Alphabet City, Manhattan

The dark blue area denotes the neighborhood's location in Lower Manhattan.

Alphabet City is a neighborhood located within the Lower East Side and East Village in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is also known as Loisaida^{[citation needed]}, a Spanglish adaptation of 'Lower East Side'. 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 centre and ethnic enclave for Manhattan's German, Polish, Hispanic, and Jewish populations.

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. If the neighborhood is considered, as according to some definitions, to extend to 23rd Street as its northern boundary, it also encompasses parts of the New York State Senate's 29th district (represented by State Senator Thomas Duane), New York City Council's 4th district (represented by Daniel Garodnick), and Manhattan Community Board 6.

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

Early history

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^[who?] 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 have been the second substantial non-Anglophone urban ethnic enclave in United States history, after Germantown in Philadelphia.

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 Jews, 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 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

The 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.

Origin of the term

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. It is referred to as the Tompkins Square Park Police Riot or simply the Tompkins Square Park Riot.

Avenue A and east 11th Street after a March 2009 snow storm.

Recent history

Avenue A from East 5th Street

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.

Cultural references

• 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.
• The photo and text book "Alphabet City" by Geoffrey Biddle^[8] chronicles life in Alphabet City over the years 1977 to 1989.
• The photo book "Street Play" by Martha Cooper ^[9]
• 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.
• Mike Codella's autobiographical novel, Alphaville, describes his time as a Sergeant in the NYPD, working in Alphabet City.
• The fictional 15th Precinct in the police drama NYPD Blue appears to cover Alphabet City, at least in part.
• The series Law and Order: SVU frequently makes reference to the dangers of living in that area of the city.
• The 1996 TV movie Mrs. Santa Claus is primarily set on Avenue A in Alphabet City in 1910.^[10]
• The 2005 motion picture Rent, starring Rosario Dawson, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Jesse L. Martin, Anthony Rapp, Adam Pascal, Idina Menzel, Taye Diggs, and Tracie Thoms, is an adaptation of the 1996 Broadway rock opera of the same name by Jonathan Larson (which itself is heavily based on Puccini's opera La Boheme) and set in Alphabet City on 11th Street and Avenue B, although many scenes were filmed in San Francisco. Unlike the stage musical, which was not set in a specific period of time, the film is clear that the story takes place between 1989 and 1990. Although this leads to occasional anachronisms in the story, the time period is explicitly mentioned to establish that the story takes place before the gentrification of Alphabet City.
• Much of the independent film Supersize Me, released in 2004, takes place in Alphabet City, near the residence of director Morgan Spurlock.
• Character actor Josh Pais, who grew up in Alphabet City, conceived and directed a very personal documentary film, 7th Street, released in 2003. Shot over a period of ten years, it is both a "love letter" to the characters he saw everyday and a chronicle of the changes that took place in the neighborhood.
• The 1999 film Flawless, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robert De Niro, and Wilson Jermaine Heredia, takes place in Alphabet City with all filming taking place there.
• A 1985 movie by Paul Morrissey, Mixed Blood was set and filmed in the pre-gentrification Alphabet city of the early 1980s
• 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.
• 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 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.
• Avenue B is an album by Iggy Pop, who wrote the album while living at the Christodora House on Avenue B.
• Avenue D is referenced in the Steely Dan song, "Daddy Don't Live In That New York City No More" off the 1975 album Katy Lied
• Alphabet City is an album by ABC.
• The 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. Leftöver Crack makes several references to "9th and C", the approximate location of C-Squat in the song "Homeo Apathy" from the album Mediocre Generica.
• Singer-songwriter Ryan Adams references Avenue A and Avenue B in his track "New York, New York".
• U2 references the neighborhood as "Alphaville" in their song "New York".
• "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.

See also

• Community gardening
• C-Squat
• Dos Blockos
• East Village
• Loisaida
• Nuyorican Poets Cafe
• Riis Houses
• St. Brigid's Church
• St. Mark's Place
• Tompkins Square Park
• Tompkins Square Park Police Riot

References

External links

• Alphabet City: The ABCs of Gentrification, Karin Pekarchik, BusinessWeek, June 11, 2001
• 6 and B Garden (Community Garden)
• La Plaza Cultural (Community Garden)
• Green Oasis Community Garden & Gilbert's Sculpture Garden (Community Garden)
• Save Brigid's Church
• Interactive map of Alphabet City

v t e Neighborhoods in the New York City Borough of Manhattan Alphabet City Astor Row Battery Park City Bowery Carnegie Hill Chelsea Chinatown Civic Center Columbus Circle Cooperative Village Diamond District East Harlem East Village Financial District Five Points Flatiron District Garment District Gashouse District Gramercy Park Greenwich Village Hamilton Heights Harlem Hell's Kitchen Herald Square Hudson Heights Hudson Yards Inwood Italian Harlem Kips Bay Koreatown Lenox Hill Le Petit Senegal Liberty Island Lincoln Square Little Germany Little Italy Little Syria Loisaida Lower East Side Lower Manhattan Madison Square Manhattan Valley Manhattanville Marble Hill Marcus Garvey Park Meatpacking District Midtown Manhattan Morningside Heights Murray Hill NoHo Nolita NoMad Peter Cooper Village Pomander Walk Radio Row Randall's Island Roosevelt Island Rose Hill San Juan Hill SoHo South Street Seaport South Village Strivers' Row Stuyvesant Square Stuyvesant Town Sugar Hill Sutton Place Sylvan Court Mews, Sylvan Place, and Sylvan Terrace Tenderloin Theatre District Times Square TriBeCa Tudor City Turtle Bay Two Bridges Union Square Upper East Side Upper Manhattan Upper West Side Wards Island Washington Heights Waterside Plaza West Village Yorkville Community Boards: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

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