s by
Thomas E. Davis
Thomas Edward Davis or Davies ( or 1795 – March 16, 1878) was a prolific real estate developer who built residential properties in New York between 1830 and 1860.
Early life
Davis emigrated from England to New Brunswick, New Jersey, early in t ...
on 8th Street between
Second
The second (symbol: s) is the unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), historically defined as of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds ...
and
Third Avenue
Third Avenue is a north-south thoroughfare on the East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan, as well as in the center portion of the Bronx. Its southern end is at Astor Place and St. Mark's Place. It transitions into Cooper Square ...
s. That block was renamed "
St. Mark's Place" and is one of the few remaining terrace names in the East Village. In 1833 Davis and
Arthur Bronson bought the entire block of 10th Street from
Avenue A to
Avenue B. The block was located adjacent to
Tompkins Square Park
Tompkins Square Park is a public park in the Alphabet City, Manhattan, Alphabet City portion of East Village, Manhattan, East Village, Manhattan, New York City. The square-shaped park, bounded on the north by 10th Street (Manhattan), East 10th ...
, located between 7th and 10th Streets from Avenue A to Avenue B, designated the same year.
Though the park was not in the original Commissioners' Plan of 1811, part of the land from 7th to 10th Streets east of First Avenue had been set aside for a marketplace that was ultimately never built. Rowhouses up to three stories were built on the side streets by such developers as
Elisha Peck
Elisha Peck (1789-1851) was a Massachusetts-born merchant who formed a partnership with Anson Green Phelps. He ran the British side of their business from Liverpool for about thirteen years. The partnership ended in 1834 after an accident at t ...
and
Anson Green Phelps
Anson Green Phelps (March 24, 1781 – May 18, 1858) was an American entrepreneur and business man from Connecticut. Beginning with a saddlery business, he founded Phelps, Dodge & Co. in 1833 as an export-import business with his sons-in-law as p ...
;
Ephraim H. Wentworth
Ephraim (; he, ''ʾEp̄rayīm'', in pausa: ''ʾEp̄rāyīm'') was, according to the Book of Genesis, the second son of Joseph ben Jacob and Asenath. Asenath was an Ancient Egyptian woman whom Pharaoh gave to Joseph as wife, and the daughte ...
; and
Christopher S. Hubbard and
Henry H. Casey.
Mansions were also built on the East Side. One notable address was the twelve-house development called "Albion Place", located on Fourth Street between the Bowery and Second Avenue, built for Peck and Phelps in 1832–1833. Second Avenue also had its own concentration of mansions, though most residences on that avenue were row houses built by
speculative land owners, including the
Isaac T. Hopper House
The Isaac T. Hopper House is a Greek Revival architecture, Greek Revival townhouse at 110 Second Avenue (Manhattan), Second Avenue between East 6th Street (Manhattan), 6th and 7th Street (Manhattan), 7th Streets in the East Village, Manhattan, ...
. One ''
New York Evening Post
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com.
It was established i ...
'' article in 1846 said that Second Avenue was to become one of "the two great avenues for elegant residences" in Manhattan, the other being
Fifth Avenue
Fifth Avenue is a major and prominent thoroughfare in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It stretches north from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village to West 143rd Street in Harlem. It is one of the most expensive shopping stre ...
.
Two marble cemeteries were also built on the East Side: the
New York City Marble Cemetery
The New York City Marble Cemetery is a historic cemetery founded in 1831, and located at 52-74 East 2nd Street between First and Second Avenues in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. The cemetery has 258 undergroun ...
, built in 1831 on 2nd Street between First and Second Avenues,
and the
New York Marble Cemetery
The New York Marble Cemetery is a burial ground established in 1830 in what is now the East Village of Manhattan. It occupies the interior of the block bounded by 2nd Street, Second Avenue, 3rd Street, and the Bowery. I ...
, built in 1830 within the backlots of the block to the west.
Following the rapid growth of the neighborhood, Manhattan's 17th ward was split from the 11th ward in 1837. The former covered the area from Avenue B to the Bowery, while the latter covered the area from Avenue B to the
East River
The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary in New York City. The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Queens ...
.
Immigrant neighborhood
19th century
By the middle of the 19th century, many of the wealthy had continued to move further northward to the
Upper West Side
The Upper West Side (UWS) is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by Central Park on the east, the Hudson River on the west, West 59th Street to the south, and West 110th Street to the north. The Upper West ...
and the
Upper East Side
The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the wes ...
.
Some wealthy families remained, and one observer noted in the 1880s that these families "look
ddown with disdain upon the parvenus of Fifth avenue". In general, though, the wealthy population of the neighborhood started to decline as many moved northward. Immigrants from modern-day Ireland, Germany, and Austria moved into the rowhouses and manors.
The population of Manhattan's 17th wardwhich includes the western part of the East Village and Lower East Sidegrew from 18,000 in 1840 to over 43,000 by 1850 and to 73,000 persons in 1860, becoming the city's most highly populated ward at that time.
As a result of the
Panic of 1837
The Panic of 1837 was a financial crisis in the United States that touched off a major depression, which lasted until the mid-1840s. Profits, prices, and wages went down, westward expansion was stalled, unemployment went up, and pessimism abound ...
, the city had experienced less construction in the previous years, and so there was a dearth of units available for immigrants, resulting in the subdivision of many houses in lower Manhattan.
Another solution was brand-new "tenant houses", or
tenement
A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access. They are common on the British Isles, particularly in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, i ...
s, within the East Side.
Clusters of these buildings were constructed by the
Astor family
The Astor family achieved prominence in business, society, and politics in the United States and the United Kingdom during the 19th and 20th centuries. With ancestral roots in the Italian Alps region of Italy by way of Germany,
the Astors settle ...
and
Stephen Whitney. The developers rarely involved themselves with the daily operations of the tenements, instead subcontracting landlords (many of them immigrants or their children) to run each building. Numerous tenements were erected, typically with footprints of , before regulatory legislation was passed in the 1860s.
To address concerns about unsafe and unsanitary conditions, a second set of laws was passed in 1879, requiring each room to have windows, resulting in the creation of air shafts between each building. Subsequent tenements built to the law's specifications were referred to as
Old Law Tenement
Old Law Tenements are tenements built in New York City after the Tenement House Act of 1879 and before the New York State Tenement House Act ("New Law") of 1901. The 1879 law required that every habitable room have a window opening to plain air, ...
s.
Reform movements, such as the one started by
Jacob Riis
Jacob August Riis ( ; May 3, 1849 – May 26, 1914) was a Danish-American social reformer, "muckraking" journalist and social documentary photographer. He contributed significantly to the cause of urban reform in America at the turn of the twen ...
's 1890 book ''
How the Other Half Lives
''How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York'' (1890) is an early publication of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s. The photographs served as a basis f ...
'', continued to attempt to alleviate the problems of the area through
settlement house
The settlement movement was a reformist social movement that began in the 1880s and peaked around the 1920s in United Kingdom and the United States. Its goal was to bring the rich and the poor of society together in both physical proximity and s ...
s, such as the
Henry Street Settlement
The Henry Street Settlement is a not-for-profit social service agency in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City that provides social services, arts programs and health care services to New Yorkers of all ages. It was founde ...
, and other welfare and service agencies.
Because most of the new immigrants were German speakers, the East Village and the Lower East Side collectively became known as "
Little Germany" (german: links=no, Kleindeutschland).
The neighborhood had the third largest urban population of Germans outside of
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
and
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
. It was America's first foreign language neighborhood; hundreds of political, social, sports and recreational clubs were set up during this period. Numerous churches were built in the neighborhood, of which many are still extant. In addition, Little Germany also had its own library on Second Avenue,
now the
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress ...
's Ottendorfer branch.
However, the community started to decline after the sinking of the ''
General Slocum
The PS ''General Slocum''"PS" stands for "Paddle Steamer" was a sidewheel passenger steamboat built in Brooklyn, New York, in 1891. During her service history, she was involved in a number of mishaps, including multiple groundings and collision ...
'' on June 15, 1904, in which more than a thousand German-Americans died.
The Germans who moved out of the area were replaced by immigrants of many different nationalities. This included groups of Italians and Eastern European Jews, as well as Greeks, Hungarians, Poles, Romanians, Russians, Slovaks and Ukrainians, each of whom settled in relatively homogeneous enclaves.
[ In ''How the Other Half Lives'' Riis wrote: "A map of the city, colored to designate nationalities, would show more stripes than on the skin of a zebra, and more colors than any rainbow."]
One of the first groups to populate the former Little Germany were Yiddish
Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...
-speaking Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews ( ; he, יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכְּנַז, translit=Yehudei Ashkenaz, ; yi, אַשכּנזישע ייִדן, Ashkenazishe Yidn), also known as Ashkenazic Jews or ''Ashkenazim'',, Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation: , singu ...
, who first settled south of Houston Street before moving northward. The Roman Catholic
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
Poles
Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, who share a common history, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in Ce ...
as well as the Protestant
Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...
Hungarians
Hungarians, also known as Magyars ( ; hu, magyarok ), are a nation and ethnic group native to Hungary () and historical Hungarian lands who share a common culture, history, ancestry, and language. The Hungarian language belongs to the Urali ...
would also have a significant impact in the East Side, erecting houses of worship next to each other along 7th Street at the turn of the 20th century. American-born New Yorkers would build other churches and community institutions, including the Olivet Memorial Church at 59 East 2nd Street (built 1891), the Middle Collegiate Church at 112 Second Avenue (built 1891–1892), and the Society of the Music School Settlement, now Third Street Music School Settlement
Third Street Music School Settlement is the longest-running community music school in the United States. Founded in 1894, it is at 235 East 11th Street, New York. Third Street has three main programs: a music & dance school, a music-infused Presc ...
, at 53–55 East 3rd Street (converted 1903–1904).
By the 1890s tenements were being designed in the ornate Queen Anne and Romanesque Revival
Romanesque Revival (or Neo-Romanesque) is a style of building employed beginning in the mid-19th century inspired by the 11th- and 12th-century Romanesque architecture. Unlike the historic Romanesque style, Romanesque Revival buildings tended to ...
styles. Tenements built in the later part of the decade were built in the Renaissance Revival
Renaissance Revival architecture (sometimes referred to as "Neo-Renaissance") is a group of 19th century architectural revival styles which were neither Greek Revival nor Gothic Revival but which instead drew inspiration from a wide range o ...
style. At the time, the area was increasingly being identified as part of the Lower East Side.
20th century
By the 1890s and 1900s any remaining manors on Second Avenue had been demolished and replaced with tenements or apartment buildings. The New York State Tenement House Act One of the reforms of the Progressive Era, the New York State Tenement House Act of 1901 was one of the first such laws to ban the construction of dark, poorly ventilated tenement buildings in the state of New York. Among other sanctions, the law ...
of 1901 drastically changed the regulations to which tenement buildings had to conform. The early 20th century marked the creation of apartment houses,[ ().] office buildings, and other commercial or institutional structures on Second Avenue. After the widening of Second Avenue's roadbed in the early 1910s, many of the front stoops on that road were eliminated. The symbolic demise of the old fashionable district came in 1912 when the last resident moved out of the Thomas E. Davis mansion at Second Avenue and St. Mark's Place, which ''The New York Times'' had called the "last fashionable residence" on Second Avenue.
Simultaneously with the decline of the last manors, the Yiddish Theatre District
The Yiddish Theatre District, also called the Jewish Rialto and the Yiddish Realto, was the center of New York City's Yiddish theatre scene in the early 20th century. It was located primarily on Second Avenue, though it extended to Avenue B, b ...
or "Yiddish Rialto" developed within the East Side. It contained many theaters and other forms of entertainment for the Jewish immigrants of the city. While most of the early Yiddish theaters were located south of Houston Street, several theater producers were considering moving north along Second Avenue by the first decades of the 20th century.
Second Avenue gained more prominence as a Yiddish theater destination in the 1910s with the opening of two theatres: the Second Avenue Theatre
Village East by Angelika (originally the Louis N. Jaffe Art Theatre, also Village East, and formerly known by several other names) is a movie theater at 189 Second Avenue, on the corner with 12th Street, in the East Village of Manhattan in N ...
, which opened in 1911 at 35–37 Second Avenue, and the National Theater, which opened in 1912 at 111–117 East Houston Street. This was followed by the opening of several other theaters, such as the Louis N. Jaffe Theater and the Public Theatre in 1926 and 1927 respectively. Numerous movie houses also opened in the East Side, including six on Second Avenue. By World WarI the district's theaters hosted as many as twenty to thirty shows a night. After World WarII Yiddish theater became less popular, and by the mid-1950s few theaters were still extant in the District.
The city built First Houses
First Houses is a public housing project in the East Village, Manhattan, New York City and was one of the first public housing projects in the United States. First Houses were designated a New York City and National Historic Landmark in 1974. T ...
on the south side of East 3rd Street between First Avenue and Avenue A, and on the west side of Avenue A between East 2nd and East 3rd Streets in 1935–1936, the first such public housing project
Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is usually owned by a government authority, either central or local. Although the common goal of public housing is to provide affordable housing, the details, terminology, def ...
in the United States. The neighborhood originally ended at the East River
The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary in New York City. The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Queens ...
, to the east of where Avenue D was later located. In the mid-20th-century, landfillincluding World WarII debris and rubble shipped from Londonwas used to extend the shoreline to provide foundation for the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive
The Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive, commonly called the FDR Drive for short, is a limited-access parkway on the east side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It starts near South and Broad Streets, just north of the Battery Park ...
.
In the mid-20th century Ukrainians
Ukrainians ( uk, Українці, Ukraintsi, ) are an East Slavs, East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine. They are the seventh-largest nation in Europe. The native language of the Ukrainians is Ukrainian language, Ukrainian. The majority ...
created a Ukrainian enclave in the neighborhood, centered around Second Avenue and 6th and 7th Streets. The Polish enclave in the East Village persisted as well. Numerous other immigrant groups had moved out, and their former churches were sold and became Orthodox cathedrals. Latin American immigrants started to move to the East Side, settling in the eastern part of the neighborhood and creating an enclave that later came to be known as Loisaida
Alphabet City is a neighborhood located within the East Village in the New York City borough of Manhattan. Its name comes from Avenues A, B, C, and D, the only avenues in Manhattan to have single-letter names. It is bounded by Houston St ...
.
The East Side's population started to decline at the start of the Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
in the 1930s and the implementation of the Immigration Act of 1924
The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act (), was a United States federal law that prevented immigration from Asia and set quotas on the number of immigrants from the Eastern ...
, and the expansion of the New York City Subway
The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, an affiliate agency of the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Opened on October 2 ...
into the outer boroughs. Many old tenements, deemed to be "blighted" and unnecessary, were destroyed in the middle of the 20th century. A substantial portion of the neighborhood, including the Ukrainian enclave, was slated for demolition under the Cooper Square Urban Renewal Plan of 1956, which was to redevelop the area from Ninth to Delancey Street
__NOTOC__
Delancey Street is one of the main thoroughfares of New York City's Lower East Side in Manhattan, running from the street's western terminus at the Bowery to its eastern end at FDR Drive, connecting to the Williamsburg Bridge and Bro ...
s from the Bowery/Third Avenue to Chrystie Street
Chrystie Street is a street on Manhattan's Lower East Side and Chinatown, Manhattan, Chinatown, running as a continuation of Second Avenue (Manhattan), Second Avenue from Houston Street, for seven blocks south to Canal Street (Manhattan), Canal ...
/Second Avenue with new privately owned cooperative housing
A housing cooperative, or housing co-op, is a legal entity, usually a cooperative or a corporation, which owns real estate, consisting of one or more residential buildings; it is one type of housing tenure. Housing cooperatives are a distinc ...
.
The United Housing Foundation {{unreferenced, date=September 2019
The United Housing Foundation (UHF) was a real estate investment trust in New York that constructed numerous cooperative housing projects, including Rochdale Village in Queens and Co-op City in the Bronx.
Purpo ...
was selected as the sponsor for the project,[ ()] and there was significant opposition to the plan, as it would have displaced thousands of people.[ ; .] Neither the original large-scale development nor a 1961 revised proposal were implemented and the city's government lost interest in performing such large-scale slum-clearance projects. Another redevelopment project that was completed was the Village View Houses on First Avenue between East 2nd and 6th Streets, which opened in 1964 partially on the site of the old St. Nicholas Kirche.[ ()]
Rebranding and cultural scene
Initial rebranding
Until the mid-20th century the area was simply the northern part of the Lower East Side, with a similar culture of immigrant, working-class life. In the 1950s and 1960s the migration of Beatnik
Beatniks were members of a social movement in the 1950s that subscribed to an anti-materialistic lifestyle.
History
In 1948, Jack Kerouac introduced the phrase "Beat Generation", generalizing from his social circle to characterize the undergr ...
s into the neighborhood later attracted hippies, musicians, writers, and artists who had been priced out of the rapidly gentrifying Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
. Among the first displaced Greenwich Villagers to move to the area were writers Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...
, W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...
, and Norman Mailer
Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, activist, filmmaker and actor. In a career spanning over six decades, Mailer ...
, who all moved to the area in 1951–1953.
A cluster of cooperative art galleries on East 10th Street (later collectively referred to as the 10th Street galleries
The 10th Street galleries was a collective term for the co-operative galleries that operated mainly in the East Village on the east side of Manhattan, in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s. The galleries were artist run and generally operate ...
) were opened around the same time, starting with the Tanger and the Hansa which both opened in 1952. Further change came in 1955 when the Third Avenue elevated railway above the Bowery and Third Avenue was removed. This in turn made the neighborhood more attractive to potential residents; in 1960 ''The New York Times'' reported: "This area is gradually becoming recognized as an extension of Greenwich Village... thereby extending New York's Bohemia from river to river."
The 1960 ''Times'' article stated that rental agents were increasingly referring to the area as "Village East" or "East Village". The new name was used to dissociate the area from the image of slums evoked by the Lower East Side. According to ''The New York Times'', a 1964 guide called ''Earl Wilson's New York'' wrote: "Artists, poets and promoters of coffeehouses from Greenwich Village are trying to remelt the neighborhood under the high-sounding name of 'East Village'." Newcomers and real estate brokers popularized the new name, and the term was adopted by the popular media by the mid-1960s. A weekly newspaper with the neighborhood's new name, '' The East Village Other'', started publication in 1966. ''The New York Times'' declared that the neighborhood "had come to be known" as the East Village in the edition of June 5, 1967.
Growth
The East Village became a center of the counterculture
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Hou ...
in New York, and was the birthplace and historical home of many artistic movements, including punk rock and the Nuyorican
Nuyorican is a portmanteau of the terms "New York" and "Puerto Rican" and refers to the members or culture of the Puerto Ricans located in or around New York City, or of their descendants (especially those raised or currently living in the N ...
literary movement. Multiple former Yiddish theaters were converted for use by Off-Broadway
An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer tha ...
shows: for instance, the Public Theater at 66 Second Avenue became the Phyllis Anderson Theater. Numerous buildings on East 4th Street hosted Off-Broadway
An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer tha ...
and Off-Off-Broadway
Off-off-Broadway theaters are smaller New York City theaters than Broadway and off-Broadway theaters, and usually have fewer than 100 seats. The off-off-Broadway movement began in 1958 as part of a response to perceived commercialism of the prof ...
productions, including the Royal Playhouse, the Fourth Street Theatre, the Downtown Theatre, the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (La MaMa E.T.C.) is an Off-Off-Broadway theatre founded in 1961 by Ellen Stewart, African-American theatre director, producer, and fashion designer. Located in Manhattan's East Village, the theatre began in the ...
, and the Truck & Warehouse Theater just on the block between Bowery and Second Avenue.
By the 1970s and 1980s the city in general was in decline and nearing bankruptcy, especially after the 1975 New York City fiscal crisis. Residential buildings in the East Village suffered from high levels of neglect, as property owners did not properly maintain their buildings. The city purchased many of these buildings, but was also unable to maintain them due to a lack of funds. Following the publication of a revised Cooper Square renewal plan in 1986, some properties were given to the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association as part of a 1991 agreement.
In spite of the deterioration of the structures within the East Village, its music and arts scenes were doing well. By the 1970s gay dance halls and punk rock clubs had started to open in the neighborhood. These included the Fillmore East
The Fillmore East was rock promoter Bill Graham's rock venue on Second Avenue near East 6th Street in the (at the time) Lower East Side neighborhood, now called the East Village neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan of New York City. ...
Music Hall (later a gay private nightclub called The Saint), which was located in a movie theater at 105 Second Avenue. The Phyllis Anderson Theatre was converted into Second Avenue Theater, an annex of the CBGB
CBGB was a New York City music club opened in 1973 by Hilly Kristal in Manhattan's East Village. The club was previously a biker bar and before that was a dive bar. The letters ''CBGB'' were for '' Country'', '' BlueGrass'', and '' Blues'', Kri ...
music club, and hosted musicians and bands such as Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an American singer and songwriter. He has released 21 studio albums, most of which feature his backing band, the E Street Band. Originally from the Jersey Shore, he is an originat ...
, Patti Smith
Patricia Lee Smith (born December 30, 1946)
is an American singer, songwriter, poet, painter and author who became an influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album '' Horses''.
Called the "punk poe ...
, and the Talking Heads
Talking Heads were an American rock band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991.[Talkin ...](_blank)
. The Pyramid Club, which opened in 1979 at 101 Avenue A, hosted musical acts such as Nirvana
( , , ; sa, निर्वाण} ''nirvāṇa'' ; Pali: ''nibbāna''; Prakrit: ''ṇivvāṇa''; literally, "blown out", as in an oil lampRichard Gombrich, ''Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benāres to Modern Colombo.' ...
and Red Hot Chili Peppers
Red Hot Chili Peppers are an American rock music, rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1983, comprising vocalist Anthony Kiedis, bassist Flea (musician), Flea, drummer Chad Smith, and guitarist John Frusciante. Their music incorporates element ...
, as well as drag performer
The term "drag" refers to the performance of exaggerated masculinity, femininity, or other forms of gender expression, usually for entertainment purposes. A drag queen is someone (usually male) who performs femininity and a drag king is someone ( ...
s such as RuPaul
RuPaul Andre Charles (born November 17, 1960; stylized as RuPaul) is an American drag queen, television personality, actor, musician, and model. Best known for producing, hosting, and judging the reality competition series ''RuPaul's Drag Race'' ...
and Ann Magnuson
Ann Magnuson (born January 4, 1956) is an American actress, performance artist, and nightclub performer. She was described by ''The New York Times'' in 1990 as "An endearing theatrical chameleon who has as many characters at her fingertips as Lil ...
. In addition, there were more than a hundred art galleries in the East Village by the mid-1980s. These included Patti Astor
Patti Astor (born ca. 1950) is an American performer who was a key actress in New York City underground films of the 1970s, and the East Village art scene of the 1980s, and involved in the early popularizing of hip hop. She co-founded the instr ...
and Bill Stelling's Fun Gallery
The Fun Gallery was an art gallery founded by Patti Astor and Bill Stelling in 1981. The Fun Gallery had a cultural impact until it closed in 1985. As the first art gallery in Manhattan's East Village, it exposed New York to the talents of stre ...
at 11th Street, as well as numerous galleries on 7th Street.
Decline
By 1987 the visual arts scene was in decline. Many of these art galleries relocated to more profitable neighborhoods such as SoHo
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century.
The area was develop ...
, or closed altogether. The arts scene had become a victim of its own success, since the popularity of the art galleries had revived the East Village's real estate market.
One club that tried to resurrect the neighborhood's past artistic prominence was Mo Pitkins' House of Satisfaction, part-owned by comedian Jimmy Fallon
James Thomas Fallon (born September 19, 1974) is an American comedian, television host, actor, and writer. He is known for his work in television as a cast member on ''Saturday Night Live'' and as the host of the late-night talk show ''The Ton ...
before it closed in 2007. A Fordham University
Fordham University () is a Private university, private Jesuit universities, Jesuit research university in New York City. Established in 1841 and named after the Fordham, Bronx, Fordham neighborhood of the The Bronx, Bronx in which its origina ...
study, examining the decline of the East Village performance and art scene, stated that "the young, liberal culture that once found its place on the Manhattan side of the East River" has shifted in part to new neighborhoods like Williamsburg in Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
.[ Originally retrieved March 5, 2013.]''Not the Hudson: A Comprehensive Study of the East River'' was written and designed by fifteen second-year undergrads from
Fordham University
Fordham University () is a Private university, private Jesuit universities, Jesuit research university in New York City. Established in 1841 and named after the Fordham, Bronx, Fordham neighborhood of the The Bronx, Bronx in which its origina ...
's Honors Program during the Fall 2011 semester in a course on Trends in New York City at Fordham's Lincoln Center Honors Program under the guidance of Roger G. Panetta, PhD. The project yielded sixty essays.
There are still some performance spaces, such as Sidewalk Cafe on 6th Street and Avenue A, where downtown acts find space to exhibit their talent, as well as the poetry clubs Bowery Poetry Club
The Bowery Poetry Club is a New York City poetry performance space founded by Bob Holman in 2002.Aptowicz, Cristin O'Keefe. (2008). ''Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam.'' Chapter 26: What the ...
and Nuyorican Poets Café
The Nuyorican (Puerto Rican New Yorkers) Poets Cafe is a nonprofit organization in Alphabet City, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It is a bastion of the Nuyorican art movement in New York City, and has become a forum for poetry, music, hip ...
.[ Originally retrieved April 14, 2008.]
Gentrification, preservation, and present day
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries the East Village became gentrified
Gentrification is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more affluent residents and businesses. It is a common and controversial topic in urban politics and planning. Gentrification often increases the econ ...
as a result of real-estate price increases following the success of the arts scene. In the 1970s rents were extremely low and the neighborhood was considered among the last places in Manhattan where many people would want to live. However, as early as 1983, the ''Times'' reported that because of the influx of artists, many longtime establishments and immigrants were being forced to leave the East Village due to rising rents. By the following year, young professionals constituted a large portion of the neighborhood's demographics. Even so, crimes remained prevalent and there were often drug deals being held openly in Tompkins Square Park.[ () (online; US Newsstream).]
Tensions over gentrification resulted in the 1988 Tompkins Square Park riot
The Tompkins Square Park riot occurred on August 6–7, 1988 in Tompkins Square Park, located in the East Village and Alphabet City neighborhoods of Manhattan, New York City. Groups of "drug pushers, homeless people and young people known a ...
, which occurred following opposition to a proposed curfew that had targeted the park's homeless. The aftermath of the riot slowed down the gentrification process somewhat as real estate prices declined. By the end of the 20th century, however, real estate prices had resumed their rapid rise. About half of the East Village's stores had opened within the decade since the riot, while vacancy rates in that period had dropped from 20% to 3%, indicating that many of the longtime merchants had been pushed out.
By the early 21st century some buildings in the area were torn down and replaced by newer buildings. One example of this was in 2010, when actor David Schwimmer
David Lawrence Schwimmer (born November 2, 1966) is an American actor, director and producer. He gained worldwide recognition for portraying Ross Geller in the sitcom '' Friends'', for which he received a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Prime ...
bought an 1852 townhouse on 6th Street and completely rebuilt it, despite having received several notices of its possible landmark status.
Rezoning
Due to the gentrification of the neighborhood, parties including the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation
Village Preservation (formerly the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, or GVSHP) is a non-profit organization which advocates for the preservation of architecture and culture in several neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan, New York. ...
(GVSHP), Manhattan Community Board 3
The Manhattan Community Board 3 is a New York City community board encompassing the Manhattan neighborhoods of Alphabet City, the East Village, the Lower East Side, Two Bridges, and a large portion of Chinatown. It is delimited by the East Riv ...
, the East Village Community Coalition, and City Councilmember Rosie Mendez
Rosie may refer to:
Geography
* Rosie, Arkansas, an unincorporated community
* Rosie River, Northern Territory, Australia
People and characters
* Rosie (given name)
* Rosie the Rocketeer (aka "Rosie"), a Boeing spaceflight test dummy
* Rosie t ...
, began calling for a change to the area's zoning
Zoning is a method of urban planning in which a municipality or other tier of government divides land into areas called zones, each of which has a set of regulations for new development that differs from other zones. Zones may be defined for a si ...
in the first decade of the 21st century. The city first released a draft in July 2006, which concerned an area bounded by East 13th Street on the north, Third Avenue on the west, Delancey Street on the south, and Avenue D on the east. The rezoning proposal was done in response to concerns about the character and scale of some of the new buildings in the neighborhood. Despite protests and accusations of promoting gentrification and increased property values over the area's history and need for affordable housing, the rezoning was approved in 2008. Among other things, The zoning established height limits for new development throughout the affected area, modified allowable density of real estate, capped air rights
Air rights are the property interest in the "space" above the earth's surface. Generally speaking, owning, or renting, land or a building includes the right to use and build in the space above the land without interference by others.
This legal ...
transfers, eliminated the current zoning bonus for dorms and hotels, and created incentives for the creation and retention of affordable housing.
Landmark efforts
Local community groups such as the GVSHP are actively working to gain individual and district landmark designations for the East Village to preserve and protect the architectural and cultural identity of the neighborhood. In early 2011 the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission
The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) is the New York City agency charged with administering the city's Landmarks Preservation Law. The LPC is responsible for protecting New York City's architecturally, historically, and cu ...
(LPC) proposed two East Village historic districts: a small district along the block of 10th Street that lies north of Tompkins Square Park
Tompkins Square Park is a public park in the Alphabet City, Manhattan, Alphabet City portion of East Village, Manhattan, East Village, Manhattan, New York City. The square-shaped park, bounded on the north by 10th Street (Manhattan), East 10th ...
, and a larger district focused around lower Second Avenue. before later being expanded. In January 2012 the East 10th Street Historic District was designated by the LPC, and that October, the larger East Village/Lower East Side Historic District
__NOTOC__
The East Village/Lower East Side Historic District in Lower Manhattan, New York City was created by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission on October 9, 2012.Brazee, Christopher D., et al"East Village/Lower East Side Hist ...
was also designated by the LPC.
Several notable buildings are designated as individual landmarks, some due to the GVSHP's efforts. These include:
*The First Houses
First Houses is a public housing project in the East Village, Manhattan, New York City and was one of the first public housing projects in the United States. First Houses were designated a New York City and National Historic Landmark in 1974. T ...
at East 3rd Street and Avenue A, the country's first public housing development, built in 1935 and designated in 1974
*The Stuyvesant Polyclinic at 137 Second Avenue, built in 1884 and designated in 1976
*The Christodora House
Christodora House is a historic building located at 143 Avenue B in the East Village/Alphabet City neighborhoods of Manhattan, New York City. It was designed by architect Henry C. Pelton (architect of Riverside Church) in the American Perpend ...
, built in 1928 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
in 1986
*The Children's Aid Society
Children's Aid, formerly the Children's Aid Society, is a private child welfare nonprofit in New York City founded in 1853 by Charles Loring Brace. With an annual budget of over $100 million, 45 citywide sites, and over 1,200 full-time employee ...
's Tompkins Square Lodging House for Boys and Industrial School Tompkins may refer to:
Places
* Tompkins, New York, USA
*Tompkins County, New York, USA
* Tompkins Township, Warren County, Illinois, USA
* Tompkins Township, Jackson County, Michigan, USA
*Tompkins, Saskatchewan, Canada
*Tompkins, Newfoundland ...
at 296 East 8th Street, built in 1886 and designated in 2000
*Public School 64
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...
at 350 East 10th Street, a French Renaissance Revival public school built in 1904–1906 by architect and school superintendent C.B.J. Snyder
Charles B. J. Snyder (November 4, 1860 – November 14, 1945) was an American architect, architectural engineer, and mechanical engineer in the field of urban school building design and construction. He is widely recognized for his leadership, i ...
, designated in 2006
*Webster Hall
Webster Hall is a nightclub and concert venue located at 125 East 11th Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues, near Astor Place, in the East Village of Manhattan, New York City. It is one of New York City's most historically significant ...
, a Romanesque Revival concert hall and nightclub designed in 1886, designated in 2008
*The Children's Aid Society's Elizabeth Home for Girls at 308 East 12th Street, built in 1891–1892 and designated in 2008
*The Wheatsworth Bakery Building, built in 1927–1928 and designated in 2008
*The St. Nicholas of Myra Church at 288 East 10th Street, designated in 2008
*The Van Tassell and Kearney Horse Auction Mart at 126–128 East 13th Street, a horse auction mart built in 1903–1904, designated in 2012
*The First German Baptist Church (Town & Village Synagogue) at 334 East 14th Street, designated in 2014
File:First Houses in winter from west.jpg, First Houses
First Houses is a public housing project in the East Village, Manhattan, New York City and was one of the first public housing projects in the United States. First Houses were designated a New York City and National Historic Landmark in 1974. T ...
File:Webster Hall.jpg, Webster Hall
Webster Hall is a nightclub and concert venue located at 125 East 11th Street, between Third and Fourth Avenues, near Astor Place, in the East Village of Manhattan, New York City. It is one of New York City's most historically significant ...
File:Peridance Center 128 East 13th St.jpg, 128 East 13th Street
Landmark efforts have included a number of losses as well. Despite the request of GVSHP and allied groups in 2012 for landmarking of Mary Help of Christians school, church and rectory, the site was demolished starting in 2013. In 2011 an early 19th-century Federal house at 35 Cooper Squareone of the oldest on the Bowery and in the East Villagewas approved for demolition to make way for a college dorm. over requests of community groups and elected officials. Furthermore, the LPC acts on no particular schedule, leaving open indefinitely some "calendared" requests for designation. Sometimes it simply declines requests for consideration, as it did regarding an intact Italianate tenement at 143 East 13th Street. In other cases the LPC has refused the expansion of existing historic districts, as in 2016 when it declined to add 264 East 7th Street (the former home of illustrator Felicia Bond
Felicia Bond (born July 18, 1954 in Yokohama, Japan) is an American writer and illustrator of numerous books for children. She is the illustrator of all the ''If You Give...'' series written by Laura Numeroff and published by HarperCollins Child ...
) and four neighboring rowhouses to the East Village/Lower East Side Historic District.
2015 gas explosion
On March 26, 2015, a gas explosion occurred on Second Avenue after a gas line was tapped. The explosion and resulting fire destroyed three buildings at 119, 121 and 123 Second Avenue, between East 7th Street and St. Marks Place. Two people were killed, and at least twenty-two people were injured, four critically. Three restaurants were also destroyed in the explosion. Landlord Maria Hrynenko and an unlicensed plumber and another employee were sentenced to prison time for their part in causing the explosion in New York State Supreme Court. Ms. Hrynenko allowed an illegal gas line to be constructed on her property.
Geography
Neighboring the East Village are the Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets.
Traditionally an im ...
to the south, NoHo
NoHo, short for North of Houston Street (as contrasted with SoHo), is a primarily residential neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is bounded by Mercer Street to the west and the Bowery to the east, ...
to the west, Stuyvesant Park to the northwest, and Stuyvesant Town Stuyvesant may refer to:
People
* Peter Stuyvesant (1592–1672), the last governor of New Netherland
* Peter Gerard Stuyvesant (1778–1847), lawyer, landowner and philanthropist.
* Rutherfurd Stuyvesant (1843–1909), socialite and land developer ...
to the northeast. The East Village contains several smaller vibrant communities, each with its own character.
Subsections
Alphabet City
Alphabet City
Alphabet City is a neighborhood located within the East Village in the New York City borough of Manhattan. Its name comes from Avenues A, B, C, and D, the only avenues in Manhattan to have single-letter names. It is bounded by Houston St ...
is the eastern section of the East Village that is so named because it contains avenues with single-lettered names, e.g. Avenues A, B, C, and D. It is bordered by Houston Street
Houston Street ( ) is a major east–west thoroughfare in Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs the full width of the island of Manhattan, from FDR Drive along the East River in the east to the West Side Highway along the Hudson River in t ...
to the south and 14th Street to the north. Notable places within Alphabet City include Tompkins Square Park
Tompkins Square Park is a public park in the Alphabet City, Manhattan, Alphabet City portion of East Village, Manhattan, East Village, Manhattan, New York City. The square-shaped park, bounded on the north by 10th Street (Manhattan), East 10th ...
and the Nuyorican Poets Café
The Nuyorican (Puerto Rican New Yorkers) Poets Cafe is a nonprofit organization in Alphabet City, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It is a bastion of the Nuyorican art movement in New York City, and has become a forum for poetry, music, hip ...
. Alphabet City also contains St. Marks Place, the continuation of Eighth Street between Third Avenue
Third Avenue is a north-south thoroughfare on the East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan, as well as in the center portion of the Bronx. Its southern end is at Astor Place and St. Mark's Place. It transitions into Cooper Square ...
and Avenue A. The street contains a Japanese street culture; an aged punk culture and CBGB
CBGB was a New York City music club opened in 1973 by Hilly Kristal in Manhattan's East Village. The club was previously a biker bar and before that was a dive bar. The letters ''CBGB'' were for '' Country'', '' BlueGrass'', and '' Blues'', Kri ...
's new store; the former location of one of New York City's only Automat
An automat is a fast food restaurant where simple foods and drinks are served by vending machines. The world's first automat, Quisisana, opened in Berlin, Germany in 1895.
By country Germany
The first automat in the world was the Quisisana ...
s;[Automat is about to return to the East Village](_blank)
, Jared Newman, ''New York Sun
''The New York Sun'' is an American online newspaper published in Manhattan; from 2002 to 2008 it was a daily newspaper distributed in New York City. It debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of the earlier New York ...
'', August 16, 2006; accessed August 25, 2008. and a portion of the "Mosaic Trail", a trail of eighty mosaic-encrusted lampposts that runs from Broadway down Eighth Street to Avenue A, to Fourth Street and then back to Eighth Street.[Hope for Jim Power's public works](_blank)
, Abby Luby, '' The Villager'', December 5, 2007; accessed September 19, 2009.
Alphabet City was once the archetype of a dangerous New York City neighborhood. Its turn-around was cause for ''The New York Times'' to observe in 2005 that Alphabet City went "from a drug-infested no man's land to the epicenter of downtown cool". This part of the neighborhood has long been an ethnic enclave
In sociology, an ethnic enclave is a geographic area with high ethnic concentration, characteristic cultural identity, and economic activity. The term is usually used to refer to either a residential area or a workspace with a high concentration ...
for Manhattan's German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
, Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
, Hispanic
The term ''Hispanic'' ( es, hispano) refers to people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or Hispanidad.
The term commonly applies to countries with a cultural and historical link to Spain and to Vic ...
, and Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
populations. Crime went up in the area in the late 20th century but then declined in the 21st, as the area became gentrified
Gentrification is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more affluent residents and businesses. It is a common and controversial topic in urban politics and planning. Gentrification often increases the econ ...
. Alphabet City's alternate name Loisaida
Alphabet City is a neighborhood located within the East Village in the New York City borough of Manhattan. Its name comes from Avenues A, B, C, and D, the only avenues in Manhattan to have single-letter names. It is bounded by Houston St ...
, which is also used as the alternate name for Avenue C, is a term derived from the Latino
Latino or Latinos most often refers to:
* Latino (demonym), a term used in the United States for people with cultural ties to Latin America
* Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States
* The people or cultures of Latin America;
** Latin A ...
, and especially Nuyorican
Nuyorican is a portmanteau of the terms "New York" and "Puerto Rican" and refers to the members or culture of the Puerto Ricans located in or around New York City, or of their descendants (especially those raised or currently living in the N ...
, pronunciation of "Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets.
Traditionally an im ...
". The term was originally coined by poet/activist Bittman "Bimbo" Rivas in his 1974 poem "Loisaida".
Bowery
The Bowery was once known for its many homeless shelters, drug rehabilitation centers and bars. The phrase "on the Bowery", which has since fallen into disuse, was a generic way to say one was down-and-out. By the 21st century the Bowery had become a boulevard with new luxury condominiums. Redevelopment of the avenue from flophouse
A flophouse (American English) or dosshouse (British English) is a place that offers very low-cost lodging, providing space to sleep and minimal amenities.
Characteristics
Historically, flophouses, or British "doss-houses", have been used for o ...
s to luxury condominiums has met resistance from long-term residents, who agree the neighborhood has improved but its unique, gritty character is disappearing. The Bowery has also become an area with a diverse artistic community. It is the location of the Bowery Poetry Club
The Bowery Poetry Club is a New York City poetry performance space founded by Bob Holman in 2002.Aptowicz, Cristin O'Keefe. (2008). ''Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam.'' Chapter 26: What the ...
, where artists Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka (born Everett Leroy Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays and music criticism. He was the author of numerous bo ...
and Taylor Mead
Taylor Mead (December 31, 1924 – May 8, 2013) was an American writer, actor and performer. Mead appeared in several of Andy Warhol's underground films filmed at Warhol's The Factory, Factory, including ''Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort of ...
have held regular readings and performances, and until 2006 was home to the punk–rock nightclub CBGB
CBGB was a New York City music club opened in 1973 by Hilly Kristal in Manhattan's East Village. The club was previously a biker bar and before that was a dive bar. The letters ''CBGB'' were for '' Country'', '' BlueGrass'', and '' Blues'', Kri ...
.
Little Ukraine
Little Ukraine is an ethnic enclave
In sociology, an ethnic enclave is a geographic area with high ethnic concentration, characteristic cultural identity, and economic activity. The term is usually used to refer to either a residential area or a workspace with a high concentration ...
in the East Village, which has served as a spiritual, political and cultural epicenter for several waves of Ukrainian Americans
Ukrainian Americans ( uk, Українські американці, Ukrayins'ki amerykantsi) are Americans who are of Ukrainian ancestry. According to U.S. census estimates, in 2021 there were 1,017,586 Americans of Ukrainian descent represent ...
in New York City as far back as the late 19th century.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Ukrainian immigrants began moving into areas previously dominated by fellow Eastern European
Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whi ...
and Galician Jews
Galician Jews or Galitzianers () are members of the subgroup of Ashkenazi Jews originating in the levant having developed in the diaspora of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, from contemporary western Ukraine (Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Ter ...
, as well as the Lower East Side's German enclave. After World WarII, the Ukrainian
Ukrainian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Ukraine
* Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe
* Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine
* So ...
population of the neighborhood reached 60,000, but as with the city's Little Italy
Little Italy is a general name for an ethnic enclave populated primarily by Italians or people of Italian ancestry, usually in an urban neighborhood. The concept of "Little Italy" holds many different aspects of the Italian culture. There are s ...
, today the neighborhood consists of only a few Ukrainian stores and restaurants. Today, the East Village between Houston and 14th Street, and Third Avenue and Avenue A still houses nearly a third of New York City's Ukrainian population.
Several churches, including St. George's Catholic Church; Ukrainian restaurants and butcher shops; The Ukrainian Museum
The Ukrainian Museum in New York City is the largest museum of its kind outside of Ukraine and is dedicated to the enjoyment, understanding, and preservation of the artistic and cultural heritage of Ukraine. For centuries Ukraine has been an ep ...
; the Shevchenko Scientific Society
The Shevchenko Scientific Society () is a Ukrainian scientific society devoted to the promotion of scholarly research and publication that was founded in 1873.
Unlike the government-funded National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the society ...
; and the Ukrainian Cultural Center are evidence of the impact of this culture on the area. The gallery American Painting, located on E. 6th Street during 2004–2009, presented a painting exhibition by artists Andrei Kushnir and Michele Martin Taylor titled "East Village Afternoon" depicting many of these sites.
Since the early 20th century, St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church has served as the anchor of Little Ukraine, offering daily liturgies and penances, and operating the adjoining St. George Academy, a coeducational
Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to t ...
parochial school. Starting in 1976 the church has sponsored an annual Ukrainian Heritage Festival, regularly described as one of the few remaining authentic New York City street fairs. In April 1978 the New York City Council
The New York City Council is the lawmaking body of New York City. It has 51 members from 51 council districts throughout the five Borough (New York City), boroughs.
The council serves as a check against the Mayor of New York City, mayor in a may ...
renamed Taras Shevchenko Place, a small connecting street between East 7th and 6th Streets, after Taras Shevchenko
Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko ( uk, Тарас Григорович Шевченко , pronounced without the middle name; – ), also known as Kobzar Taras, or simply Kobzar (a kobzar is a bard in Ukrainian culture), was a Ukraine, Ukrainian p ...
, Ukraine's national bard.
Political representation
Politically, the East Village is in New York's 7th
7 (seven) is the natural number following 6 and preceding 8. It is the only prime number preceding a cube (algebra), cube.
As an early prime number in the series of positive integers, the number seven has greatly symbolic associations in religion ...
and 12th
12 (twelve) is the natural number following 11 and preceding 13. Twelve is a superior highly composite number, divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6.
It is the number of years required for an orbital period of Jupiter. It is central to many systems ...
congressional districts. It is also in the New York State Senate
The New York State Senate is the upper house of the New York State Legislature; the New York State Assembly is its lower house. Its members are elected to two-year terms; there are no term limits. There are 63 seats in the Senate.
Partisan com ...
's 27th and 28th districts, the New York State Assembly
The New York State Assembly is the lower house of the New York State Legislature, with the New York State Senate being the upper house. There are 150 seats in the Assembly. Assembly members serve two-year terms without term limits.
The Assem ...
's 65th, 66th, and 74th districts, and the New York City Council
The New York City Council is the lawmaking body of New York City. It has 51 members from 51 council districts throughout the five Borough (New York City), boroughs.
The council serves as a check against the Mayor of New York City, mayor in a may ...
's 1st and 2nd districts.
Demographics
Based on data from the 2010 United States Census
The United States census of 2010 was the twenty-third United States national census. National Census Day, the reference day used for the census, was April 1, 2010. The census was taken via mail-in citizen self-reporting, with enumerators servin ...
, the population of the East Village was 44,136, a change of 2,390 (5.4%) from the 41,746 counted in 2000. Covering an area of , the neighborhood had a population density of .[Table PL-P5 NTA: Total Population and Persons Per Acre – New York City Neighborhood Tabulation Areas*, 2010](_blank)
, Population Division – New York City Department of City Planning, February 2012. Accessed June 16, 2016. The racial makeup of the neighborhood was 65.5% (28,888) White
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on ...
, 3.9% (1,743) African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
, 0.1% (64) Native American, 14.9% (6,560) Asian
Asian may refer to:
* Items from or related to the continent of Asia:
** Asian people, people in or descending from Asia
** Asian culture, the culture of the people from Asia
** Asian cuisine, food based on the style of food of the people from Asi ...
, 0% (22) Pacific Islander
Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the list of islands in the Pacific Ocean, Pacific Islands. As an ethnic group, ethnic/race (human categorization), racial term, it is used to describe the original p ...
, 0.4% (182) from other races
Other often refers to:
* Other (philosophy), a concept in psychology and philosophy
Other or The Other may also refer to:
Film and television
* ''The Other'' (1913 film), a German silent film directed by Max Mack
* ''The Other'' (1930 film), a ...
, and 2.8% (1,214) from two or more races. Hispanic
The term ''Hispanic'' ( es, hispano) refers to people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or Hispanidad.
The term commonly applies to countries with a cultural and historical link to Spain and to Vic ...
or Latino
Latino or Latinos most often refers to:
* Latino (demonym), a term used in the United States for people with cultural ties to Latin America
* Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States
* The people or cultures of Latin America;
** Latin A ...
of any race were 12.4% (5,463) of the population.[Table PL-P3A NTA: Total Population by Mutually Exclusive Race and Hispanic Origin – New York City Neighborhood Tabulation Areas*, 2010](_blank)
, Population Division – New York City Department of City Planning, March 29, 2011. Accessed June 14, 2016.
The entirety of Community District 3, which comprises the East Village and the Lower East Side, had 171,103 inhabitants as of NYC Health's 2018 Community Health Profile, with an average life expectancy of 82.2 years. This is higher than the median life expectancy of 81.2 for all New York City neighborhoods. Most inhabitants are adults: a plurality (35%) are between the ages of 25–44, while 25% are between 45 and 64, and 16% are 65 or older. The ratio of youth and college-aged residents was lower, at 13% and 11% respectively.
As of 2017 the median household income
Household income is a measure of the combined incomes of all people sharing a particular household or place of residence. It includes every form of income, e.g., salaries and wages, retirement income, near cash government transfers like food stamp ...
in Community District3 was $39,584, though the median income in the East Village individually was $74,265. In 2018 an estimated 18% of East Village and Lower East Side residents lived in poverty, compared to 14% in all of Manhattan and 20% in all of New York City. One in twelve residents (8%) were unemployed, compared to 7% in Manhattan and 9% in New York City. Rent burden, or the percentage of residents who have difficulty paying their rent, is 48% in the East Village and the Lower East Side, compared to the boroughwide and citywide rates of 45% and 51% respectively. Based on this calculation, , the East Village and the Lower East Side are considered to be gentrifying
Gentrification is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more affluent residents and businesses. It is a common and controversial topic in urban politics and planning. Gentrification often increases the ec ...
.
Culture
Hare Krishnas
On October 9, 1966, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Abhay Charanaravinda Bhaktivedanta Swami (; 1 September 1896 – 14 November 1977) was an Indian Gaudiya Vaishnava guru who founded ISKCON, commonly known as the "Hare Krishna movement". Members of ISKCON view Bhaktivedanta Swami as a repr ...
, founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), known Colloquialism, colloquially as the Hare Krishna movement or Hare Krishnas, is a Gaudiya Vaishnavism, Gaudiya Vaishnava Hinduism, Hindu religious organization. ISKCON was found ...
, held the first recorded outdoor chanting session of the Hare Krishna mantra
The Hare Krishna mantra, also referred to reverentially as the ("Great Mantra"), is a 16-word Vaishnava mantra which is mentioned in the Kali-Santarana Upanishad and which from the 15th century rose to importance in the Bhakti movement follo ...
outside the Indian subcontinent at Tompkins Square Park
Tompkins Square Park is a public park in the Alphabet City, Manhattan, Alphabet City portion of East Village, Manhattan, East Village, Manhattan, New York City. The square-shaped park, bounded on the north by 10th Street (Manhattan), East 10th ...
.[Hare Krishna Tree](_blank)
, New York City Parks Department; accessed August 26, 2008. This is considered the founding of the Hare Krishna religion in the United States, and the large tree close to the center of the Park is demarcated as a special religious site for Krishna adherents.[
]
Cultural institutions
Preservation institution:
*Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation
Village Preservation (formerly the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, or GVSHP) is a non-profit organization which advocates for the preservation of architecture and culture in several neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan, New York. ...
Gallery:
*Tenth Street galleries
The 10th Street galleries was a collective term for the co-operative galleries that operated mainly in the East Village on the east side of Manhattan, in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s. The galleries were artist run and generally operate ...
Museums:
*Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space
The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS) is a not-for profit museum dedicated to archiving the history of community gardens, squatting, and grassroots environmental activism of the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. ...
*New Museum of Contemporary Art
The New Museum of Contemporary Art, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is a museum in New York City at 235 Bowery, on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
History
The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-named New Scho ...
*Brant Foundation
The ''Brant Foundation Art Study Center'' is a private art collection and gallery with exhibition spaces in New York City and nearby Greenwich, Connecticut. The collections, focused on modern and contemporary art, are privately owned by Peter Bra ...
Art Museum
*The Ukrainian Museum
The Ukrainian Museum in New York City is the largest museum of its kind outside of Ukraine and is dedicated to the enjoyment, understanding, and preservation of the artistic and cultural heritage of Ukraine. For centuries Ukraine has been an ep ...
Movie theaters
*Anthology Film Archives
Anthology Film Archives is an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema.[Village East Cinema
Village East by Angelika (originally the Louis N. Jaffe Art Theatre, also Village East, and formerly known by several other names) is a movie theater at 189 Second Avenue, on the corner with 12th Street, in the East Village of Manhattan in ...]
Music venues:
*Bowery Ballroom
The Bowery Ballroom is a New York City live-music venue located at 6 Delancey Street in the neighborhood of Bowery in Manhattan. The Bowery Ballroom holds something of a cult status among musicians as well as audiences. ''Rolling Stone'' magazi ...
– concerts and shows
*Mercury Lounge – live music
*Nublu Club The Nublu Club is a club in East Village, Manhattan, New York, that was opened in 2002 by Swedish-Turkish saxophonist Ilhan Ersahin. On its 10th anniversary the club's namesake festival presented what it calls the Nublu Sound, a combination of jazz ...
– live music
* The Stone – experimental music
*Rue B – live jazz
Poetry venues:
*Nuyorican Poets Café
The Nuyorican (Puerto Rican New Yorkers) Poets Cafe is a nonprofit organization in Alphabet City, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It is a bastion of the Nuyorican art movement in New York City, and has become a forum for poetry, music, hip ...
– music, poetry, readings, slam
Slam, SLAM or SLAMS may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional elements
* S.L.A.M. (Strategic Long-Range Artillery Machine), a fictional weapon in the ''G.I. Joe'' universe
* SLAMS (Space-Land-Air Missile Shield), a fictional anti-ball ...
s
*Bowery Poetry Club
The Bowery Poetry Club is a New York City poetry performance space founded by Bob Holman in 2002.Aptowicz, Cristin O'Keefe. (2008). ''Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam.'' Chapter 26: What the ...
– music, poetry, readings, slams
*Poetry Project The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church was founded in 1966 at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery in the East Village of Manhattan by, among others, the poet and translator Paul Blackburn. It has been a crucial venue for new and experimental poetry ...
at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery
Theaters and performance spaces:
*Amato Opera
Amato ( Calabrian: ; ) is an Arbëreshë ''comune'' and town in the province of Catanzaro in the Calabria region of Italy.
History
Amato is one of the oldest towns in Calabria. It is mentioned by the Greek philosopher Aristotle and by the Roman P ...
*Bouwerie Lane Theatre
The Bouwerie Lane Theatre is a former bank building which became an Off-Broadway theatre, located at 330 Bowery at Bond Street in Manhattan, New York City. It is located in the NoHo Historic District.
The cast-iron building, which was constructed ...
* Connelly Theater – historic Off-Broadway venue
*Danspace Project
Danspace Project is a performance venue for contemporary dance. Its performances are held in St. Mark's Church in the East Village area of the Manhattan borough of New York City.
History
Founded in 1974 by Barbara Dilley, Mary Overlie, and Larry ...
– at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery
*La MaMa E.T.C.
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (La MaMa E.T.C.) is an Off-Off-Broadway theatre founded in 1961 by Ellen Stewart, African-American theatre director, producer, and fashion designer. Located in Manhattan's East Village, the theatre began in the ...
– avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
theater
*Metropolitan Playhouse
The Metropolitan Playhouse is a resident producing theater in New York City's East Village. Founded in 1992, the theater is devoted to presenting plays that explore American culture and history, including seldom-produced, "lost" American plays an ...
* The Ontological-Hysteric Theater at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery
*The Pearl Theatre Company
*Tompkins Square Park
Tompkins Square Park is a public park in the Alphabet City, Manhattan, Alphabet City portion of East Village, Manhattan, East Village, Manhattan, New York City. The square-shaped park, bounded on the north by 10th Street (Manhattan), East 10th ...
– Regular site of outdoor music, dance, and performance
*Performance Space New York
Performance Space New York, formerly known as Performance Space 122 or P.S. 122, is a non-profitable arts organization founded in 1980 in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan in an abandoned public school building.
Origin
The former eleme ...
*'' Stomp!'' – long running Off-Broadway performance
*Theater for the New City
Theater for the New City, founded in 1971 and known familiarly as "TNC", is one of New York City's leading off-off-Broadway theaters, known for radical political plays and community commitment. Productions at TNC have won 43 Obie Awards and the P ...
*Theatre for a New Audience
* Wild Project
Neighborhood festivals
*Mayday Festival – May 1; yearly.
*Charlie Parker Jazz Festival
Charlie may refer to:
Characters
* "Charlie," the head of the Townsend Agency', from the ''Charlie's Angels'' franchise
* Charlie, a character on signs for the CharlieCard, a smart card issued by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority
* ...
– August; yearly.[ Archival access – via ]Wayback Machine
The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and see ...
.
*HOWL! Festival
The Howl Festival (sometimes styled Howl! Festival or HOWL! Festival) was an event that took place in Manhattan's Tompkins Square Park. It was founded in 2003 and held each spring through 2013 as a celebration of the arts history of the East Villa ...
– Summer; yearly.
*Dance Parade – Summer; yearly.
*Dream Up Festival – August–September; yearly.
*Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade – October; yearly.
Parks and gardens
Large parks
Tompkins Square Park
Tompkins Square Park is a public park in the Alphabet City, Manhattan, Alphabet City portion of East Village, Manhattan, East Village, Manhattan, New York City. The square-shaped park, bounded on the north by 10th Street (Manhattan), East 10th ...
is a public park in the Alphabet City section of the East Village. It is bounded on the north by 10th Street, on the east by Avenue B, on the south by 7th Street, and on the west by Avenue A. Tompkins Square Park contains a baseball field, basketball courts, and two playgrounds. It also contains the city's first dog run
A dog park is a park for dogs to exercise and play off-leash in a controlled environment under the supervision of their owners.
Description
Dog parks have varying features, although they typically offer a 4' to 6' fence, separate double-gated ...
, which is a social scene unto itself. The park has been the site of numerous events and riots:
* On January 13, 1874, a riot broke out after the New York City Police Department
The New York City Police Department (NYPD), officially the City of New York Police Department, established on May 23, 1845, is the primary municipal law enforcement agency within the City of New York, the largest and one of the oldest in ...
clashed with a demonstration involving thousands of unemployed
Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work during the referen ...
civilians.
*On July 25, 1877, during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, sometimes referred to as the Great Upheaval, began on July 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, after the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) cut wages for the third time in a year. This strike finally ended 52 day ...
, twenty thousand people gathered in the park to hear communist orators speak. New York City police and National Guardsmen eventually charged the crowd with billy clubs, later claiming that the rally was not being held in a peaceful manner. In the wake of this "riot" the city, in conjunction with the War Department, established an official city armory program led by the 7th Regiment.
* On August 6–7, 1988, a riot broke out between police and groups of "drug pushers, homeless people and young people known as 'skinhead
A skinhead is a member of a subculture which originated among working class youths in London, England, in the 1960s and soon spread to other parts of the United Kingdom, with a second working class skinhead movement emerging worldwide in th ...
s'" who had largely taken over the park. The neighborhood was divided about what, if anything, should be done about it.[Koch Suspends Park Curfew Following bloody clash in Tompkins Square, Manuel Perez-Rivas, ]Newsday
''Newsday'' is an American daily newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island, although it is also sold throughout the New York metropolitan area. The slogan of the newspaper is "Newsday, Your Eye on LI", and f ...
, August 8, 1988, NEWS; Pg. 5. Manhattan Community Board3 adopted a curfew for the previously 24-hour park in an attempt to bring it under control. A rally against the curfew resulted in several clashes between protesters and police.
East River Park
East River Park, also called John V. Lindsay East River Park, is public park located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, administered by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Bisected by the Williamsburg Bridge, it stretches ...
is and runs between the FDR Drive
The Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive, commonly called the FDR Drive for short, is a limited-access parkway on the east side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It starts near South and Broad Streets, just north of the Battery Park ...
and the East River
The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary in New York City. The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Queens ...
from Montgomery Street to East 12th Street. It was designed in the 1930s by parks commissioner Robert Moses
Robert Moses (December 18, 1888 – July 29, 1981) was an American urban planner and public official who worked in the New York metropolitan area during the early to mid 20th century. Despite never being elected to any office, Moses is regarded ...
, who wanted to ensure there was parkland along the Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets.
Traditionally an im ...
shorefront. The park includes football, baseball, and soccer fields; tennis, basketball, and handball courts; a running track; and bike paths, including the East River Greenway
The East River Greenway (also called the East River Esplanade) is an approximately foreshoreway for walking or cycling on the east side of the island of Manhattan on the East River. It is part of the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway. The largest por ...
.
Community gardens
There are reportedly more than 640 community garden
A community garden is a piece of land gardened or cultivated by a group of people individually or collectively. Normally in community gardens, the land is divided into individual plots. Each individual gardener is responsible for their own plo ...
s in New York Citygardens run by local collectives within the neighborhood who are responsible for the gardens' upkeepand an estimated ten percent of those are located on the Lower East Side and the East Village alone.[East Village Community Garden Gets New Lease On Life](_blank)
, Rebecca Spitz, NY1
NY1 (also officially known as Spectrum News NY1 and spoken as New York One) is an American cable news television channel founded by Time Warner Cable, which itself is owned by Charter Communications through its acquisition in May 2016. The channe ...
, June 30, 2008; accessed August 25, 2008. Development of these community gardens, often on municipally owned land, started in the early 1970s. Although many of these lots were later sold to private developers, others were taken over by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, also called the Parks Department or NYC Parks, is the department of the government of New York City responsible for maintaining the city's parks system, preserving and maintaining the ecolog ...
, which preserves the gardens under its ownership.
Open Road Park, a former cemetery and bus depot, is a garden and a playground adjacent to East Side Community High School between 11th and 12th Streets east of First Avenue.
The Avenue B and 6th Street Community Garden was known for a now-removed outdoor sculpture, the Tower of Toys, designed by artist and long-time garden groundskeeper Eddie Boros.[A Force of Nature Leave](_blank)
, Lincoln Anderson, '' The Village'', May 2–8, 2007; Accessed August 26, 2008. It was a makeshift structure made of wooden planks, from which were suspended an amalgamation of fanciful objects. The tower was a neighborhood icon, having appeared in the opening credits
In a motion picture, television program or video game, the opening credits or opening titles are shown at the very beginning and list the most important members of the production. They are now usually shown as text superimposed on a blank screen ...
for the television show ''NYPD Blue
''NYPD Blue'' is an American police procedural television series set in New York City, exploring the struggles of the fictional 15th Precinct detective squad in Manhattan. Each episode typically intertwines several plots involving an ensemble c ...
'' and also appears in the musical ''Rent
Rent may refer to:
Economics
*Renting, an agreement where a payment is made for the temporary use of a good, service or property
*Economic rent, any payment in excess of the cost of production
*Rent-seeking, attempting to increase one's share of e ...
''.[ It was also controversial: some viewed it as a masterpiece, while others as an eyesore.] The tower was dismantled in May 2008 because, according to parks commissioner Adrian Benepe
Adrian Benepe was the 14th Commissioner of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, serving in that role from February 4, 2002, to August 29, 2012, under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. During his tenure, he oversaw 7,000 parks' staff, the ex ...
, it was rotting and thus a safety hazard. Its removal was seen by some as a symbol of the neighborhood's fading past.
The Toyota Children's Learning Garden at 603 East 11th Street is technically a learning garden rather than a community garden. Designed by landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh, the garden opened in May 2008 as part of the New York Restoration Project and is designed to teach children about plants.[.]
La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez is a community garden, open-air theater, and green space at 9th Street and Avenue C. Founded in 1976, the garden continues to operate , despite having been proposed for redevelopment multiple times.
Marble cemeteries
On the block bounded by Bowery, Second Avenue, and 2nd and 3rd Streets, is the oldest public cemetery in New York City not affiliated with any religion, the New York Marble Cemetery
The New York Marble Cemetery is a burial ground established in 1830 in what is now the East Village of Manhattan. It occupies the interior of the block bounded by 2nd Street, Second Avenue, 3rd Street, and the Bowery. I ...
.[New York Marble Cemetery](_blank)
official site. Established in 1830, it is open the fourth Sunday of every month.
The similarly named New York City Marble Cemetery
The New York City Marble Cemetery is a historic cemetery founded in 1831, and located at 52-74 East 2nd Street between First and Second Avenues in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. The cemetery has 258 undergroun ...
, located on 2nd Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue, is the second oldest nonsectarian cemetery in New York City. The cemetery opened in 1831. Notable people interred there include U.S. President James Monroe
James Monroe ( ; April 28, 1758July 4, 1831) was an American statesman, lawyer, diplomat, and Founding Father who served as the fifth president of the United States from 1817 to 1825. A member of the Democratic-Republican Party, Monroe was ...
; Stephen Allen, mayor (1821–1824); James Lenox
James Lenox (August 19, 1800 – February 17, 1880) was an American bibliophile and philanthropist. His collection of paintings and books eventually became known as the Lenox Library and in 1895 became part of the New York Public Library.
Early ...
, whose personal library became part of the New York Public Library; Isaac Varian, mayor (1839–1841); Marinus Willet
Colonel Marinus Willett (July 31, 1740 – August 22, 1830) was an American military officer, politician and merchant who served as the mayor of New York City from 1807 to 1808. Willett is best known for his actions during the American Revolu ...
, Revolutionary War hero; and Preserved Fish
Fish preservation is the method of increasing the shelf life of fish and other fish products by applying the principles of different branches of science in order to keep the fish, after it has landed, in a condition wholesome and fit for human ...
, a well-known merchant.[New York City Marble Cemetery](_blank)
official site.
Police and crime
East Village is patrolled by the 9th Precinct of the NYPD
The New York City Police Department (NYPD), officially the City of New York Police Department, established on May 23, 1845, is the primary municipal law enforcement agency within the City of New York, the largest and one of the oldest in ...
, located at 321 East 5th Street. The 9th Precinct ranked 58th safest out of 69 patrol areas for per-capita crime in 2010. , with a non-fatal assault rate of 42 per 100,000 people, Community District 3's rate of violent crime
A violent crime, violent felony, crime of violence or crime of a violent nature is a crime in which an offender or perpetrator uses or threatens to use harmful force upon a victim. This entails both crimes in which the violence, violent act is t ...
s per capita is less than that of the city as a whole. The incarceration rate of 449 per 100,000 people is higher than that of the city as a whole.
The 9th Precinct has a lower crime rate than in the 1990s, with crimes across all categories having decreased by 79.5% between 1990 and 2019. The precinct reported 3murders, 15 rapes, 119 robberies, 171 felony assaults, 122 burglaries, 760 grand larcenies, and 37 grand larcenies auto in 2019.
Fire safety
East Village is served by four New York City Fire Department
The New York City Fire Department, officially the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY), is an American department of the government of New York City that provides fire protection services, technical rescue/special operations services, ...
(FDNY) fire stations:
*Ladder Co. 3/Battalion 6 – 103 East 13th Street
*Engine Co. 5 – 340 East 14th Street
*Engine Co. 28/Ladder Co. 11 – 222 East 2nd Street
*Engine Co. 33/Ladder Co. 9 – 42 Great Jones Street
Health
, preterm birth
Preterm birth, also known as premature birth, is the Childbirth, birth of a baby at fewer than 37 weeks Gestational age (obstetrics), gestational age, as opposed to full-term delivery at approximately 40 weeks. Extreme preterm is less than 28 we ...
s and births to teenage mothers are less common in the East Village and the Lower East Side than in other places citywide. In the East Village and the Lower East Side, there were 82 preterm births per 1,000 live births (compared to 87 per 1,000 citywide), and 10.1 teenage births per 1,000 live births (compared to 19.3 per 1,000 citywide). The East Village and the Lower East Side have a low population of residents who are uninsured
Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge ...
. In 2018 this population of uninsured residents was estimated to be 11%, slightly less than the citywide rate of 12%.
The concentration of fine particulate matter, the deadliest type of air pollutant
Air pollution is the contamination of air due to the presence of substances in the atmosphere that are harmful to the health of humans and other living beings, or cause damage to the climate or to materials. There are many different types ...
, in the East Village and the Lower East Side is , more than the city average. Twenty percent of East Village and Lower East Side residents are smokers, which is more than the city average of 14% of residents being smokers. In the East Village and the Lower East Side, 10% of residents are obese
Obesity is a medical condition, sometimes considered a disease, in which excess body fat has accumulated to such an extent that it may negatively affect health. People are classified as obese when their body mass index (BMI)—a person's we ...
, 11% are diabetic
Diabetes, also known as diabetes mellitus, is a group of metabolic disorders characterized by a high blood sugar level (hyperglycemia) over a prolonged period of time. Symptoms often include frequent urination, increased thirst and increased app ...
, and 22% have high blood pressure
Hypertension (HTN or HT), also known as high blood pressure (HBP), is a long-term medical condition in which the blood pressure in the arteries is persistently elevated. High blood pressure usually does not cause symptoms. Long-term high bl ...
compared to the citywide averages of 24%, 11%, and 28% respectively. In addition, 16% of children are obese, compared to the citywide average of 20%.
Eighty-eight percent of residents eat some fruits and vegetables every day, which is about the same as the city's average of 87%. In 2018, 70% of residents described their health as "good", "very good", or "excellent", less than the city's average of 78%. For every supermarket in the East Village and the Lower East Side, there are eighteen bodegas.
The nearest major hospitals are Beth Israel Medical Center
Mount Sinai Beth Israel is a 799-bed teaching hospital in Manhattan. It is part of the Mount Sinai Health System, a nonprofit health system formed in September 2013 by the merger of Continuum Health Partners and Mount Sinai Medical Center, and ...
in Stuyvesant Town Stuyvesant may refer to:
People
* Peter Stuyvesant (1592–1672), the last governor of New Netherland
* Peter Gerard Stuyvesant (1778–1847), lawyer, landowner and philanthropist.
* Rutherfurd Stuyvesant (1843–1909), socialite and land developer ...
, as well as the Bellevue Hospital Center
Bellevue Hospital (officially NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue and formerly known as Bellevue Hospital Center) is a hospital in New York City and the oldest public hospital in the United States. One of the largest hospitals in the United States b ...
and NYU Langone Medical Center
NYU Langone Health is an academic medical center located in New York City, New York, United States. The health system consists of NYU Grossman School of Medicine and NYU Long Island School of Medicine, both part of New York University (NYU), and m ...
in Kips Bay
Kips Bay, or Kip's Bay, is a neighborhood on the east side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by East 34th Street to the north, the East River to the east, East 27th and/or 23rd Streets to the south, and Third Aven ...
, and NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital
NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital is a nonprofit, acute care, teaching hospital in New York City and is the only hospital in Lower Manhattan south of Greenwich Village. It is part of the NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare System and one ...
in the Civic Center
A civic center or civic centre is a prominent land area within a community that is constructed to be its focal point or center. It usually contains one or more dominant public buildings, which may also include a government building. Recently, the ...
area.
Post offices and ZIP Codes
East Village is located within two primary ZIP Codes. The area east of First Avenue including Alphabet City is part of 10009, while the area west of First Avenue is part of 10003. The United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U ...
operates three post offices in the East Village:
* Cooper Station – 93 Fourth Avenue
*Peter Stuyvesant Station – 335 East 14th Street
*Tompkins Square Station – 244 East 3rd Street
Education
East Village and the Lower East Side generally have a higher rate of college-educated residents than the rest of the city . A plurality of residents age 25 and older (48%) have a college education or higher, while 24% have less than a high school education and 28% are high school graduates or have some college education. By contrast, 64% of Manhattan residents and 43% of city residents have a college education or higher. The percentage of East Village and the Lower East Side students excelling in math rose from 61% in 2000 to 80% in 2011, and reading achievement increased from 66% to 68% during the same time period.
East Village and the Lower East Side's rate of elementary school student absenteeism is lower than the rest of New York City. In the East Village and the Lower East Side, 16% of elementary school students missed twenty or more days per school year
A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes compulsor ...
, less than the citywide average of 20%. Additionally, 77% of high school students in the East Village and the Lower East Side graduate on time, more than the citywide average of 75%.
Schools
The New York City Department of Education
The New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) is the department of the government of New York City that manages the city's public school system. The City School District of the City of New York (or the New York City Public Schools) is t ...
operates public schools in the East Village as part of Community School District 1. District1 does not contain any zoned schools, which means that students living in District1 can apply to any school in the district, including those in the Lower East Side.
The following public elementary schools are located in the East Village and serve grades PK–5 unless otherwise indicated:
*PS 15 Roberto Clemente
*PS 19 Asher Levy
*PS 34 Franklin D Roosevelt (grades PK–8)
*PS 63 STAR Academy
*PS 64 Robert Simon
*PS 94 (grades K–8)
*PS 188 The Island School (grades PK–8)
*Earth School
*Neighborhood School
*The Children's Workshop School
*The East Village Community School
The following middle and high schools are located in the East Village:
* East Side Community High School (grades 6–12)
*Manhattan School for Career Development (grades 9–12)
*Tompkins Square Middle School (grades 6–8)
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York
The Archdiocese of New York ( la, Archidiœcesis Neo-Eboracensis) is an ecclesiastical territory or archdiocese of the Catholic Church ( particularly the Roman Catholic or Latin Church) located in the State of New York. It encompasses the borough ...
operates Catholic schools in Manhattan. St. Brigid School in the East Village closed in 2019.
The following independent schools are located in the East Village:
The New Amsterdam School
(Waldorf)
Libraries
The New York Public Library
The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress ...
(NYPL) operates three branches near the East Village.
*The Ottendorfer branch is located at 135 Second Avenue. The branch opened in 1884 based on a gift from Oswald Ottendorfer
Valentin Oswald Ottendorfer (26 February 1826 – 15 December 1900) was a United States journalist associated with the development of the German-language ''New Yorker Staats-Zeitung'' into a major newspaper. He served a term as a member of the New ...
, who owned the ''New Yorker Staats-Zeitung
The ''New Yorker Staats-Zeitung'', nicknamed ''"The Staats"'', claims to be the leading German language, German-language weekly newspaper in the United States and is one of the oldest, having been published since the mid-1830s. In the late 19th c ...
''. The Ottendorfer branch, designed in the Queen Anne and Renaissance Revival
Renaissance Revival architecture (sometimes referred to as "Neo-Renaissance") is a group of 19th century architectural revival styles which were neither Greek Revival nor Gothic Revival but which instead drew inspiration from a wide range o ...
styles, is a New York City designated landmark
The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) is the New York City agency charged with administering the city's Landmarks Preservation Law. The LPC is responsible for protecting New York City's architecturally, historically, and cu ...
.
*The Tompkins Square branch is located at 331 East 10th Street. The library opened in 1887 and moved three times before relocating to its current Carnegie library structure in 1904.
*The Hamilton Fish Park branch is located at 415 East Houston Street. It was originally built as a Carnegie library in 1909, but was torn down when Houston Street was expanded; the current one-story structure was completed in 1960.
Colleges
New York University
Along with gentrification, the East Village has seen an increase in the number of buildings owned and maintained by New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
, particularly dormitories for undergraduate students, and this influx has given rise to conflict between the community and the university.[As NYU plans towering dorm for 12th Street, East Village neighbors cry foul](_blank)
, Kristen Lombardi, ''The Village Voice'', February 28, 2006.
St. Ann's Church (Manhattan), St. Ann's Church, a rusticated-stone structure with a Romanesque Revival
Romanesque Revival (or Neo-Romanesque) is a style of building employed beginning in the mid-19th century inspired by the 11th- and 12th-century Romanesque architecture. Unlike the historic Romanesque style, Romanesque Revival buildings tended to ...
tower on 12th Street (Manhattan), East 12th Street that dated to 1847, was sold to NYU to make way for a 26-story, 700-bed dormitory. After community protest, the university promised to protect and maintain the church's original facade; and so it did, literally, by having the facade stand alone in front of the building, now the tallest structure in the area.[ According to many residents, NYU's alteration and demolition of historic buildings, such as the Peter Cooper Post Office, is spoiling the physical and socio-economic landscape that makes this neighborhood so interesting and attractive.][Residents wary of changing physical, socio-economic landscape](_blank)
, Katla McGlynn, Pace Press, February 6, 2008.
NYU has often been at odds with residents of both the East and West Villages due to its expansive Campus of New York University#Real estate and development, development plans; urban preservationist Jane Jacobs battled the school in the 1960s. "She spoke of how universities and hospitals often had a special kind of hubris reflected in the fact that they often thought it was OK to destroy a neighborhood to suit their needs," said Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation
Village Preservation (formerly the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, or GVSHP) is a non-profit organization which advocates for the preservation of architecture and culture in several neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan, New York. ...
.
Cooper Union
The Cooper Union, Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, founded in 1859 by entrepreneur and philanthropist Peter Cooper and located on Cooper Square, was, as of 2008, one of the most selective colleges in the world, and formerly offered tuition-free programs in engineering, art and architecture. Its Cooper Union#The Great Hall, Great Hall has been used for several notable speeches, such as Abraham Lincoln's Cooper Union speech,[ ; (article).][ ; (article).] and its 41 Cooper Square, New Academic Building is the first in New York City to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, LEED Platinum status.
Transportation
The nearest New York City Subway
The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, an affiliate agency of the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Opened on October 2 ...
stations are Second Avenue (IND Sixth Avenue Line), Second Avenue (), Astor Place (IRT Lexington Avenue Line), Astor Place (), Eighth Street–New York University (BMT Broadway Line), Eighth Street–New York University (), and First Avenue (BMT Canarsie Line), First Avenue (). Phase3 of the Second Avenue Subway is planned to establish two stations on 2nd Avenue, one on 14th Street and one on Houston Street. Bus routes serving the area include the .
Media
Local news
*East Village Feed
*The East Villager
*East Village Eye, ''The East Village Eye''
*''The Village Voice''
*'' The Villager''
Radio
*East Village Radio
Television
*Obscura Antiques & Oddities, focus of Oddities (TV series), ''Oddities''
Notable residents
*Skippy Adelman (1924–2004) – jazz photojournalist, lived at 488 East Houston, through high school
*Ryan Adams (born 1974) – alt-country musician"Ryan Adams may have left winter behind for the perennial summer of Los Angeles almost a decade ago, but he gifted us ten records and God knows how many unreleased songs while in New York that give brief, yet beautiful snapshots into what life was like for a heavy-drinking, perpetually fucked up mid-2000s East Village resident."
*Darren Aronofsky (born 1969) – filmmaker
*W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...
(1907–1973) – poet
*John Franklin Bardin (1916–1981) – novelist
*Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) – artist
*Dana Beal (born 1947) – social and political activist.
*Mark Bloch (artist), Mark Bloch (born 1956) – artist
*Jeremy Blake (1971–2007) – digital artist and painter.
*Walter Bowart (1939–2007) – co-founder and editor of the ''East Village Other''
*David Bowes (born 1957) – painter
*William S. Burroughs (1914–1997) – novelist, actor
*Richard Brookhiser (born 1955) – author, historian
*Chris Cain (born 1955) – bassist for the indie-rock band We Are Scientists
*Max Cantor (1959–1991) – journalist and former actor
*Julian Casablancas – musician
*Ching Ho Cheng (1946–1989) – artist
*Alexa Chung (born 1983) – model, TV presenter
*David Cross (born 1964) – actor, comedian
*Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) – writer, raconteur
*Jackie Curtis (1947–1985) – writer, poet, actor Andy Warhol, Warhol superstar
*Candy Darling (1944–1974) – actress, Andy Warhol, Warhol superstar
*Tory Dent (1958–2005) – poet, art critic, and commentator on the AIDS crisis.
*Lindsay Ellis (born 1984) – film critic, author
*Jonathan Larson (1960–1996) – musician, composer of the musical ''Rent
Rent may refer to:
Economics
*Renting, an agreement where a payment is made for the temporary use of a good, service or property
*Economic rent, any payment in excess of the cost of production
*Rent-seeking, attempting to increase one's share of e ...
''
*Rosario Dawson (born 1979) – actress, singer and writer
*Stan Distenfield – former WNYC radio announcer
*Negin Farsad – writer, director, comedian
*Sarah Feinberg (born 1977) – Interim President of the New York City Transit Authority, and former Administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration
*Barbara Feinman Millinery, Barbara Feinman – milliner
*Lady Gaga – singer, songwriter
*Sharon Gannon and David Life – yoga instructors and co-founders of Jivamukti Yoga school, which originated in the East Village
*Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...
– Beat Generation poet
*Philip Glass – American composer
*Lotti Golden – artist, songwriter, poet
*Nan Goldin – photographer
*Wade Guyton – painter
*Ayun Halliday – actress and writer
*Keith Haring – artist
*Randy Harrison – actor
*Matt Harvey – MLB Pitcher
*Richard Hell – musician, author
*Vlad Holiday – musician, songwriter
*Abbie Hoffman – 1960s political activist[Strausbach, John, ''The New York Times'']
*John Holmstrom – cartoonist and writer, Punk (magazine), Punk editor
*Harold Hunter – skateboarder, actor
*Sarah Hyland – actress
*Jim Jarmusch – film director, screenwriter, actor, producer, editor and composer
*Indian Larry (born Lawrence DeSmedt) – motorcycle builder and artist, stunt rider, and biker
*Tom Kalin – filmmaker
*Agim Kaba – actor, artist and director
*Allan Katzman – co-founder and editor of the ''East Village Other''
*Kathy Kemp – fashion designer and entrepreneur
*Alvin Klein (1938–2009) – theater critic for ''The New York Times''.
*Vashtie Kola – director
*Greg Kotis – playwright
*Paul Krassner – publisher of ''The Realist''
*Tuli Kupferberg – Beat Generation poet, and one of the original Fugs
*Stephen Lack – actor, painter
*Scooter LaForge – artist
*Ronnie Landfield – painter
*Greer Lankton – artist and dollmaker
*Phoebe Legere – musician and artist
*John Leguizamo (born 1960) – actor, comedian, and monologist
*Frank London (born 1958) – composer, musician
*Frank Lovell (1913–1998) – communist politician.
*John Lurie (born 1952) – musician, painter, actor, producer
*Madonna (entertainer), Madonna – singer/entrepreneur, in the 1980s
*Handsome Dick Manitoba – singer, saloon owner
*Jimmy McMillan – political activist, founder of "The Rent is Too Damn High Party"
*Butch Morris – cornetist, composer and conductor.
*Cookie Mueller (1949–1989) – actress, model
*Joseph Nechvatal – digital artist
*Conor Oberst – musician
*Claes Oldenburg – sculptor
*Tom Otterness – sculptor
*Iggy Pop – performer, musician
*Adam Purple – creator of the Lower East Side "Garden of Eden"
*Daniel Radcliffe – actor
*Daniel Rakowitz (the East Side Cannibal) and his victim and roommate, dancer Monicka Beerle
*Joey Ramone – musician
*Johnny Ramone – musician
*Bill Raymond – actor
*Lou Reed – musician and songwriter
*Joel Resnicoff – artist and fashion illustrator
*James Romberger – artist
*Mark Ronson – musician
*Jerry Rubin – 1960s political activist
*Arthur Russell (musician), Arthur Russell – musician
*Ed Sanders – New York School (art), New York School poet and one of the original Fugs
*Liev Schreiber – actor
*David Schwimmer
David Lawrence Schwimmer (born November 2, 1966) is an American actor, director and producer. He gained worldwide recognition for portraying Ross Geller in the sitcom '' Friends'', for which he received a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Prime ...
–''Friends'' actor, and wife, part-time photographer Zoe Buckman
*Chloë Sevigny – actress
*Sam Shepard – playwright, actor, author, screenwriter, and director
*Jack Smith (film director), Jack Smith – filmmaker, artist
*Kiki Smith – sculptor
*John Spacely – actor, activist (Junkie, Sid and Nancy, Iboga therapy)
*Regina Spektor – singer–songwriter and pianist
*Bobby Steele – musician
*Frank Stella – painter, maintained as studio in the East Village
*Ellen Stewart – founder of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, La MaMa, E.T.C. (Experimental Theatre Club) in 1961
*Adario Strange – writer, director
*Michele Martin Taylor – artist
*Henry Threadgill – musician
*Johnny Thunders – (John Genzale) purveyor of LES street rock, member of NYDolls and The Heartbreakers
*Marisa Tomei – actress
*Rachel Trachtenburg – singer and musician
*Marguerite Van Cook – artist, musician, writer, producer
*Arturo Vega – punk rock graphic designer and artistic director.
*Steven Vincent – journalist and author who was shot and killed in 2005 while reporting in Iraq.
*David Wojnarowicz (1954–1992) – painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, songwriter/recording artist and AIDS activist prominent in the New York City art world.
*Rachel Weisz – actress and wife of actor Daniel Craig.
*Charles Wright (novelist), Charles Wright – novelist who wrote ''The Messenger'' (1963), ''The Wig'' (1966) and ''Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About'' (1973).
*John Zorn – musician and composer
See also
*
*Curry Row – a cluster of South Asian restaurants between First Avenue (Manhattan), First and Second Avenue (Manhattan), Second Avenues in the East Village
References
Notes
Digital source → NARA digital publication T627 → Digital image 2 (of 18). ''Records of the Bureau of the Census, 1790–2007''. RG (record group) No 29. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration (2012). Roll 2635.
Bibliography
*
*
* () (2003), (2006), (2015).
*.
* ; .
* – via Internet Archive (University of Pittsburgh). ; , , .
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*
External links
East Village Parks Conservancy
East Village Visitors Center
Lower East Side Preservation Initiative
{{Authority control
East Village, Manhattan,
Arts districts
Ethnic enclaves in New York (state)
Little Italys in the United States
Neighborhoods in Manhattan
Ukrainian communities in the United States