East Village, Manhattan
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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, the Bowery and Third Avenue 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).
The East Village was — and still is by many — regarded as part of the Lower East Side. In the 1980s, real estate developers began promoting the name East Village to dissociate the neighborhood from the Lower East Side's reputation as a slum district and to try to capture the cachet of Greenwich Village. This has led many to believe that the East Village is part of Greenwich Village. Extensive gentrification during the 1980s around Tompkins Square Park was a contributing factor to several riots (in 1988 and 1995) as police disbanded homeless encampments.
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. The most notable of those steets 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 countercultural, especially punk, businesses; and Astor Place/Cooper Square, home of the Public Theater and the Cooper Union, one of the world's most prestigious art, architecture, and engineering schools. Nearby New York University (NYU) has dormitories in the neighborhood.
CBGB, the nightclub considered to be the birthplace of punk music, is located in the neighborhood on the Bowery. Other important East Village clubs in punk history were the Mudd Club, A7 and the Mercer Arts Center both of which are now closed. Max's Kansas City another important club was located just outside the neighborhood. 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 were: the New York Dolls, Patti Smith, Arto Lindsay, the Ramones, Blondie, the Talking Heads, the Plasmatics, Glenn Danzig, Sonic Youth, Madonna, 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 the nation. 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.
External links
- [East-Village.com, sponsored by East Village Community Media]
- [East Village map with landmarks]
- [Air visit of 'East Village' in Photographs]
- [Google map of East Village area]
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