Alphabet City
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Alphabet City, formerly considered a slum, is now a trendy part of the East Village in lower Manhattan, New York City. 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 14th Street to the north. Some famous landmarks include Tompkins Square Park, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and the Stuyvesant Town housing project.
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 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.
The 20th Century
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 had evolved into “Loisaida” (a Latinization of “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 Algarin 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). The area was also known as a location of heavy drug activity and high crime. The late 1990s has witnessed a sharp rise in housing rents and has ushered in a new, distinctly less bohemian era for Alphabet City. On the plus side, 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. The drawback to redevelopment has been that many families, artists and small businesses can no longer afford to remain in the neighborhood. Young 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. 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.
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.
The television police drama NYPD Blue takes place in Alphabet City.
The Broadway musical Rent takes place in Alphabet City.