Alphabet City, Manhattan

"Alphabet City" redirects here. For other uses, see Alphabet City (disambiguation).

Coordinates: 40°43′34″N 73°58′43″W / 40.72606°N 73.978595°W / 40.72606; -73.978595

The dark blue area denotes the neighborhood's location in Lower Manhattan.
Avenue C was designated Loisaida Avenue in recognition of the neighborhood's Puerto Rican heritage.
Tompkins Square branch of New York Public Library on East 10th Street

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 bordered by Houston Street to the south and by 14th Street to the north, along the traditional northern border of the East Village and south of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village.[1][2][3] Some famous landmarks include Tompkins Square Park and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.

The neighborhood has a long history, serving as a cultural center and ethnic enclave for Manhattan's German, Polish, Hispanic, and Jewish populations. However, there is much dispute over the borders of the Lower East Side, Alphabet City, and East Village. Historically, Manhattan's Lower East Side was 14th Street at the northern end, bound on the east by East River and on the west by First Avenue; today, that same area is Alphabet City. The area's German presence in the early 20th century, in decline, virtually ended after the General Slocum disaster in 1904.

Alphabet City is located in New York's 12th and 14th congressional districts, the New York State Assembly's 64th and 74th districts, the New York State Senate's 25th district, and New York City Council's 2nd district. It is represented by Congresswomen Carolyn Maloney and Nydia Velázquez, State Senator Dan Squadron, Assemblymen Sheldon Silver and Brian Kavanagh, and Councilwoman Rosie Mendez. The neighborhood is regulated by Manhattan Community Board 3. The neighborhood lies within the New York Police Department's 9th precinct, and its schools fall within Manhattan's 1st school district.

History

Founding

Until the early 19th century, much of what is now Alphabet City was an extensive salt marsh, a type of wetland that was part of the East River ecosystem. The wetland was drained, and a patch of the river bed reclaimed, by real estate developers in the early 19th century.

Like many other neighborhoods on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Alphabet City became home to a succession of immigrant groups over the years. By the 1840s and 1850s, much of present-day Alphabet City had become known as "Kleindeutschland" or "Little Germany"; in the mid-19th century, many claimed New York to be the third-largest German-speaking city in the world after Berlin and Vienna, with most of those German speakers residing in and around Alphabet City. Moreover, Kleindeutschland is considered to have been the second substantial non-Anglophone urban ethnic enclave in United States history, after Philadelphia's Germantown.

By the 1880s, most Germans were moving out of Kleindeutschland and relocating Uptown, to the Yorkville section of the Upper East Side. Eastern Europeans replaced Germans as the dominant ethnic group in Alphabet City during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During this time, the area was considered part of the Lower East Side, and it became home to Eastern European Jewish, Irish, and Italian immigrants. It consisted of tenement housing with no running water, and the primary bathing location for residents in the northern half of the area was the Asser Levy bath house located on 23rd Street and Avenue C, north of Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town. During this time, it was also the red light district of Manhattan and one of the worst slums in the city.

20th century

By the turn of the 20th century, Alphabet City was among the most densely populated parts of New York City. This density was partially a result of the area's proximity to the city's garment factories, which were the major source of employment for newly arrived immigrants. After the construction of the subway system, workers were able to relocate to other parts of the city that were previously too remote, such as the Bronx, and Alphabet City's population decreased dramatically.

By the middle of the 20th century, Alphabet City was again in transition, as thousands of Puerto Ricans began to settle in the neighborhood. By the 1960s and 1970s, what was once Kleindeutschland and the red light district had evolved into "Loisaida" (Spanglish for "Lower East Side"). Alphabet City became an important site for the development and strengthening of Puerto Rican cultural identity in New York (see the Nuyorican Movement). A number of important Nuyorican intellectuals, poets and artists called Loisaida home during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, including Miguel Algarín and Miguel Piñero.

During the 1980s, Alphabet City was home to a mix of Puerto Rican and African American families living alongside struggling artists and musicians (who were mostly young and white). Attracted by the Nuyorican movement, low rents, and creative atmosphere, Alphabet City attracted a growing Bohemian population. At one time it was home to many of the first graffiti writers, b-boys, rappers, and DJs. The area also had high levels of illegal drug activity and violent crime. The Broadway musical Rent portrays some of the positive and negative aspects of this time and place.

Etymology

In the original layout of Manhattan streets, north-south streets east of First Avenue were designated Avenue A, Avenue B, etc. In Midtown and north, Avenue A was eventually renamed as Beekman Place, Sutton Place, York Avenue and Pleasant Avenue; Avenue B was renamed East End Avenue. (There were no avenues farther east in this part of the city.) Farther south, the avenues retained their letter designations.

The name 'Alphabet City' is thought to be of rather recent vintage, as the neighborhood was considered to be simply a part of the Lower East Side for much of its history. Urban historian Peter G. Rowe posits that the name only began to become used in the 1980s, when gentrification spread east from the Village.[4] The term's first appearance in The New York Times is in a 1984 editorial penned by then mayor Ed Koch, appealing to the federal government to aid in fighting crime on the neighborhood's beleaguered streets:

The neighborhood, known as Alphabet City because of its lettered avenues that run easterly from First Avenue to the river, has for years been occupied by a stubbornly persistent plague of street dealers in narcotics whose flagrantly open drug dealing has destroyed the community life of the neighborhood.[5]
A later 1984 Times article describes it using a number of names: "Younger artists ... are moving downtown to an area variously referred to as Alphabetland, Alphabetville, or Alphabet City (Avenues A, B, C and so forth on the Lower East Side of Manhattan)".[6]

Tompkins Square Park riots

In August 1988, a riot erupted in Tompkins Square Park when police arrived to evict a large encampment of homeless people from the park. The police had been sent there to enforce a curfew enacted in response to over a decade of complaints from residents about the round-the-clock lawlessness and noise emanating from the park. The police showed little restraint, with several demonstrators injured, and much ensuing public disapproval.

Avenue A from East 5th Street

Gentrification

Alphabet City was one of many neighborhoods in New York to experience gentrification in the 1990s and early 21st century. Multiple factors resulted in lower crime rates and higher rents in Manhattan in general, and Alphabet City in particular. Avenues A through D became distinctly less bohemian in the 21st century than they had been in earlier decades.[7] Apartments have been renovated and formerly abandoned storefronts are now bustling with new restaurants, nightclubs and retail establishments.

The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space opened on Avenue C in the building known as C-Squat in 2012. A living archive of urban activism, the museum explores the history of grassroots movements in the East Village and offers guided walking tours of community gardens, squats, and sites of social change.[8]

Architecture

The streets and avenues of Alphabet City are lined largely by 19th and early-20th century tenements and mid-20th century public housing complexes, although there are plenty of rowhouses, institutional and commercial buildings, and houses of worship as well. The area contains one historic district: the East 10th Street Historic District, designated in 2012 by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC). According to the designation report, “The rare attribution of several of the early residences to noted architect Joseph Trench, and the possible role they played in introducing the Italianate style of architecture to row house design ... enhances the significance of these buildings. Even through the modernizations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the buildings within the East 10th Street Historic District have maintained a cohesive architectural character on an important park setting in the historically and culturally rich East Village neighborhood.”[9]

In recent years, under increasing pressure from local groups such as the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) for expanded landmark protections in the neighborhood, the LPC has also designated a number of individual landmarks. They include:

Congregation Mezritch Synagogue at 415 East 6th Street

Other buildings of note include “Political Row,” a block of stately rowhouses on East 7th Street between Avenues C and D, where political leaders of every kind lived in the 19th century; the landmarked Wheatsworth Bakery building on East 10th Street near Avenue D; and next to it, 143-145 Avenue D, a surviving vestige of the Dry Dock District, which once filled the East River waterfront with bustling industry.

Alphabet City has a surprisingly large number of surviving early 19th century houses connected to the maritime history of the neighborhood, which also are the first houses ever to be built on what previously was farmland. GVSHP and others have been trying to protect them, but the LPC has been resistant.[16] Despite local advocacy, an 1835 rowhouse at 316 East 3rd Street was demolished in 2012 for the construction of a 33-unit rental called “The Robyn,” which opened in 2014.[17] In 2010, GVSHP and the East Village Community Coalition asked the LPC to consider for landmark designation 326 and 328 East 4th Street,[18] two Greek Revival rowhouses dating from 1837–41, which over the years housed merchants affiliated with the shipyards, a synagogue, and most recently an art collective called the Uranian Phalanstery. The LPC declined, and those buildings were heightened, altered, and remade into luxury rentals in 2012. The LPC also declined a request to evaluate 285 and 287 East 3rd Street, two highly intact Greek Revival “sister” rowhouses dating from 1837, built on land originally owned by the prominent Fish family. Those buildings still stand, however.

In 2008, nearly the entire Alphabet City area was “downzoned” as part of an effort led by local community groups including GVSHP, the local community board, and local elected officials. In most parts of Alphabet City, the rezoning requires that new development occurs in harmony with the low-rise character of the area.[19]

Loisaida

A homeless man walks past a trendy sidewalk bar on Avenue C, showing the area's penurious past and gentrified present.

Loisaida /ˌloʊ.iːˈsaɪdə/ is a term derived from the Spanish (and especially Nuyorican) pronunciation of "Lower East Side". Originally coined by poet/activist Bittman "Bimbo" Rivas in his 1974 poem "Loisaida", it now refers to Avenue C in Alphabet City, whose population has largely been Hispanic (mainly Nuyorican) since the 1960s.

Since the 1940s the demographic has changed markedly several times: the addition of the large labor-backed Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village after World War II at the northern end added a lower-middle to middle-class element to the area, which contributed to the eventual gentrification of the area in the 21st century; the construction of large government housing projects south and east of those and the growing Latino population transformed a large swath of the neighborhood into a Latin one until the late 1990s, when low rents outweighed high crime rates and large numbers of artists and students moved to the area. Manhattan's growing Chinatown then expanded into the southern portions of the Lower East Side, but Hispanics are still concentrated in Alphabet City. With crime rates down, the area surrounding Alphabet City, the East Village, and the Lower East Side, is quickly becoming gentrified; the borders of the Lower East Side differ from its historical ones in that Houston Street is now considered the northern edge, and the area north of that between Houston Street and 14th Street is considered Alphabet City. But, because the Alphabet City term is largely a relic of a high-crime era, English-speaking residents refer to Alphabet City as part of the East Village, while Spanish-speaking residents continue to refer to Alphabet City only as Loisaida.

There also exists a mixed drink called a Loisaida that gained popularity in 2008. It consists of lime, Olde English malt liquor, and apple cider. The name comes from combining sounds from each of the ingredients, as in L(ime), OE (common abbreviation for Olde English) and "Cida" (cider).[20]

Notable residents

In popular culture

Novels and poetry

  • The protagonist of the novel The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart lives in Alphabet City in the mid-1990s.
  • A fictional version of NYC's Alphabet City is explored in the Fallen Angels supplement to Kult.
  • Allen Ginsberg wrote many poems relating to the streets of his neighborhood in Alphabet City.
  • Henry Roth's novel Call It Sleep took place in Alphabet City, with the novel's main character, David and his family, living there.
  • Jerome Charyn's novel War Cries Over Avenue C takes place in Alphabet City.
  • In his book Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain says "Hardly a decision was made without drugs. Cannabis, methaqualone, cocaine, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms soaked in honey and used to sweeten tea, secobarbital, tuinal, amphetamine, codeine and, increasingly, heroin, which we'd send a Spanish-speaking busboy over to Alphabet City to get."

Comics

  • In Marvel Comics, Alphabet City is home to District X, also known as Mutant Town, a ghetto primarily populated by mutants. The ghetto was identified as being inside Alphabet City in New X-Men #127. It was described in District X as having the 'highest unemployment rate in the USA, the highest rate of illiteracy and the highest severe overcrowding outside of Los Angeles'. (These figures would suggest a large population.) It was destroyed in X-Factor #34.

Photo books

  • The photo and text book "Alphabet City" by Geoffrey Biddle[22] chronicles life in Alphabet City over the years 1977 to 1989.
  • The photo book "Street Play" by Martha Cooper[23]

Places

Television

  • The fictional 15th Precinct in the police drama NYPD Blue appears to cover Alphabet City, at least in part.
  • In an appearance on The Tonight Show, writer P. J. O'Rourke said that when he lived in the neighborhood in the late 1960s, it was dangerous enough that he and his friends referred to Avenue A, Avenue B, and Avenue C as "Firebase Alpha", "Firebase Bravo", and "Firebase Charlie", respectively.
  • In the episode "My First Kill" in Season 4 of Scrubs, J.D. (Zach Braff) wears a T-shirt with "Alphabet City, NYC" on it.
  • The 1996 TV movie Mrs. Santa Claus is primarily set on Avenue A in Alphabet City in 1910.[24]
  • In episode 6 of the 2009 police drama The Unusuals, "The Circle Line", an identity thief buys his ID from a dealer in Alphabet City.
  • The episode "The Pugilist Break" of Forever is about a murder that takes place in Alphabet City; the episode highlights the history of the neighborhood and its current development and gentrification.
  • In the episode "The Safety Dance" in "Season 2" of "The Carrie Diaries", Walt helps his boyfriend move into an apartment in Alphabet City.

Films

Theatre

  • The Broadway musical Rent takes place in Alphabet City. The characters live on East 11th Street and Avenue B. They hang out at such East Village locales as Life Cafe.
  • In Tony Kushner's play, Angels in America (and the film adaptation of same), the character Louis makes a comment about "Alphabet Land," saying it's where the Jews lived when they first came to America, and "now, a hundred years later, the place to which their more seriously fucked-up grandchildren repair."
  • The Broadway musical Avenue Q takes place on the fictitious Avenue Q, which is, for the sake of the plot, located in Alphabet City. One of the main characters mentions he is looking for cheap accommodation in Alphabet City.

Music: Specific avenues

  • In Bongwater's "Folk Song" there is the repeated chorus "Hello death, goodbye Avenue A". Ann Magnuson, lead singer of Bongwater, lives on Avenue A.
  • "Avenue A" is a song by The Dictators, from their 2001 CD, DFFD.
  • The Pink Martini song "Hey Eugene" takes place "at a party on Avenue A."
  • "Avenue A" is a song by Red Rider off their 1980 album, Don't Fight It.
  • "The Belle of Avenue A" is a song by Ed Sanders.
  • Singer-songwriter Ryan Adams refers to Avenue A and Avenue B in his track "New York, New York".
  • The 1978 classical salsa hit "Pedro Navaja", by Panamanian singer Rubén Blades, says at the end that the "lifeless bodies" of Pedro Barrios (Pedro Navaja) and Josefina Wilson were found on "lower Manhattan" "between Avenues A and B"...
  • In Lou Reed's "Halloween Parade", from his highly acclaimed concept album New York (album), he mentions "the boys from Avenue B and the girls from Avenue D."
  • "Avenue B" is a song by Gogol Bordello
  • Avenue B is an album by Iggy Pop, who wrote the album while living at the Christodora House on Avenue B.
  • "Avenue B" is a song by Mike Stern
  • "Avenue C" is a Count Basie Band song, recorded by Barry Manilow in 1974 for his album Barry Manilow II.
  • It is mentioned in Sunrise on Avenue C, James Maddock from the album Fragile.[25]
  • "Venus of Avenue D" is a song by Mink DeVille.
  • Avenue D is referred to in the Steely Dan song, "Daddy Don't Live In That New York City No More" off the 1975 album Katy Lied.
  • Avenue D is referred to in the song "Capital City", sung by Tony Bennett in The Simpsons episode "Dancin' Homer".

Music: General

  • Elliott Smith refers to "Alphabet City" in his song, "Alphabet Town," from his self-titled album.
  • Alphabet City is an album by ABC.
  • "Take A Walk With The Fleshtones" is a song by The Fleshtones on their album Beautiful Light (1994). The song devotes a verse to each Avenue.
  • Alphabet City is mentioned in the song "Poster Girl" by the Backstreet Boys.
  • In the song "New York City," written by Cub and popularized by They Might Be Giants, Alphabet City is mentioned in the chorus.
  • The Clash mentions the neighborhood in the song "Straight to Hell": "From Alphabet City all the way a to z, dead, head"
  • U2 refer to the neighborhood as "Alphaville" in their song "New York".
  • In their song "Click Click Click Click" on the 2007 album The Broken String, Bishop Allen sing, "Sure I've got pictures of my own, of all the people and the places that I've known. Here's when I'm carryin' your suitcase, outside of Alphabet City".
  • On Dan the Automator's "A Better Tomorrow", rapper Kool Keith quips that he is the "King of New York, running Alphabet City".
  • "Alphabet City" is the name of the fifth track on the 2004 release, The Wall Against Our Back from the Columbus, Ohio band Two Cow Garage.
  • Steve Earle's expressionistic "Down Here Below" (track 2 of Washington Square Serenade) cites: "And hey, whatever happened to Alphabet City? Ain’t no place left in this town that a poor boy can go"
  • The dance hit "Sugar is Sweeter (Danny Saber Mix)" by CJ Bolland refers to the neighborhood with the lyrics, "Down in Alphabet City..."
  • Mano Negra refers to Alphabet City in the song "El Jako", on the album King of Bongo (1991): "Avenue A: Here comes the day/Avenue B: Here goes the junky/Avenue C: There's no rescue/Death avenue is waiting for you" and "Avenue A: Here comes the day/Avenue B: Here goes the junky/Avenue C: It's an emergency/O.D.O.D. in Alphabet City".

See also

References

Notes

  1. ↑ "Selling the Lower East Side - Geography Page". Upress.umn.edu. Retrieved 2010-10-15.
  2. ↑ "Exhibitions". The Villager. October 4, 2006. Retrieved 2009-08-22.
  3. ↑ Foderaro, Lisa W. (May 17, 1987). "Will it be Loisaida of Alphabet city?; Two Visions Vie In the East Village". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-08-22.
  4. ↑ Rowe, Peter G. (1999). "Civic Realism". MIT Press. Retrieved 2010-03-22.
  5. ↑ Koch, Ed (April 27, 1984). "Needed: Federal Anti-Drug Aid". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-03-22.
  6. ↑ Freedman, Samuel (November 4, 1984). "Metropolis of the Mind". The New York Times. section 6, page 32, column 1. Retrieved 2010-03-22.
  7. ↑ Shaw, Dan (November 11, 2007). "Rediscovering New York as It Used to Be". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 12 November 2007. Retrieved 2007-11-12.
  8. ↑ Leland, John (8 December 2012). "East Village Shrine to Riots and Radicals". New York Times.
  9. ↑ "East 10th Street Historic District Designation Report" (PDF). NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.
  10. ↑ "St. Nicholas of Myra Orthodox Church Designation Report" (PDF). NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.
  11. ↑ "Free Public Baths of the City of New York, East 11th Street Bath" (PDF). NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.
  12. ↑ "Public National Bank of New York Building" (PDF). NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.
  13. ↑ "Former Congregation Beth Hamedrash Hagadol Anshe Ungarn Building" (PDF). NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.
  14. ↑ "Former Public School 64" (PDF). NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.
  15. ↑ "Congregation Mezritch Request for Evaluation" (PDF). Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.
  16. ↑ "Historic East Village House Rejected by Landmarks". Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.
  17. ↑ "The Robyn is now fully exposed on East 3rd Street". EV Grieve blog.
  18. ↑ "326 & 328 East 4th Street". Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.
  19. ↑ "Keeping in Character: A Look at the Impacts of Recent Community-Initiated Rezonings in the East Village" (PDF). Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.
  20. ↑ "Loisaida recipe". 30 December 2008.
  21. ↑ http://www.allenginsberg.org/index.php?page=allen-ginsberg-1953-2
  22. ↑ "Geoffrey Biddle". Retrieved 24 October 2010.
  23. ↑ whatyouwrite (2006-09-13). "Street Play, Photographs By Martha Cooper « Whatyouwrite.Com". Whatyouwrite.wordpress.com. Retrieved 2010-10-15.
  24. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117103/
  25. ↑ "James Maddock".

Further reading


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