Alphabet City, Manhattan
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- Avenue A redirects here. For the company called "Avenue A / Razorfish", please see Avenue A/Razorfish.
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, home to many pimps and gangs dangerously vying for territory.
The 20th Century
Much of 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 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 transitioning again, 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” (a Latinization of "Lower East Sider"). 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 the positive and negative aspects of this time and place. In August 1988, a riot erupted along Tompkins Square Park between police, homeless residents in the park and their supporters.
Recent History & Gentrification
The late 1990s has witnessed a sharp rise in housing rents and has ushered in a new, distinctly less bohemian era for Alphabet City. 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. The drawback to redevelopment has been that many families, artists and small businesses can no longer afford to remain in the neighborhood. Young urban professionals or "yuppies" now dominate the area around Avenues A and B. 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 the eventual destruction of the housing projects and 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.Cultural Landscape and Changes
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, German, Irish, and Italian, the cultural landscape of the neighborhood to most living New Yorkers is one that changed dramatically from a mix of Puerto Rican and artists to white yuppies. Alphabet City's once diverse cultural landscape is arguably become 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 70's, 80's, and even 90's 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 has sacrificed much of that culture to go the way of higher rents, cleaner streets, and lower crime. Whereas 14th Street up until the late 90's 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 it's borders can never change unless the avenues are renamed from the letters they are today.
Trivia
An East Village Wisdom (arguably no longer true):- Avenue A, you're All right.
- Avenue B, you're Brave.
- Avenue C, you're Crazy.
- Avenue D, you're Dead.
- Avenue A, aware.
- Avenue B, beware.
- Avenue C, caution!
- Avenue D, DEATH!
Cultural references
- The television police drama NYPD Blue takes place in Alphabet City.
- There is an indie/new wave band from Gainesville, Florida named [Alphabet City]. The name was reportedly inspired by the artistic/creative community known to live in Alphabet City.
- 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.
- The motion picture Rent, an adaptation of the musical starring Rosario Dawson, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, and Jesse L. Martin, is also set in Alphabet City, specifically in 1989-1990, but many scenes were filmed in San Francisco. The movie takes place on 11th Street and Avenue A.
- Much of the independent film Supersize Me takes place in Alphabet City, near the residence of the director.
- Alphabet City is mentioned in the song 'Alphabet Town' by Elliott Smith.
- A 1984 movie called Alphabet City, about a drug dealer's attempts to flee his life of crime, took place in the district. It starred Vincent Spano, Zohra Lampert and Jami Gertz.
- Alphabet City is mentioned in the song "Poster Girl" by the Backstreet Boys.
- 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.
- Avenue B is an album by Iggy Pop.
- "Take A Walk With The Fleshtones" is a song by The Fleshtones on their album Beautiful Light (1994) that devotes a verse each to Avenues A, B, C, and D.
- Alphabet City is an album by ABC.
- A fictional version of NYC's Alphabet City is explored in the Fallen Angels supplement to Kult.
- The Broadway musical Avenue Q takes Alphabet City to a humorous extreme: "I started at Avenue A, but so far everything is out of my price range..."
- 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."
- Singer-songwriter Ryan Adams references Avenue A and Avenue B in his track "New York, New York."
- The members of the now defunct seminal ska punk band Choking Victim were originally from a squat in Avenue C.
- In Bongwater's 'Folk Song' there is the repeated chorus "Hello death, goodbye Avenue A."
- The film Flawless, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robert DiNiro, and Wilson Jermaine Heredia, takes place in Alphabet City with all filming taking place there.
- 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 Leftover Crack, Choking Victim, INDK, Morning Glory and Stza.
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