Looking south from 7th Street down
Second Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares through the East Village.
The 'East Village' is a neighborhood in the
borough of
Manhattan in
New York City. The neighborhood is bounded by
14th Street on the north, the
East River on the east,
Houston Street on the south, and
Broadway on the west. It lies east of
Greenwich Village, south of
Gramercy and
Stuyvesant Town, and north of the
Lower East Side. The East Village encompasses the neighborhoods of
Alphabet City (Avenues A - D) and
NoHo (Houston Street - Astor Place, Broadway to the Bowery.)
Genesis of the name
Until the 1960s, the eastern side of Manhattan between 14th and Houston streets was simply the northern part of the Lower East Side, and shared much of its immigrant, working class characteristics with the area below Houston Street. A shift began in the 1950s with the migration of
Beatniks into the neighborhood, and then hippies, musicians and artists in the 1960s. The area was dubbed the "East Village", to dissociate it from the image of slums evoked by the Lower East Side name, and to present the area as the new Greenwich Village, which had been popular with artists, but had become middle-class by then.
Newcomers and real estate brokers popularized the East Village name, and the term was adopted by the popular media the by the mid-60s. As East Village developed a culture distinct from the rest of the Lower East Side, the two areas came to be seen as two separate neighborhoods rather that the former being part of the latter.
[1][2]
Tompkins Square Park Police Riot
Main articles: Tompkins Square Park Police Riot
In August 1988, the Tompkins Square Park Police Riot erupted when police attempted to enforce a newly-passed curfew for the park.
Culture
Other than geography, the East Village's most notable commonalities with Greenwich Village are a colorful history, vibrant social and cultural outlets, and street names that often diverge from the norm. Some notable examples are the Bowery, a north-south avenue which also lends its name to the somewhat overlapping neighborhood of the Bowery;
St. Mark's Place, a crosstown street well-known for counterculture businesses; and
Astor Place/Cooper Square, home of the
Public Theater and the
Cooper Union. Nearby universities like
New York University (NYU) and
The New School have
dormitories in the neighborhood.
CBGB, the nightclub considered by some to be the birthplace of
punk music, was located in the neighborhood, as was the early punk standby A7.
No Wave and
New York hardcore also emerged in the area’s clubs. Among the many important bands and singers who got their start at these clubs and other venues in downtown New York were: the
New York Dolls,
Patti Smith,
Arto Lindsay, the
Ramones,
Blondie,
Talking Heads, the
Plasmatics,
Glenn Danzig,
Sonic Youth, the
Beastie Boys,
Anthrax, and
The Strokes.
Over the last 100 years, the East Village/Lower East Side neighborhood has been considered one of the strongest contributors to American arts and culture in New York. During the great wave of immigration (Germans, Ukrainians, Polish) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, countless families found their new homes in this area. The East Village has also been the home of cultural icons and movements from the American gangster to the
Warhol Superstars,
folk music to
punk rock,
anti-folk to
hip-hop, advanced education to organized activism, experimental theater to the
Beat Generation.
Club 57, on St. Mark's Place, was an important incubator for performance and visual art in the late 1970s and early 1980s, followed by
8BC as, during the 1980s, the East Village art gallery scene helped to galvanize modern art in America, with such artists as
Keith Haring,
Jean-Michel Basquiat and
Jeff Koons exhibiting. The East Village is also the setting for
Jonathan Larson's musical
Rent, which is set in the early 1990s and follows a group of friends as they spend a year struggling against
AIDS, poverty, and drug abuse.
Though parts of this culture remain, many artists have relocated to
Brooklyn in response to the rising prices and homogeneity that have followed the neighborhood's
gentrification.
References
1. Selling the Lower East Side - Geography Page
2. The 1960s Counterculture and the Invention of the "East Village"
See also
★
East Side (Manhattan)
★
Alphabet City
★
Loisaida
★
The Bowery
★
Tompkins Square Park
★
Ninth Precinct
External links
★
East Village Photo Gallery
★
nycvisit.com - East Village
★
East Village profile in
''New York''
★
East-Village.com
★
East Village Community Coalition
★
East Village Parks Conservancy
★
East Village Idiot, a local humor site
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