Alphabet City, Manhattan

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Alphabet City is a neighborhood located in 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 23rd Street to the north where Avenue C ends. However, the historic boundaries of the Lower East Side—which transformed into the modern-day Lower East Side and Alphabet City—place the northern border at 14th Street. Some famous landmarks include Tompkins Square Park, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and the Stuyvesant Town private residential community.

Avenue C was designated Loisaida Avenue in recognition of Puerto Rican heritage of the neighborhood
Avenue C was designated Loisaida Avenue in recognition of Puerto Rican heritage of the neighborhood

Contents

[edit] Early history

Like many other neighborhoods on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Alphabet City has been home to a succession of different immigrant groups over the years. In the 1840s and 1850s, much of present day Alphabet City was known as "Kleindeutschland" or "Little Germany". By 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. In fact, Kleindeutschland is considered to be the first substantial non-Anglophone urban ethnic enclave in United States history.

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 became home to Eastern European Jewish, Irish, and Italian immigrants. It comprised 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 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.

Tompkins Square branch of New York Public Library on East 10th Street
Tompkins Square branch of New York Public Library on East 10th Street

[edit] The 20th century

Alphabet City is now part of the East Village, and at the turn of the century was the most densely populated part 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 '70s, 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, 70s and 80s, including Miguel Algarín and Miguel Piñero.

During the 1980s, Alphabet City was home to an eclectic 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. 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.

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In August 1988, a riot erupted in Tompkins Square Park when anarchists and homeless activists from outside the neighborhood began throwing M80s and rocks at police who had arrived to evict a large encampment of drug dealing 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 great restraint and although several rioters were injured, no one was killed. The rioters and their sympathizers refer to it as the Tompkins Square Park Police Riot while the residents have mostly referred to it as the Tompkins Square Park Riot.

[edit] Recent history and gentrification

Avenue A from East 5th Street
Avenue A from East 5th Street

The late 1990s has witnessed a sharp rise in housing rents and has ushered in a new, distinctly less bohemian era for Alphabet City.[1] Apartments have been renovated and formerly abandoned storefronts are now bustling with new restaurants, nightclubs and retail establishments. Crime has also decreased since the 1980s and 1990s at a greater rate than elsewhere in Manhattan. Many families, artists and small businesses can no longer afford to remain in the neighborhood. Avenue C is still a transitional area, but rents are rising quickly and many long-time residents and businesses are being priced out of the market. Avenue D, home to a number of large low-income housing projects, seems destined to remain affordable for the foreseeable future, although plans have been floated in City Hall which call for redevelopment of the waterfront along East River Park. As part of the gentrification, the area lost a number of community gardens, which were planted by residents in vacant lots. These gardens serve as valuable green space in the densely built neighborhood. A recent major loss has been the Charas Community Center.

[edit] Cultural landscape and changes

Avenue A at night
Avenue A at night

Alphabet City has always been home to some of the most important cultural movements to occur in New York and worldwide. Although the neighborhood was once largely Jewish, Ukrainian, German, Irish, and Italian, the cultural landscape of the neighborhood to most living New Yorkers is one that changed dramatically. Alphabet City's once diverse cultural landscape is arguably becoming more homogeneous by the day. At one time it was home to many of the first graffiti writers, b-boys, rappers, and DJs. The projects along the East River on Avenue D, although always fairly dangerous, have been a cultural powerhouse in the city's recent history. Much of the culture of Alphabet City may have stemmed from the diverse surroundings of the neighborhood and the mix of poverty and decay with wealth and beauty nearby. Chinatown and the Lower East Side to the south, Gramercy and Midtown to the Northwest, Union Square and the Bowery to the West, and not far from SoHo and the Financial District, Alphabet City in the '70s, '80s, and even '90s was a decaying melting pot adjacent to some of the most fast-paced and iconic neighborhoods in New York City. Even within Alphabet City the mix of demographics often led to interesting movements and understandings. With the largely white, middle to lower-middle class housing complex of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village comprising the northern area of the neighborhood, a multitude of Puerto Ricans and other Hispanics dispersed throughout, a small remainder of the old European immigrant population, and a steady flux of artists, such things as the highly bohemian yet incredibly urban community gardens of the neighborhood are truly unique to it.

Alphabet City in the 21st century lost the influences and gained higher rents, cleaner streets, and lower crime. Whereas 14th Street up until the late 1990s was a bustling working-class commercial center that was also very high-crime, there exists today only relics of that era on the street and an inkling of the crime there once was. Although the transformation of the neighborhood has made it more accessible and safer, it has also displaced tens of thousands of residents who maintained Alphabet City as one of the strongest 'neighborhoods' in the city. Unfortunately, much of its neighborhood identity today is gone, becoming a fuzzy combination of the Lower East Side and the East Village; however one thing that Alphabet City has which few other neighborhoods do is that its borders can never change unless the avenues are renamed from the letters they are today.

In the early '60s, Vazak's, on the corner of 7th street and Avenue B, was one of the last bars in New York to have a free lunch counter.

[edit] Cultural references

[edit] In print

  • The photo and text book "Alphabet City" by Geoffrey Biddle [1] chronicles life in Alphabet City over the years 1977 to 1989.
  • The photo book "Street Play" by Martha Cooper [2]
  • The protagonist of the novel The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart lives in Alphabet City in the mid 1990s.
  • In the book Hellboy: Odd Jobs, Alphabet City is home to a giant rat named Mick that collects arcane artifacts and a "fairy" that eats children.
  • 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.


[edit] In television programs

  • 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 series Law and Order: SVU frequently makes reference to the dangers of living in that area of the city.

[edit] In films

[edit] On stage

  • 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 musical Avenue Q takes place on the fictional, lower class "Avenue Q"

[edit] In music

  • The area is referenced in an Elliott Smith penned tune, "Alphabet Town", found on his 1995 self-titled LP.
  • The infamous punk house and independent gig venue C-Squat is called so because it sits on Avenue C, between 9th and 10th St. Bands and artists to emerge from the former squat include Leftöver Crack, Choking Victim, INDK, Morning Glory and Stza.
  • Alphabet City is mentioned in the song "Poster Girl" by the Backstreet Boys.
  • Avenue B is an album by Iggy Pop, who wrote the album while living at the Christadora House on Avenue B.
  • In the song "New York City," written by Cub and popularized by They Might be Giants, Alphabet City is mentioned in the chorus.
  • "Avenue A" is a song by The Dictators, from their 2001 CD, DFFD.
  • "Avenue A" is a song by Red Rider off their 1980 album, Don't Fight It.
  • "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 an album by ABC.
  • "Avenue B" is a song by Gogol Bordello
  • "Avenue B" is a song by The Major Thinkers
  • Singer-songwriter Ryan Adams references Avenue A and Avenue B in his track "New York, New York".
  • 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.
  • The Clash namechecks the neighborhood in the song "Straight to Hell": "From alphabet city all the way a to z, dead, head"
  • U2 references the neighborhood as "Alphaville" in their song "New York."
  • New York power-rock band F-Units references Alphabet City in their song "Alpha East Side".
  • In their song Click Click Click Click on July EP, 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".
  • "The Belle of Avenue A" is a song by Ed Sanders.
  • On Dan the Automator's A Better Tomorrow, rapper Kool Keith quips that he is the "King of New York, running Alphabet City".
  • Accidental CDs, Records and Tapes, the world's only 24 hour record store, was located on Avenue A from 1996-2006.
  • "Alphabet City" is the name of the fifth track on the 2004 release, The Wall Against Our Back from the Columbus, OH band Two Cow Garage.
  • Barry Manilow recorded a Count Basie Band song, "Avenue C" in 1974 for his album "Barry Manilow II".
  • "Venus of Avenue D" is a song by Mink DeVille
  • Steve Earle's expresionistic "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"

[edit] References

  1. ^ Shaw, Dan. "Rediscovering New York as It Used to Be", The New York Times, 2007-11-11. Retrieved on 2007-11-12. 

[edit] See also


[edit] External links



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