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, roughly, Broadway on the west. It lies east of Greenwich Village and NoHo, south of Stuyvesant Town, and north of the Lower East Side. The East Village includes the area known as Alphabet City (Avenues A - D).

Genesis of the name

Until the 1960s, the eastern side of Manhattan between 14th and Houston Streets was simply the north side 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 stodgy and 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.

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 New York University (NYU) has 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. 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.