View source for Alphabet City, Manhattan

{{Short description|Neighborhood in New York City}}
{{Redirect|Alphabet City}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=February 2025}}
{{Use American English|date=January 2025}}
{{stack begin}}
{{Infobox settlement
| name               = Alphabet City
| settlement_type    = [[Neighborhoods of Manhattan|Neighborhood of Manhattan]]
| image_skyline      = File:July25th 008.jpg
| image_size         = 300px
| image_alt          = 
| image_caption      = [[Avenue C (Manhattan)|Avenue C]] was designated Loisaida Avenue in recognition of the neighborhood's Puerto Rican heritage
| image_map          = {{maplink|frame=y|plain=y|frame-align=center|zoom=12|type=shape|from=Neighbourhoods/New York City/Alphabet City.map}}
| map_caption        = Location in New York City
| nickname           = 
| motto              = 
| pushpin_map        = <!--USA New York City#USA New York#USA-->
| pushpin_label_position = 
| pushpin_map_caption = <!--Location-->
<!-- location ------------------>
| coordinates        = {{Coord|40.726|-73.979|region:US-NY_type:city|display=inline,title}}
| coordinates_footnotes = 
| subdivision_type   = [[List of sovereign states|Country]]
| subdivision_name   = {{flag|United States}}
| subdivision_type1  = [[U.S. state|State]]
| subdivision_name1  = {{flag|New York}}
| subdivision_type2  = [[City]]
| subdivision_name2  = {{flag|New York City}}
| subdivision_type3  = [[Boroughs of New York City|Borough]]
| subdivision_name3  = [[Manhattan]]
| subdivision_type4  = [[Community boards of Manhattan|Community District]]
| subdivision_name4  = [[Manhattan Community Board 3|Manhattan 3]]<ref name="NYCPlanning">{{cite web |title=NYC Planning {{!}} Community Profiles|url=https://communityprofiles.planning.nyc.gov/manhattan/3|website=communityprofiles.planning.nyc.gov|publisher=New York City Department of City Planning|access-date=March 18, 2019}}</ref>
<!-- area ---------------------->
| area_footnotes     = <ref name="2020_census_tract_stats">{{cite web |url=https://popfactfinder.planning.nyc.gov/explorer/selection/6b4c9355dea3ecbd2cd9f05f2f501ac2057a3f33/ |title=Manhattan census tracts 34, 22.02, 20, 24, 26.01, 26.02, 28, 30.02, 32 |website=NYC Population FactFinder}}</ref>
| area_total_sq_mi   = 0.47
<!-- population ---------------->
| population_footnotes = <ref name="2020_census_tract_stats"/>
| population_total   = 45,317
| population_as_of   = 2020
| population_density_km2 = <!-- for automatic calculation of any density field, use: auto -->
| population_density_sq_mi = auto
| population_note    = 
| population_demonym = <!-- demographics (section 1) -->
| demographics_type1 = Ethnicity
| demographics1_footnotes = <ref name="2020_census_tract_stats"/>
| demographics1_title1 = White
| demographics1_info1 = 41.5%
| demographics1_title2 = Hispanic
| demographics1_info2 = 30.6%
| demographics1_title3 = Asian
| demographics1_info3 = 14.3%
| demographics1_title4 = Black
| demographics1_info4 = 9.3%
| demographics1_title5 = Other
| demographics1_info5 = 4.4%
<!-- demographics (section 2) -->| demographics_type2 = Economics
| demographics2_footnotes = <ref name="2019_zip_code_10009_stats">{{cite web |url=https://censusreporter.org/profiles/86000US10009-10009/ |title=Zip code 10009 |website=Census Reporter}}</ref>
| demographics2_title1 = [[Median household income|Median income]]
| demographics2_info1 = $63,717
<!-- postal codes, area code --->
| postal_code_type   = [[ZIP Code]]
| postal_code        = 10009
| area_code_type     = [[Telephone numbering plan|Area codes]]
| area_code          = [[Area codes 212, 646, and 332|212, 332, 646]], and [[Area code 917|917]]
}}
{{Ethnic New York City sidebar}}
{{stack end}}

'''Alphabet City''' is a neighborhood located within the [[East Village, Manhattan|East Village]] in the [[New York City]] [[Boroughs of New York City|borough]] of [[Manhattan]]. Its name comes from Avenues [[Avenue A (Manhattan)|A]], [[Avenue B (Manhattan)|B]], [[Avenue C (Manhattan)|C]], and [[Avenue D (Manhattan)|D]], the only avenues in Manhattan to have single-letter names. It is bounded by [[Houston Street (Manhattan)|Houston Street]] to the south and [[14th Street (Manhattan)|14th Street]] to the north, and extends roughly from Avenue A to the East River.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/realestate/living-in-alphabet-city.html |title=Living In: Alphabet City |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |first=C.J. |last=Hughes |date=September 6, 2017 |quote=Stretching from Avenue A to the East River, and East 14th to East Houston Streets, Alphabet City is ...}}</ref> Some famous landmarks include [[Tompkins Square Park]], the [[Nuyorican Poets Cafe]] and the [[Charlie Parker#Charlie Parker residence|Charlie Parker Residence]].

The neighborhood has a long history, serving as a cultural center and ethnic enclave for Manhattan's [[German American|German]], [[Polish American|Polish]], [[Hispanic and Latino Americans|Hispanic]], and immigrants of Jewish descent. However, there is much dispute over the borders of the [[Lower East Side]], Alphabet City, and East Village. Historically, Manhattan's Lower East Side was bounded by [[14th Street (Manhattan)|14th Street]] at the northern end, on the east by the [[East River]] and on the west by [[First Avenue (Manhattan)|First Avenue]]; today, that same area is sometimes referred to as Alphabet City, with Houston Street as the southern boundary. The area's German presence in the early 20th century, in decline, virtually ended after the ''[[General Slocum]]'' disaster in 1904.

Alphabet City is part of [[Manhattan Community Board 3|Manhattan Community District 3]] and its primary [[ZIP Code]] is 10009.<ref name="NYCPlanning"/> It is patrolled by the [[9th Precinct, New York City Police Department|9th Precinct]] of the [[New York City Police Department]].

==Etymology==
The [[Commissioners' Plan of 1811]], which laid out the grid scheme of Manhattan above Houston Street, designated 16 north–south "avenues". Twelve numbered avenues were to run continuously to [[Harlem]], while four lettered ones—A, B, C and D—appeared intermittently wherever the island widened east of [[First Avenue (Manhattan)|First Avenue]].<ref>[[Gouverneur Morris|Morris, Gouverneur]]; [[Simeon De Witt|De Witt, Simeon]]; and [[John Rutherfurd|Rutherford, John]] {{sic}} (March 1811). [https://urbanplanning.library.cornell.edu/DOCS/nyc1811.htm "Remarks Of The Commissioners For Laying Out Streets And Roads In The City Of New York, Under The Act Of April 3, 1807"]. [[Cornell University Library]]. Accessed June 27, 2016. "These are one hundred feet wide, and such of them as can be extended as far north as the village of Harlem are numbered (beginning with the most eastern, which passes from the west of Bellevue Hospital to the east of Harlem Church) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. This last runs from the wharf at Manhattanville nearly along the shore of the Hudson river, in which it is finally lost, as appears by the map. The avenues to the eastward of number one are marked A, B, C, and D."</ref> The plan called for stretches of [[Avenue A (Manhattan)|Avenue A]] and [[Avenue B (Manhattan)|Avenue B]] north of midtown, all of which have been renamed. In 1943, Avenue A went as far north as 25th Street, Avenue B ended at 21st Street, and Avenue C reached 18th Street.<ref>"[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/346364-manhattan-profiles.html#pages Stuyvesant Square]". ''New York City Market Analysis'', 1943. Accessed January 1, 2024.</ref> [[Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village|Stuyvesant Town]], a post–World War II private residential development, blotted out the rest of A and B above 14th Street (sparing only a few blocks of [[Avenue C (Manhattan)|Avenue C]]). What remained of 1811's lettered avenues came to be called, by some, Alphabet City.

There is disagreement about the earliest uses of the name. It is often characterized as a marketing invention of realtors and other gentrifiers who arrived in the 1980s.<ref>{{cite book |last=Rowe |first=Peter G. |title=Civic Realism |publisher=MIT Press |year=1997 |isbn=9780262681056 |url=https://archive.org/details/civicrealism00rowe |quote=The term 'Alphabet City' only began to be used when gentrification made its first incursions into the neighborhood during the 1980s.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Chodorkoff |first=Dan |year=2014 |title=The Anthropology of Utopia: Essays on Social Ecology and Community Development |publisher=New Compass Press |quote=Real estate developers ... rechristened the neighborhood 'alphabet city'.}}</ref> However, sociologist Christopher Mele connects the term to the arts scene of the late 1970s which in turn attracted real estate investors.{{Sfn|Mele|2000|p=xi}} As such, argues Mele, Alphabet City and its many variants—Alphaville,<ref>{{Cite news |last=Goldstein |first=Richard |date=1978-12-11 |title=Nietzsche in Alphaville |newspaper=Village Voice |page=33}}</ref> Alphabetland,<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Hershkovits |first=David |date=September 1983 |title=Art in Alphabetland |magazine=ARTnews |pages=88–92}}</ref> etc.—were "playful" but also "concealed the area's rampant physical and social decline and downplayed the area’s Latino identity."{{Sfn|Mele|2000|p=xi}} [[Pete Hamill]], a longtime New York City journalist, cites darker origins. NYPD officers, he claims, referred to the most degraded areas east of Avenue B as Alphabet City in the 1950s.<ref>{{cite book |last=Hamill |first=Pete |year=2004 |title=Downtown: My Manhattan |url=https://archive.org/details/downtownmymanha00hami |publisher=Little, Brown |page=210 |isbn=9780316734516}}</ref>

Whatever its origins, the name began to appear in print around 1980 with all three associations—crime, art, and gentrification. A December 1980 article in the ''[[Daily News (New York)|Daily News]]'' reported on the eastward flow of gentrification:

{{Blockquote|Ave A. is still the DMZ. While the one side has been the East Village since the days of hippie heaven, the other side has become known, by Spanish-speaking locals, as Loisaida, and, by hand-rubbing realtors, as Alphabet City.<ref>{{cite news |last=Hodenfield |first=Jan |date=December 4, 1980 |title=Gentrification comes to the lower East Side |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/485775847 |newspaper=Daily News}}</ref>}}

''[[The Official Preppy Handbook]]'', published in October 1980, caricatured a subgroup of preppies as "connoisseurs of punk ... who spend their weekends in alphabet city (Avenues A, B, C, and D) on the Lower East Side."<ref>{{cite book |last=Birnbach |first=Lisa |date=October 1980 |title=The Official Preppy Handbook |url=https://archive.org/details/officialpreppyha00birn |publisher=Workman Publishing |page=165 |isbn=9780894801402}}</ref> Similarly, a November 1984 article in ''[[The New York Times]]'' reported "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)."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Freedman |first=Samuel |date=November 4, 1984 |title=Metropolis of the Mind |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/04/magazine/metropolis-of-the-mind.html |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |at=Section 6, page 32, column 1 |access-date=2010-03-22}}</ref>

The term appeared in March 1983 in the ''[[New York Daily News]]'' regarding anti-drug raids in the area.<ref>Davila, Albert (March 6, 1984). [https://www.newspapers.com/article/daily-news-crime-and-anti-crime-activity/134474670/ "See No Pushover Spillover"]. ''[[Daily News (New York)|Daily News]]'' (New York). Accessed November 1, 2023. "In late 1980 and 1981, similar raids in "Alphabet City" as the lower East Side is also known because of Avenues A, B, C and D produced an influx into Williamsburg of drug peddlers and buyers seeking 'safer ground' across the Williamsburg Bridge."</ref> It also appeared in ''[[The New York Times]]'' in an April 1984 editorial by Mayor Ed Koch justifying recent police operations:

{{Blockquote|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.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Koch |first=Ed |date=April 27, 1984 |title=Needed: Federal Anti-Drug Aid |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/27/opinion/needed-federal-anti-drug-aid.html |department=Opinion |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=2010-03-22}}</ref>}}

In common, Mele notes, the early uses shared the "mystique of 'living on the edge'."{{Sfn|Mele|2000|p=236}} As early as 1989, however, a ''[[Newsday]]'' article suggested the mood, even among newcomers, had changed:

{{Blockquote|Residents call the area east of Avenue A between Houston and 14th Streets "the neighborhood," "The East Village," "The Lower East Side" or its Spanglish version, "Loisaida." That's because calling it "Alphabet City" brings too many memories of the days when outsiders began coming to Avenues A, B, C and D for the galleries, the clubs and the drugs.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Sax |first=Irene |date=January 18, 1989 |title=Alphabet City: Beyond the drug dealers and burnt-out buildings is a neighborhood breathing new energy |newspaper=Newsday}}</ref>}}

Several local nickname sets associated with the ABCD denotation have included Adventurous, Brave, Crazy and Dead and, more recently by writer George Pendle, "Affluent, Bourgeois, Comfortable, Decent".<ref>Moss, Jeremiah (2017). ''Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul''. New York: Dey St. p. 17. {{ISBN|9780062439697}}. {{OCLC|960707363}}.</ref>

==History==

===Before urbanization===
[[Image:Day 1 - Long Island NWR (NY) (16023762344).jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|left|Preserved salt marsh on Long Island comparable to ecosystem of Alphabet City area before urbanization in the 1820s]]

Prior to development, most of present-day Alphabet City was a [[salt marsh]], regularly flooded by the tides of the [[East River]] (technically an estuary, not a river).<ref>{{cite map |title=Plan of the city of New York in North America: Surveyed in the years 1766 & 1767 |author=Bernard Ratzer |url=https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-f437-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 |year=1776 |publisher=Jefferys & Faden}}</ref>{{Sfn|Hill|Waring|1897| page=[https://archive.org/details/historicnewyorkb00good/page/236 236]}} Marshes played a critical role in the food web and protected the coast. The [[Lenape]] Native Americans who inhabited Manhattan before European contact presided over similar ecosystems from [[New York Bay]] to [[Delaware Bay]].<ref>{{cite book |title=The Lenapes |year=1989 |first=Robert S. |last=Grumet |publisher=Chelsea House |isbn=9781555467128 |page=13}}</ref> They tended to settle in forest clearings.<ref>{{cite book |title=First Manhattans: A History of the Indians of Greater New York |first=Robert S. |last=Grumet |year=2012 |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |isbn=9780806182964 |page=6}}</ref> In summer, however, they foraged shellfish, gathered [[Spartina|cordgrass]] for weaving, and otherwise exploited the wetlands.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Historical Atlas of New York City |first=Eric |last=Homberger |year=2005 |orig-date=1st pub. 1994 |isbn=9780805078428 |publisher=Henry Holt and Company |page=16}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=McCully |first=Betsy |title=City at the Water's Edge: A Natural History of New York |publisher=Rivergate Books, an imprint of Rutgers University Press |publication-place=New Brunswick, N.J. |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-8135-3915-7 |oclc=137663737 |page=53}}</ref>

Dutch settlers brought a different model of land ownership and use.<ref>{{cite thesis |last=Van Zwieten |first=Adriana E. |title="A little land ... to sow some seeds": Real property, custom, and law in the community of New Amsterdam |year=2001 |oclc=52320808}}</ref> In 1625, representatives of the [[Dutch West India Company]] set their sights on lower Manhattan, with plans for a fortified town at its tip served by farms above.<ref>{{cite thesis |title=Early Dutch presence in North America: The West India Company's relationship with its Dutch patroonship |first=Jesper Nicolai |last=Abel |year=2017 |url=https://bora.uib.no/bora-xmlui/bitstream/handle/1956/16761/Goedeavond-meijn-Heer-.pdf |page=51}}</ref> In 1626, they "purchased" the island from a local Lenape group and began parceling the land into boweries (from the Dutch for "farm").{{sfn|Burrows|Wallace|1999|pp=23-27}} The northern half of the Alphabet City area was part of Bowery Number 2. The southwest quarter was part of Bowery Number 3.<ref name="Stokes 1928 plate">{{harvnb|Stokes|1928|ps=.|loc=PL. 84B-b}}</ref> Both belonged initially to the company but were soon sold to individuals. By 1663, a year before surrendering the colony to England, Director General [[Peter Stuyvesant]] had acquired the relevant part of Number 2 and much of Number 3 from other settlers.{{sfn|Stokes|1928|pp=142-144}} The company divided the southeast quarter of Alphabet City into small lots associated with larger parcels further away from the shore.<ref name="Stokes 1928 plate"/> In this way, upland farmers gained access to the unique tidal ecosystem—"salt meadow" as they called it—and with it, "[[Spartina patens|salt hay]]," a cordgrass species valued as fodder.{{Sfn|Greider|2011|page=[https://archive.org/details/archaeologyofhom0000grei/page/10 10]}} In his influential ''Description of New Netherland'' (1655), [[Adriaen van der Donck]] informed his fellow Dutchmen:

{{Blockquote|There [are] salt meadows; some so extensive that the eye cannot oversee the same. Those are good for pasturage and hay, although the same are overflowed by the spring tides, particularly near the seaboard. These meadows resemble the lows and outlands of the Netherlands. Most of them could be dyked and cultivated.<ref>{{cite book |title=Description of the New Netherlands |last=Donck |first=Adriaen van der |translator-last=Johnson |translator-first=Jeremiah |year=1896 |orig-date=1655 |publisher=Directors of the Old South Work |page=13 |url=https://archive.org/details/descriptionofnew00donc/page/13/}}</ref>}}

The Dutch, then, were singularly attuned to the potential for land reclamation. During the city's first two centuries, however, large-scale landfill was limited to the more commercial southern end of the island, particularly wharfs at the mouth of the East River.<ref>{{cite book |last=Buttenwieser |first=Ann |title=Manhattan, Water-Bound: Planning and Developing Manhattan's Waterfront from the Seventeenth Century to the Present |publisher=New York University Press |publication-place=New York |year=1987 |isbn=978-0-8147-1093-7 |oclc=14691918 |pages=26–27}}</ref> Stuyvesant and his heirs, with the help of slave labor, continued to occupy their farm as a country estate, cultivating it lightly and making few changes to the land.{{sfn|Brazee|Most|2012|p=5}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Blackmar |first=Elizabeth |title=Manhattan for Rent, 1785-1850 |publisher=Cornell University Press |publication-place=Ithaca |year=1989 |isbn=978-0-8014-9973-9 |oclc=18741278 |page=24}}</ref>

===Development of the avenues===
[[Image:Alphabet-City-area-of-1811-plan-for-Manhattan.png|thumb|upright=1.5|left|Alphabet City area as laid out in [[Commissioners' Plan of 1811]]. Note, the majority is depicted as marsh. Envisioned "Market Place" was never built, but the portion between Avenues A and B is now [[Tompkins Square Park]]. Long, shaded diagonals off North Street (now Houston) indicate [[rope walk|rope making walks]].]]

After the [[American Revolutionary War|Revolutionary War]], with a surge in population and trade, the city was poised to grow northward. Around 1789, [[Peter Stuyvesant (merchant)|Peter Stuyvesant]], great-grandson of the Director General by that name, came up with a plan for the area, mapping out streets to build and lots to sell.<ref>{{cite report |url=http://media.villagepreservation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/15123003/St.-Marks-Historic-District-NYC-LPC-Designation-Report.pdf |title=St. Mark's Historic District, Borough of Manhattan. |date=January 14, 1969 |publisher=[[New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission]] |page=1}}</ref> In doing so, he was following the precedent of landowners to the south.{{Sfn|Koeppel|2015|pp=11–12}} However, by this time, the city was laying out roads of its own and wanted to connect the whole.{{sfn|Koeppel|2015|p=25}} The first proposal for a unified street system was the [[Commissioners' Plan of 1811#The Mangin–Goerck Plan|Mangin–Goerck Plan]]. Presented in 1799, it extended Stuyvesant's grid into the cove above Alphabet City, straightening the shoreline such that Alphabet City and the Lower East Side were no longer an isolated bulge.{{sfn|Koeppel|2015|p=47}} When this plan succumbed to political squabbles and landowner demands, the city appealed to the state to dictate a design.<ref>{{cite book |title=Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1784-1831 |publisher=City of New York |year=1917 |oclc=576024162 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OWk2AQAAMAAJ |access-date=2021-12-09 |volume=IV: May 20, 1805 to February 8, 1808 |page=353}}</ref> The result was the [[Commissioners' Plan of 1811]], setting out the street grid of Manhattan above Houston Street.

"In general," the commissioners resolved, everything "should be rectangular."{{Sfn|Bridges|1811|p=24}} However, the new roads were rotated relative to the existing ones just below Alphabet City. Moreover, the commissioners could do little to straighten the shoreline. They were limited by charter to reclaiming 400 feet beyond the low-water mark, much less than the Mangin-Goerck plan entailed.{{sfn|Bridges|1811|p=18}} First Avenue reflected this limit. It was drawn parallel to Fifth Avenue (called Middle Road in earlier designs{{sfn|Koeppel|2015|p=22}}) as far east as possible while not straying too far into the water. Irregular bits of land protruded beyond First Avenue and, for these cases, the commissioners turned to lettered avenues. Avenues A and B appeared around Alphabet City, popped up again above midtown, and once more in Harlem (they were eventually renamed or eliminated above Alphabet City). Avenues C and D existed only in Alphabet City. Thus the neighborhood was misaligned with the old grid and relatively disconnected to the new one.

On the other hand, Alphabet City retained its long, arcing bank along the East River, just north of the ever-growing ports and shipyards that animated the city. The commissioners placed the avenues on the east side of the island closer together in anticipation of denser development there.{{sfn|Spann|1988|p=19}} For Alphabet City proper, they envisioned a wholesale food market supplying the entire city. It would extend from 7th to 10th Street and from First Avenue to the river, with a canal up the middle. The commissioners wrote: "The place selected for this purpose is a salt marsh, and from that circumstance, of inferior price, though in regard to its destination, of greater value than other soil."{{sfn|Bridges|1811|p=29}}

Despite having sought a binding plan, the city requested many modifications from the state during execution, generally along lines demanded by property interests.{{sfn|Spann|1988|p=27}} Given the marshy environs, Alphabet City landowners, mostly Stuyvesants, argued for an extra measure of deference and the city concurred:

{{blockquote|It is stated in the memorial [of the landowners] and the fact is unquestionable that the extensive tract of sunken meadow land lying between North Street [now Houston Street] and Brandy mulah Point [Burnt Mill Point, near 12th Street] cannot be improved with any prospect of Benefit to the Owners unless upon the most Economical Scale of Expense and under all the Encouragements which can be offered by the Corporation Consistently with the public Interests.<ref>{{citation |title=Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1784-1831 |chapter=In Common Council August 4th 1823 |publisher=M.B. Brown Print. & Binding Co. |year=1917 |volume=XIII |oclc=39817642 |page=201 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0PxMAAAAMAAJ |ref={{sfnref|Minutes of the Common Council XIII|1917}}}}</ref>}}

To this end, the proposed market place, like most of the public spaces in the plan, was returned to private hands. It was reduced to a sliver in 1815,{{Sfn|New York (State)|1855}} then scrapped altogether in 1824.{{sfn|New York (State)|1855|loc=An act making further alteration in the map or plan of the City of New York, Passed January 22, 1824}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Stokes |first=I. N. Phelps |title=The Iconography of Manhattan Island 1498-1909 |volume=3 |year=1918 |oclc=831811649 |publisher=Robert H. Dodd |location=New York |page=959 |url=https://archive.org/details/ldpd_5800727_003/page/959}}</ref> The city argued that the land was too remote to serve its intended purpose at the time and that holding onto it would deter development.{{sfn|Minutes of the Common Council XIII|1917|p=201}} Urban historian Edward Spann lamented, "What was perhaps the most far-sighted feature of the Plan was the first to be completely eliminated."{{sfn|Spann|1988|p=25}}

In the same act that abolished the market place, the state accommodated a landowner petition to narrow just the lettered avenues.{{sfn|New York (State)|1855|loc=An act making further alteration in the map or plan of the City of New York, Passed January 22, 1824}} From the standard avenue width of {{convert|100|ft}}, Avenue A was reduced to {{convert|80|ft}}, Avenues B, C and D to {{convert|60|ft}}, the width of most cross-streets.<ref>{{cite book |last=Post |first=John J. |title=Old streets, roads, lanes, piers and wharves of New York showing the former and present names, together with a list of alterations of streets, either by extending, widening, narrowing or closing |publisher=R.D. Cooke |year=1882 |oclc=1098350361 |page=67}}</ref> "Incapable of use as thoroughfares to and from the City," wrote the city council, "they cannot be considered as avenues in the proper Sense of the term." Instead, they should "correspond as far as possible with the Old Streets [below Houston] of which they will form the Continuation & be called by the Same names & be regulated by the Corporation as Streets."{{sfn|Minutes of the Common Council XIII|1917|p=201}}

Weighing heavily in these decisions was the marsh itself and the water that drained—or failed to drain—through it. The debate about grading and draining Alphabet City's streets went round and round for over a decade, even as filling proceeded.{{sfn|Greider|2011|pp=[https://archive.org/details/archaeologyofhom0000grei/page/65 65-67]}}<ref>{{cite book |title=Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of Greater New York |first=Theodore |last=Steinberg |publisher=Simon & Schuster |location=New York |year=2014 |isbn=9781476741246 |url=https://archive.org/details/gothamunboundeco0000stei |pages=[https://archive.org/details/gothamunboundeco0000stei/page/73 73-76]}}</ref>{{sfn|Spann|1988|pp=[https://archive.org/details/twocenturiesofam0000unse/page/25 25-26]}}{{sfn|Stuyvesant Meadows|1832}} The standard design called for the land to slope down to the river uniformly throughout the watershed, which extended as far inland as [[Bowery]]. However, landowners, who would be assessed the cost of road construction, objected to the expense of so much landfill. In 1823, a newly created committee, with latitude to amend the 1811 plan, proposed to save money with a network of closed sewers, but these suffered a bad reputation from repeated clogging in older parts of the city.{{sfn|Stuyvesant Meadows|1832|loc="Report of the Commissioners to Establish a Permanent Regulation of the Streets and Avenues South of Thirty-Fourth Street, Dated 7th November 1825"}}{{sfn|Greider|2011|pp=[https://archive.org/details/archaeologyofhom0000grei/page/66 66]}} Another proposal, from a new committee, echoed the former market place design, calling for open, ornamented canals on 6th, 9th and 14th Streets.{{sfn|Stuyvesant Meadows|1832|loc="Report of Edward Doughty, City Surveyor, on Report of Commissioners, &c. in Common Council, Sep. 25th, 1826"}}{{sfn|Hill|Waring|1897|p=[https://archive.org/details/historicnewyorkb00good/page/238 238]}} In 1832, as no amount of fill seemed to stem periodic flooding,<ref>{{cite book |url=https://www.russellsage.org/publications/history-public-health-new-york-city-1625–1866 |title=A History of Public Health in New York City, 1625–1866 |first=John |last=Duffy |publisher=Russell Sage Foundation |year=1968 |page=406}}</ref> the city resolved on a simpler sewer system. In this design, the land would slope down to Avenue C from both east and west like a trough, and flow through a sewer to the river at 14th Street (Avenue C was widened to 80 feet for the purpose).{{sfn|Greider|2011|pp=[https://archive.org/details/archaeologyofhom0000grei/page/66 66]}} With this decided, roads and buildings went forward, though sewer construction itself would wait for decades. Archaeological excavations along Avenue C at 8th Street show that the site was incrementally raised 10–12 feet between 1820 and 1840, occupied from the 1840s (with the aid of a private cistern), and only drained by the proposed sewer line in 1867.<ref>{{cite report |title=The Archaeology of Civil War Era Water Control Systems on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York |last=Grossman |first=Joel W. |date=May 12, 1995 |publisher=New York City Housing Authority |url=http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/arch_reports/352.pdf |page=24}}</ref>

===Dry dock district===
[[Image:Alphabet City portion of Burr map, printed 1833.png|thumb|upright=1.5|left|1833 map and plan shows development (shaded blocks) primarily along the river. Wharfs are built north to 8th Street and east to current [[FDR drive]]. Planned shoreline (ghosted) is near current location and would be built out over the next three decades.]]
[[Image:New-York and environs, from Williamsburgh (NYPL Hades-118701-54826).jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|left|Depiction of shipyards in 1848 from across East River]]
[[Image:The Old Mechanic's Bell tower (erected by shipwrights about 1800 at Goerck and Stanton streets near the East River, N.Y.C. The tolling of the bell marked the end of a ten-hour day, an act of LCCN2003671011.tif|thumb|upright=1.5|left|1882 sketch of moonlit "Mechanics' Bell" at 5th & Lewis Street where shipyards had given way to lumberyards. The bell once represented the abolition of the "dark to dark" workday.]]

The Alphabet City area initially developed along the riverfront, during the 1820s, as part of the city's expanding [[Shipbuilding|shipbuilding and repair]] industry. [[Shipyard]]s tended to form tight clusters in close proximity to specialized workers, such as ship carpenters, and ancillary manufacturers, such as [[Ironworks|iron works]].{{Sfn|Pred|1966|pp=327–329}} They also required lots of cheap space. Hence, the city's growth forced the shipyards to migrate periodically to peripheral sites: above Dover Street around 1750, below [[Lower East Side#Corlears Hook|Corlears Hook]] (some five blocks south of Houston Street) around 1800, then, beginning in the 1820s, the marshes of Alphabet City.{{sfn|Pred|1966|p=326}}{{sfn|Morrison|1909|pp=[https://archive.org/details/ldpd_8446801_000/page/n9 9, 21]}} During the 1840s and 50s, the East River, from Corlears Hook to 13th Street, and inland as far as Avenue C, represented the greatest concentration of shipbuilding activity in the country.{{sfn|Albion|1939|p=287}} After the [[American Civil War|Civil War]], land and labor costs, along with the switch from wood to more massive [[Iron-hulled sailing ship|iron hulls]], would push the industry off the island entirely.{{sfn|Pred|1966|pp=26-27}}

Shipyards first appeared along the southern end of the area's shoreline, roughly between [[Stanton Street|Stanton]] and 3rd Street. This location was not only close to existing yards but also a relative high point. Indeed, it was called, rather confusingly, Manhattan Island, in reference to a knoll in the salt marsh, increasingly buried under wharfs.{{efn|Stokes, following De Voe, places the geographic feature itself above Houston: "Thos. F. De Voe, writing as late as 1862, said he remembered this piece of land, or knoll, between Houston and 3d Sts. Lewis St. ran about through the centre of it.—  Market Book, 524. See also Poppleton’s Plan of 1817."{{sfn|Stokes|1926|p=1507}} The Poppleton map shows a wharf from Stanton to the north side of 3rd Street labeled "Manhattan Island." Morrison describes the same wharf and dates it back to at least 1812.{{sfn|Morrison|1909|p=[https://archive.org/details/ldpd_8446801_000/page/n40 40]}}}} Here, in 1806-7, Charles Brownne built the first commercial steamboat, [[Robert Fulton]]'s [[North River Steamboat|Clermont]], which helped establish the city's shipbuilding reputation.{{sfn|Morrison|1909|p=[https://archive.org/details/ldpd_8446801_000/page/n39 39]}}{{sfn|McKay|1934|p=[https://archive.org/details/southstreetmarit00mcka_0/page/n38 38]}}{{efn|Maritime historian Charles Lawesson places Brownne's shipyard on the north side of Houston Street in the Alphabet City area proper.<ref>{{cite thesis |last=West |first=W. Wilson |title=Monitor Madness: Union Ironclad Construction at New York City, 1862-1864 |year=2003 |oclc=54985810 |page=20}}</ref>}} Brothers [[Adam and Noah Brown]] (no relation to Charles) and [[Henry Eckford (shipbuilder)|Henry Eckford]] took over the spot{{sfn|Morrison|1909|p=[https://archive.org/details/ldpd_8446801_000/page/n39 39]}}{{sfn|McKay|1934|p=[https://archive.org/details/southstreetmarit00mcka_0/page/n38 38]}} and, by 1819, extended the wharf along Lewis Street, east of the new grid plan, to 5th Street.<ref>{{cite map |author=John Randel Jr. |date=July 23, 1819 |title=No. 2, showing North Street to 6th Street, from Avenue B to the East River, July 23, 1819. |url=https://thegreatestgrid.mcny.org/greatest-grid/randel-map-gallery/108 |volume=1}}</ref> The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 called for a wholesale food market between 7th and 10th Street, but local landowners put a stop to this, clearing the way for more of the same. In 1825, a well-capitalized group of shipowners and builders formed the New York Dry Dock Company to upgrade the city's repair facilities.<ref>{{harvnb|Morrison|1909|p=[https://archive.org/details/ldpd_8446801_000/page/n51 51]}}: This company was brought into existence by the co-operation of the owners of the large sailing vessels, some of the owners of the Black Ball line of packets, to avoid the disadvantages to themselves of 'heaving down' their vessels when requiring repairs.</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=A Description of the American Marine Rail-Way |publisher=Jesper Harding, printer |year=1827 |first=John L. |last=Sullivan |oclc=316666851 |quote=A few of the largest ship owners at New York ... associated to apply for an act of incorporation too build a dry dock.}}</ref> They bought a chunk of waterfront recently sold off by Stuyvesants, running from 6th to 13th Street, and built an elaborate campus around 10th Street including Dry Dock Bank, Dry Dock Street (present-day [[Henrietta Szold|Szold]] Place), and novel [[Patent slip|marine railways]] to elevate ships for repair.<ref>{{cite report |url=https://media.villagepreservation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/15074312/3_A-History-of-the-East-Village-Report-by-Francis-Morrone-2018.pdf |title=A History of the East Village and Its Architecture |first=Francis |last=Morrone |date=December 2018 |publisher=Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation |pages=8–11}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York |volume=6 |year=1838 |page=16 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mXMIAQAAIAAJ |quote=The property that was then purchased extended from Sixth-street to Thirteenth-street, on the East river, and from the river back to Lewis Street and Avenue D, and from Tenth to Thirteenth-streets, about half the blocks about half way between Avenue D and Avenue C.}}</ref> Hence, the neighborhood as a whole was often called Dry Dock.<ref>{{cite news |newspaper=The New York Times |title=Politicians' Row is Going |date=March 28, 1897 |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1897/03/28/117900230.html?pageNumber=3 |quote=This neighborhood was on the east side, and embraced the general lines of the old Eleventh Ward [which ran from Avenue B to the river and from Rivington to 14th Street], though its local designation to this day is 'Dry Dock.'}}</ref>{{efn|Several influential sources claim that the longer, more explicit variant, "Dry Dock District," was in fact the neighborhood's historical nickname. The New York City Parks Department has a plaque saying the "neighborhood ... was once known as the Dry Dock District."<ref>{{cite web |website=Official Website of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation |title=Dry Dock Playground History |url=https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/dry-dock-playground-and-pool/history}}</ref> In 2016, ''The New York Times'' wrote, "In the mid-19th century ... the area was known as the Dry Dock District."<ref>{{cite news |title=An Uncertain Future for East Village Rowhouses |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/realestate/an-uncertain-future-for-east-village-rowhouses.html |date=November 25, 2016 |first=Ronda |last=Kaysen |newspaper=The New York Times}}</ref> However, there is simply no evidence. The earliest known use of the phrase is a ''Times'' article from 1886, well after the period. There, the paper used "district" (lowercase) in its specifically political sense, introducing a local senator as "the silver toned [sic] orator from the Dry Dock district,"<ref>{{cite news |title=Rivals Hard at Work; Campbell realizing that Grady is a dangerous opponent |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1886/10/30/103990030.html?pageNumber=5 |date=October 30, 1886 |newspaper=The New York Times}}</ref> By contrast, the shorter variant, "Dry Dock," appeared in many contemporaneous maps, guidebooks, and transportation routes as a label for the dock and its immediate vicinity, e.g., "a jutting point on the East river, at present known as the Dry Dock."<ref>{{cite book |title=Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York |first=D.T. |last=Valentine |year=1856 |page=[https://archive.org/details/manualofcorpora1856newy/page/474/ 474]}}</ref> By synecdoche, it also referred to broader areas, as in, "The extensive ship-yards in the north-east part of the city, in the region called Dry Dock, are very interesting places of resort."<ref>{{cite book |year=1846 |title=Picture of New-York in 1846 |publisher=Homans & Ellis |first=Edward |last=Ruggles |page=[https://archive.org/details/pictureofnewyork01rugg/page/76 76]}}</ref>}}

In 1828, an observer wrote, "No place on this island has the destroying hand of man done more to alter the face of nature... Hills of great magnitude have been entirely levelled, or cut down, and used to fill up docks and wharves."<ref>{{ cite book|title=The picture of New-York, and Stranger's Guide to the Commercial Metropolis of the United States|year=1828|publisher=A. T. Goodrich|page=[https://archive.org/details/pictureofnewyork00newy/page/412/ 412]}}</ref> By the early 1840s, the shipyards formed a solid line along the riverfront,{{sfn|Morrison|1909|p=[https://archive.org/details/ldpd_8446801_000/page/n89 89]}} jutting out several hundred feet from the former low-water mark of the marsh. Shipbuilders included [[Smith and Dimon Shipyard|Smith & Dimon]] (4th to 5th Street), [[William H. Webb]] (5th to 7th Street), [[Jacob Aaron Westervelt|Jacob A. Westervelt]] (7th to 8th Street) and [[William H. Brown (shipbuilder)|William H. Brown]] (11th to 12th Street).{{sfn|Sheldon|1882a|p=223}}<ref>{{cite news |title=A Ramble among the Shipyards |newspaper=The Evening Post |date=October 9, 1847 |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/39624865/}}</ref><ref>{{cite map |title=City of New York Extending Northward to Fiftieth St. |first=Matthew |last=Dripps |year=1852 |url=https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~3018~90020002:Map-of-the-City-of-New-York-Extendi}}</ref> Alongside them were sparmakers, who built masts for the booming [[clipper]] trade, as well as iron works, which manufactured steam engines. [[Morgan Iron Works]] (9th to 10th Street) and [[Novelty Iron Works]] (12th to 14th Street) soon became the area's largest employers.<ref>{{cite book |title=A History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860 |first=J. Leander |last=Bishop |year=1868 |volume=3 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/historyofamerica0003bish/page/n120 120-122] |publisher=E. Young}}</ref> Novelty had about 1200 workers at its peak in the 1850s, and was regarded as a marvel of engineering and operations.{{sfn|Burrows|Wallace|1999|pp=659-660}}<ref>{{cite magazine |title=Novelty Iron Works; with Description of Marine Steam Engines, and their construction |magazine=Harper's New Monthly Magazine |date=December 1, 1850 |first=Jacob |last=Abbott}}</ref>

As shipyards filled the riverfront, housing popped up nearby. In many cases, shipbuilders themselves played the role of developer. Noah Brown, for example, built a boardinghouse for apprentices south of Houston{{sfn|Sheldon|1882a|p=234}}{{sfn|Burrows|Wallace|1999|p=442}} and invested in large plots to the north.{{sfn|Morrison|1909|p=49}}<ref>{{harvnb|Stokes|1928|p=120}}: "The other meadow of the Company, which belonged to Bouwery No. 8, vested in Eckford and Brown in 1815."</ref> Beginning around 1830, the Ficketts, another shipbuilding clan, built numerous three-story brick houses along Avenue D as well as cross streets west to Avenues C.{{efn|Environmental site assessments created for the city document the role of Samuel, Francis and other Ficketts on East 3rd,<ref>{{cite report |title=Stage 1A Literature Review & Sensitivity Evaluation of Archaeological Potential: Block 372, Lot 26 |author=CITY/SCAPE: Cultural Resource Consultants |date=June 2000 |url=http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/arch_reports/294.pdf}}</ref> 4th,<ref>{{cite report |title=Lower East Side Rezoning: Phase 1A Archaeological Assessment Report, Part 1 Historical Background & Lot Histories |date=April 16, 2008 |first=Celia J. |last=Bergoffen |url=http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/arch_reports/1041_A.pdf |page=48}}</ref> 7th, 8th,{{sfn|Mascia|2009}} and 9th<ref>{{cite report |title=Archaeological and Historical Sensitivity Evaluation: 723 East Ninth Street Borough of Manhattan New York, New York |date=March 2005 |author=Greenhouse Consultants Incorporated |url=http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/arch_reports/865.pdf}}</ref> Streets.}} They occupied some themselves and rented lesser variants to skilled laborers.{{sfn|Mascia|2009|p=20}} By the early 1840s, shipyard owners dotted the neighborhood,{{sfn|Mascia|2009|pp=20-21}} and the majority of the city's ship carpenters lived in a narrow strip of blocks along Avenue D and Lewis Street, a stone's throw from the wharfs.{{sfn|Pred|1966|p=328}}

Throughout this period, the industry was dominated by in-migrants drawn to the booming shipyards from surrounding countryside and boatbuilding regions across [[New England]].{{sfn|Albion|1939|pp=242-250}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Binder |first=Frederick |title=All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants, and the Making of New York |publisher=Columbia University Press |publication-place=New York |year=2019 |isbn=978-0-231-18984-2 |oclc=1049577021 |page=27}}</ref> They shared a traditional production model in which artisans progressed from [[Apprenticeship|apprentices]] to [[Journeyman|journeymen]] to [[Master craftsman|masters]], all while living and working side by side. [[Sean Wilentz]], who documented the [[sweatshop]] proclivities of antebellum New York City, points to shipbuilding as the rare industry where tradition persisted and kept wages, skill and respect generally high.<ref>{{cite book |last=Wilentz |first=Sean |title=Chants Democratic: New York City & the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 |publisher=Oxford University Press |publication-place=New York |year=1984 |isbn=978-0-19-503342-7 |oclc=9281934 |url=https://archive.org/details/chantsdemocratic00sean |pages=[https://archive.org/details/chantsdemocratic00sean/page/134 134-8]}}</ref> He and others also credit shipyard workers with pioneering the reduction of work hours in the United States. A "Mechanics' Bell" hung for decades along the Alphabet City riverfront to enforce the ten-hour day that journeymen secured around 1834.{{efn|Stories of the "Mechanics' Bell" differ in many particulars.{{sfn|Morrison|1909| pp=[https://archive.org/details/ldpd_8446801_000/page/n85 85-91]}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Sheldon |first=George William |title=The Story of the Volunteer Fire Department of the City of New York |year=1882 |oclc=866246705 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tMM1AQAAMAAJ |pages=156–7|publisher=Harper & brothers }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=The Old Fifth Street School and the Association which Bears Its Name |year=1887 |first=Abram W. |last=Moynihan |url=https://archive.org/details/oldfifthstreets00moyngoog/ |pages=[https://archive.org/details/oldfifthstreets00moyngoog/page/n91 91-93]|publisher=A.W. Moynihan }}</ref> There is general agreement that the bell first hung in the Manhattan Island shipyards, roughly on Mangin between Stanton and Rivington, around 1831-4. Here it also served as the alarm for the wharf's volunteer fire company, called the Mechanics' Association, where "mechanic" was used in the historical sense of "artisan." Subsequently, a larger bell rang near the river on 5th Street from about 1844-1873, after which it led an on-again-off-again existence on 4th Street and was finally mothballed in 1897.}} Labor reformer [[George E. McNeill|George McNeill]] likened it to a "'Liberty Bell' ... for the sons of toil."<ref>{{cite book |last=McNeill |first=George M. |title=The Labor Movement: The Problem of To-Day |publisher=A.M. Bridgman & Co. |year=1887 |oclc=57274104 |url=https://archive.org/details/labormovementpro00mcne/page/344 |page=[https://archive.org/details/labormovementpro00mcne/page/344 344]}}</ref>

===19th century===
{{See also|Little Germany, Manhattan}}

The Commissioners' Plan and resulting street grid was the catalyst for the northward expansion of the city,{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=11}} and for a short period, the portion of the Lower East Side that is now Alphabet City was one of the wealthiest residential neighborhoods in the city.<ref name="Saint">{{cite web |first=Christopher |last=Gray |title=Streetscapes / 19-25 St. Marks Place; The Eclectic Life of a Row of East Village Houses |work=The New York Times |issn=0362-4331 |date=November 8, 1998 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/08/realestate/streetscapes-19-25-st-marks-place-eclectic-life-row-east-village-houses.html |access-date=September 29, 2019}}</ref> Following the grading of the streets, development of rowhouses came to the East Side and NoHo by the early 1830s.{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=11}} In 1833, [[Thomas E. Davis]] and [[Arthur Bronson]] bought the entire block of 10th Street from [[Avenue A (Manhattan)|Avenue A]] to [[Avenue B (Manhattan)|Avenue B]]. The block was located adjacent to [[Tompkins Square Park]], located between 7th and 10th Streets from Avenue A to Avenue B, designated the same year.{{sfn|Stokes|1915|loc=vol. 5, pp. 1726–1728}} Though the park was not in the original Commissioners' Plan of 1811, part of the land from 7th to 10th Streets east of First Avenue had been set aside for a marketplace that was ultimately never built.{{sfn|Brazee|Most|2012|p=8}} Rowhouses of 2.5 to 3 stories were built on the side streets by such developers as [[Elisha Peck]] and [[Anson Green Phelps]]; Ephraim H. Wentworth; and Christopher S. Hubbard and Henry H. Casey.{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=13}} Following the rapid growth of the neighborhood, Manhattan's 17th ward was split from the 11th ward in 1837. The former covered the area from Avenue B to the Bowery, while the latter covered the area from Avenue B to the East River.{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|pp=15–16}}

By the middle of the 19th century, many of the wealthy had continued to move further northward to the [[Upper West Side]] and the [[Upper East Side]].<ref name="Dolkart 2012">{{cite book |last=Dolkart |first=Andrew |title=Biography of a Tenement House: An Architectural History of 97 Orchard Street |publisher=Center for American Places at Columbia College |series=Biography of a Tenement House: An Architectural History of 97 Orchard Street |year=2012 |isbn=978-1-935195-29-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OcuBtwAACAAJ |access-date=September 30, 2019}}</ref>{{rp|10}} Some wealthy families remained, and one observer noted in the 1880s that these families "look[ed] down with disdain upon the [[parvenu]]s of Fifth avenue."{{sfn|Lockwood|1972|p=199}} In general, though, the wealthy population of the neighborhood started to decline as many moved northward. Immigrants from modern-day [[Ireland]], [[Germany]], and [[Austria]] moved into the neighborhood.{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|pp=15–16}}

The population of Manhattan's 17th ward, which included the western part of the modern Alphabet City, doubled from 18,000 people in 1840 to over 43,000 in 1850, and nearly doubled yet again to 73,000 persons in 1860, becoming the city's most highly populated ward at that time.{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|pp=15–16}}<ref name="Nadel 1990">{{Cite book |first=Stanley |last=Nadel |title=Little Germany: Ethnicity, Religion, and Class in New York City, 1845-80 |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois Press |year=1990 |isbn=0-252-01677-7 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/littlegermanyeth0000nade}}</ref>{{rp|29, 32}} As a result of the [[Panic of 1837]], the city had experienced less construction in the previous years, and so there was a dearth of units available for immigrants, resulting in the subdivision of many houses in lower Manhattan.{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|pp=15–16}}{{sfn|Burrows|Wallace|1999|p=746}} Another solution was brand-new "tenant houses", or [[tenement]]s, within the East Side.<ref name="Dolkart 2012"/>{{rp|14–15}} Clusters of these buildings were constructed by the [[Astor family]] and [[Stephen Whitney]].{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=17}} The developers rarely involved themselves with the daily operations of the tenements, instead subcontracting landlords (many of them immigrants or their children) to run each building.{{sfn|Burrows|Wallace|1999|pp=448–449, 788}} Numerous tenements were erected, typically with footprints of {{convert|25|by|25|ft}}, before regulatory legislation was passed in the 1860s.{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=17}} To address concerns about unsafe and unsanitary conditions, a second set of laws was passed in 1879, requiring each room to have windows, resulting in the creation of air shafts between each building. Subsequent tenements built to the law's specifications were referred to as [[Old Law Tenement]]s.{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=21}}<ref name="Riis 1971"/> Reform movements, such as the one started by [[Jacob Riis]]'s 1890 book ''[[How the Other Half Lives]]'', continued to attempt to alleviate the problems of the area through [[settlement house]]s, such as the [[Henry Street Settlement]], and other welfare and service agencies.<ref name=encnyc />{{rp|769–770}}

Because most of the new immigrants were [[German language|German]] speakers, modern Alphabet City, East Village and the Lower East Side collectively became known as "[[Little Germany, Manhattan|Little Germany]]" ({{langx|de|links=no|Kleindeutschland}}).<ref name="Nadel 1990"/>{{rp|29}}{{sfn|Burrows|Wallace|1999|p=745}}<ref name="Haberstroh"/><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/a-short-walking-tour-of-new-yorks-lower-east-side-1572853/?no-ist |title=A Short Walking Tour of New York's Lower East Side |author=Susan Spano |work=Smithsonian |access-date=March 29, 2016}}</ref> The neighborhood had the third largest urban population of Germans outside of [[Vienna]] and [[Berlin]]. It was America's first foreign language neighborhood; hundreds of political, social, sports and recreational clubs were set up during this period.{{sfn|Burrows|Wallace|1999|p=745}} Numerous churches were built in the neighborhood, of which many are still extant.{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=21}} In addition, Little Germany also had its own library on Second Avenue in nearby East Village,<ref name="Haberstroh"/> now the [[New York Public Library]]'s Ottendorfer branch.<ref name="NYPL Ottendorfer">{{cite web |title=About the Ottendorfer Library |website=The New York Public Library |url=https://www.nypl.org/about/locations/ottendorfer |access-date=March 14, 2019}}</ref> However, the community started to decline after the sinking of the ''[[SS General Slocum|General Slocum]]'' on June 15, 1904, in which over a thousand German-Americans died.<ref name="Haberstroh">{{cite web |last=Haberstroh |first=Richard |title=Kleindeutschland: Little Germany in the Lower East Side |website=LESPI-NY |url=http://www.lespi-nyc.org/history/kleindeutschland-little-germany-in-the-lower-east-side.html |access-date=September 30, 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=R. T. |last=O'Donnell |year=2003 |title=Ship ablaze: The tragedy of the steamboat General Slocum |publisher=Broadway Books |location=New York |isbn=0-7679-0905-4 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/shipablazetraged00odon}}</ref>

The Germans who moved out of the area were replaced by immigrants of many different nationalities.{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=22}} This included groups of Italians and Eastern European Jews, as well as Greeks, Hungarians, Poles, Romanians, Russians, Slovaks and Ukrainians, each of whom settled in relatively homogeneous enclaves.<ref name=encnyc/>{{rp|769–770}} In ''How the Other Half Lives'', Riis wrote that "a map of the city, colored to designate nationalities, would show more stripes than on the skin of a zebra, and more colors than any rainbow."<ref name="Riis 1971">{{cite book |last=Riis |first=Jacob |title=How the other half lives : studies among the tenements of New York |publisher=Dover |location=New York |year=1971 |isbn=978-0-486-22012-3 |oclc=139827}}</ref>{{rp|20}} One of the first groups to populate the former Little Germany were [[Yiddish]]-speaking [[Ashkenazi Jews]], who first settled south of Houston Street before moving northward.{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=23}} The [[Roman Catholic]] [[Polish people|Poles]] as well as the [[Protestant]] [[Hungarians]] would also have a significant impact in the East Side, erecting houses of worship next to each other along 7th Street at the turn of the 20th century.{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|pp=24–25}} By the 1890s, tenements were being designed in the ornate [[Queen Anne architecture in the United States|Queen Anne]] and [[Romanesque Revival architecture|Romanesque Revival]] styles, though tenements built in the later part of the decade were built in the [[Renaissance Revival architecture|Renaissance Revival]] style.{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|pp=26–27}} At the time, the area was increasingly being identified as part of the Lower East Side.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sanders |first1=R. |last2=Gillon |first2=E.V. |title=The Lower East Side: A Guide to Its Jewish Past with 99 New Photographs |publisher=Dover Publications |series=Dover books on New York City |year=1979 |isbn=978-0-486-23871-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Epqr_te4DBsC |access-date=September 1, 2019 |page=13}}</ref>

===20th century===
[[File:St Nicholas Manhattan NYC 1914.png|thumb|200px|[[St. Nicholas Kirche (New York City)|St. Nicholas Kirche]] at East 2nd Street, just west of Avenue A. The church and almost all buildings on the street were demolished in 1960 and replaced with parking lots for the [[Village View|Village View Houses]]<ref name="NYT-Kirche-1960"/>]]
The [[New York State Tenement House Act]] of 1901 drastically changed the regulations to which buildings in the East Side had to conform.{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|pp=29–30}} Simultaneously, the [[Yiddish Theatre District]] or "Yiddish Rialto" developed within the East Side, centered around [[Second Avenue (Manhattan)|Second Avenue]]. It contained many theaters and other forms of entertainment for the Jewish immigrants of the city.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3ClbSVEha8gC&pg=PT199 |title=The Rough Guide to New York City |first1=Andrew |last1=Rosenberg |first2=Martin |last2=Dunford |publisher=Penguin |year=2012 |isbn=9781405390224 |access-date=March 10, 2013 }}
*{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6-sGw8H-yRkC&pg=PA171 |title=Let's Go New York City 16th Edition |author=Let's Go, Inc |publisher=Macmillan |year=2006 |isbn=9780312360870 |access-date=March 10, 2013 }}
*{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3c0RAQAAIAAJ |title=Oscar Israelowitz's guide to Jewish New York City |author=Oscar Israelowitz |publisher=Israelowitz Publishing |year=2004 |isbn=9781878741622 |access-date=March 10, 2013 }}
*{{cite news |last=Cofone |first=Annie |url=http://eastvillage.thelocal.nytimes.com/tag/theater-district/ |title=Theater District; Strolling Back Into the Golden Age of Yiddish Theater |newspaper=The New York Times |date=September 13, 2010 |access-date=March 10, 2013 |archive-date=April 23, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160423081700/http://eastvillage.thelocal.nytimes.com/tag/theater-district/ |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name="jweekly1">{{cite web |url=http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/7106/yiddish-music-maven-sees-mamaloshen-in-mainstream/ |author=Ronnie Caplane |title=Yiddish music maven sees mamaloshen in mainstream |publisher=Jweekly |date=November 28, 1997 |access-date=March 10, 2013}}</ref> By [[World War I]], the district's theaters hosted as many as 20 to 30 shows a night.<ref name="jweekly1"/> After [[World War II]], Yiddish theater became less popular,<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.campustimes.org/2005/09/29/obrien-traces-history-of-yiddish-theater/ |author=J. Katz |title=O'Brien traces history of Yiddish theater |publisher=Campus Times |date=September 29, 2005 |access-date=March 10, 2013}}</ref> and by the mid-1950s few theaters were still extant in the District.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://forward.com/articles/13862/bruce-adler--star-of-yiddish-stage-and-broadw-/ |author=Lana Gersten |title=Bruce Adler, 63, Star of Broadway and Second Avenue |publisher=Forward |date=July 29, 2008 |access-date=March 10, 2013}}</ref>

The city built [[First Houses]] on the south side of [[3rd Street (Manhattan)|East 3rd Street]] between [[First Avenue (Manhattan)|First Avenue]] and [[Avenue A (Manhattan)|Avenue A]], and on the west side of Avenue A between [[2nd Street (Manhattan)|East 2nd]] and East 3rd Streets in 1935–1936, the first such [[public housing project]] in the United States.<ref name="encnyc">{{cite enc-nyc2}}</ref>{{rp|769–770}}<ref name="NYCL-0876">{{cite web |url=http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/0876.pdf |title=First Houses |date=November 12, 1974 |publisher=[[New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission]] |access-date=September 28, 2019}}</ref>{{rp|1}} The Polish enclave in the East Village persisted, though numerous other immigrant groups had moved out, and their former churches were sold and became [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Orthodox cathedrals]].{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=36}} Latin American immigrants started to move to the East Side, settling in the eastern part of the neighborhood and creating an enclave that later came to be known as Loisaida.{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=37}}<ref name="Foderaro 1987">{{cite news |last=Foderaro |first=Lisa W. |title=Will it be Loisaida of Alphabet city?; Two Visions Vie In the East Village |newspaper=The New York Times |issn=0362-4331 |date=May 17, 1987 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/17/realestate/will-it-be-loisaida-or-alphabet-city-two-visions-vie-in-the-east-village.html |access-date=August 22, 2009}}</ref><ref name="von Hassell 1996">{{cite book |last=von Hassell |first=M. |title=Homesteading in New York City, 1978-1993: The Divided Heart of Loisaida |publisher=Bergin & Garvey |series=Contemporary urban studies |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-89789-459-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=URZPAAAAMAAJ |access-date=October 3, 2019 |page=7}}</ref>

The East Side's population started to decline at the start of the [[Great Depression]] in the 1930s and the implementation of the [[Immigration Act of 1924]], and the expansion of the [[New York City Subway]] into the outer boroughs.{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=33}} Many old tenements, deemed to be "blighted" and unnecessary, were destroyed in the middle of the 20th century.{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=34}} The Village View Houses on First Avenue between East 2nd and 6th Streets were opened in 1964,{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=35}} partially on the site of the old [[St. Nicholas Kirche (New York City)|St. Nicholas Kirche]].<ref name="NYT-Kirche-1960">{{cite web |title=CHURCH BUILDING FACES DEMOLITION; 100-Year-Old St. Nicholas on the Lower East Side Is Sold to Company |website=The New York Times |date=January 27, 1960 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1960/01/27/archives/church-building-faces-demolition-100yearold-st-nicholas-on-the.html |access-date=October 4, 2019}}</ref>

Until the mid-20th century, the area was simply the northern part of the Lower East Side, with a similar culture of immigrant, working-class life. In the 1950s and 1960s, the migration of [[Beatnik]]s into the East Village attracted hippies, musicians, writers, and artists who had been priced out of the rapidly gentrifying [[Greenwich Village]].{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=35}}<ref name="Miller 1990">{{cite book |last=Miller |first=Terry |title=Greenwich Village and how it got that way |publisher=Crown Publishers |year=1990 |isbn=978-0-517-57322-8 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0sZ4AAAAMAAJ |access-date=October 2, 2019}}</ref>{{rp|254}} Among the first displaced Greenwich Villagers to stray as far east as Alphabet City was poet [[Allen Ginsberg]], who moved to 206 East 7th Street in 1951. His apartment served as a "nerve center" for writers such as [[William Burroughs]], [[Jack Kerouac]] and [[Gregory Corso]].<ref name="Miller 1990" />{{rp|258}} Further change came in 1955 when the [[IRT Third Avenue Line|Third Avenue elevated railway]] above the Bowery and Third Avenue was removed.{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=35}}<ref>{{cite web |first=Ralph |last=Katz |title=Last Train Rumbles On Third Ave. 'El' |work=The New York Times |issn=0362-4331 |date=May 13, 1955 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1955/05/13/archives/last-train-rumbles-on-third-ave-el-an-era-ends-with-final-run-of.html |access-date=October 2, 2019}}</ref> This in turn made the East Side more attractive to potential residents, and by 1960, ''The New York Times'' said that "this area is gradually becoming recognized as an extension of Greenwich Village ... thereby extending New York’s Bohemia from river to river".{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=35}}<ref name="The New York Times 1960">{{cite web |title='Village' Spills Across 3d Ave |work=The New York Times |issn=0362-4331 |date=February 7, 1960 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1960/02/07/archives/village-spills-across-3d-ave-demolition-of-el-opened-the-way-for.html |access-date=October 2, 2019}}</ref> The area became a center of the [[counterculture]] in New York, and was the birthplace and historical home of many artistic movements, including [[punk rock]]<ref name="TimesPunk">{{cite news |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE3DF1231F93BA35755C0A966958260 |title=In Rocking East Village, The Beat Never Stops |first=Karen |last=Schoemer |work=The New York Times |issn=0362-4331 |date=June 8, 1990}}</ref> and the [[Nuyorican]] literary movement.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://nylatinojournal.com/home/news/latest/another_nuyorican_icon_fades_2.html |title=Another Nuyorican Icon Fades |first=Santiago |last=Nieves |work=New York Latino Journal |date=May 13, 2005 |access-date=April 14, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071027010459/http://nylatinojournal.com/home/news/latest/another_nuyorican_icon_fades_2.html |archive-date=October 27, 2007 |url-status=dead}}.</ref>

By the 1970s and 1980s, the city in general was in decline and nearing bankruptcy, especially after the [[1975 New York City fiscal crisis]].{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=37}} Residential buildings in Alphabet City and the East Village suffered from high levels of neglect, as property owners did not properly maintain their buildings.{{Sfn|Mele|2000|pp=191–194}} The city purchased many of these buildings, but was also unable to maintain them due to a lack of funds.{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=37}} In spite of the deterioration of the area's structures, its music and arts scenes were doing well. By the 1970s, gay dance halls and punk rock clubs had started to open in the neighborhood.{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=38}} These included the [[Pyramid Club (New York City)|Pyramid Club]], which opened in 1979 at 101 Avenue A; it hosted musical acts such as [[Nirvana (band)|Nirvana]] and [[Red Hot Chili Peppers]], as well as [[drag performer]]s such as [[RuPaul]] and [[Ann Magnuson]].{{sfn|Brazee et al.|2012|p=38}}

===Gentrification===
[[File:NYPL Tompkins Square Branch, Manhattan.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|Tompkins Square branch of the [[New York Public Library]] on E 10th St.]]
Alphabet City was one of many neighborhoods in New York to experience [[gentrification]] in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. 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 [[Bohemianism|bohemian]] in the 21st century than they had been in earlier decades.<ref>Shaw, Dad. [https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/realestate/11habi.html "Rediscovering New York as It Used to Be"], ''[[The New York Times]]'', November 11, 2007. Accessed August 31, 2016.</ref> In the 1970s, rents were extremely low and the neighborhood was considered one of the least desirable places in Manhattan to live in.<ref name="The New York Times 1984" /> However, as early as 1983, the ''Times'' reported that because of the influx of artists, many longtime establishments and immigrants were being forced to leave the area due to rising rents.<ref>{{cite web |title=NEW PROSPERITY BRINGS DISCORD TO THE EAST VILLAGE |work=The New York Times |issn=0362-4331 |date=December 19, 1983 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/19/nyregion/new-prosperity-brings-discord-to-the-east-village.html |access-date=October 3, 2019}}</ref> By the following year, young professionals constituted a large portion of the neighborhood's demographics.<ref name="The New York Times 1984">{{cite web |title=THE GENTRIFICATION OF THE EAST VILLAGE |work=The New York Times |issn=0362-4331 |date=September 2, 1984 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1984/09/02/realestate/the-gentrification-of-the-east-village.html |access-date=October 3, 2019}}</ref> Even so, crime remained prevalent and there were often drug deals being held openly in Tompkins Square Park.<ref>{{cite web |title=IF YOU'RE THINKING OF LIVING IN; THE EAST VILLAGE |work=The New York Times |issn=0362-4331 |date=October 6, 1985 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/06/realestate/if-you-re-thinking-of-living-in-the-east-village.html |access-date=October 3, 2019}}</ref>

Tensions over gentrification contributed to the 1988 [[Tompkins Square Park riot (1988)|Tompkins Square Park riot]], which occurred following opposition to a proposed curfew that had targeted the park's homeless. The aftermath of the riot slowed gentrification somewhat, as real estate prices declined.<ref>{{cite web |title=Prices Decline as Gentrification Ebbs |work=The New York Times |issn=0362-4331 |date=September 29, 1991 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/29/realestate/prices-decline-as-gentrification-ebbs.html |access-date=October 3, 2019}}</ref> However, by the end of the 20th century, real estate prices had resumed their rapid rise. About half of Alphabet City's stores had opened within the decade since the riot, while vacancy rates in that period had dropped from 20% to 3%, indicating that many of the longtime merchants had been pushed out.<ref>{{cite web |title=A New Spell for Alphabet City; Gentrification Led to the Unrest at Tompkins Square 10 Years Ago. Did the Protesters Win That Battle but Lose the War? |work=The New York Times |issn=0362-4331 |date=August 9, 1998 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/09/nyregion/new-spell-for-alphabet-city-gentrification-led-unrest-tompkins-square-10-years.html |access-date=October 3, 2019}}</ref>

The [[Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space]] opened on Avenue C in the building known as [[C-Squat]] in 2012. An archive of urban activism, the museum explores the history of grassroots movements in the East Village and offers guided walking tours of community gardens, squats, and sites of social change.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Leland |first1=John |title=East Village Shrine to Riots and Radicals |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/nyregion/the-museum-of-reclaimed-urban-space-enshrines-the-east-village-struggle.html?_r=0 |newspaper=The New York Times |date=8 December 2012}}</ref>

==Political representation==
Politically, Alphabet City is in New York's [[New York's 7th congressional district|7th]] and [[New York's 12th congressional district|12th]] congressional districts.<ref>[http://www.latfor.state.ny.us/maps/2012c/CD_map_rep_07.pdf Congressional District 7], New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment. Accessed May 5, 2017.

*[http://www.latfor.state.ny.us/maps/2012c/CD_map_rep_12.pdf Congressional District 12], New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment. Accessed May 5, 2017.</ref><ref>[http://www.latfor.state.ny.us/maps/2012c/CD_nyc.pdf New York City Congressional Districts], New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment. Accessed May 5, 2017.</ref> It is also in the [[New York State Senate]]'s 27th and 28th districts,<ref>[http://www.latfor.state.ny.us/maps/2012s/SD_map_rep_27.pdf Senate District 27], New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment. Accessed May 5, 2017.
*[http://www.latfor.state.ny.us/maps/2012s/SD_map_rep_28.pdf Senate District 28], New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment. Accessed May 5, 2017.</ref><ref>[http://www.latfor.state.ny.us/maps/2012s/SD_nyc.pdf 2012 Senate District Maps: New York City], New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment. Accessed November 17, 2018.</ref> the [[New York State Assembly]]'s 65th and 74th districts,<ref>[http://www.latfor.state.ny.us/maps/2012a/AD_map_rep_065.pdf Assembly District 65], New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment. Accessed May 5, 2017.
*[http://www.latfor.state.ny.us/maps/2012a/AD_map_rep_074.pdf Assembly District 74], New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment. Accessed May 5, 2017.</ref><ref>[http://www.latfor.state.ny.us/maps/2012a/AD_nyc.pdf 2012 Assembly District Maps: New York City], New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment. Accessed November 17, 2018.</ref> and the [[New York City Council]]'s 1st and 2nd districts.<ref>[http://www.nyc.gov/html/dc/downloads/pdf/manhattan.pdf Current City Council Districts for New York County], [[New York City]]. Accessed May 5, 2017.</ref>

==Architecture==
===Historic buildings===
Local community groups such as the [[Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation]] (GVSHP) are working to gain individual and district landmark designations for Alphabet City to preserve and protect the architectural and cultural identity of the neighborhood.<ref>[http://www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/preservation/east_village/east_village-main.htm "East Village"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180722234108/http://www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/preservation/east_village/east_village-main.htm |date=2018-07-22 }} on the [[Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation]] website</ref> In early 2011, the [[New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission]] (LPC) proposed a small district along the block of 10th Street that lies north of [[Tompkins Square Park]].<ref>[http://www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/preservation/east_village/east_village-main.htm "East Village Preservation"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180722234108/http://www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/preservation/east_village/east_village-main.htm |date=2018-07-22 }} on the [[Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation]] website</ref> The [[East 10th Street Historic District]] was designated by the LPC in January 2012.<ref>{{cite web |last=Berger |first=Joseph |title=Designation of Historic District in East Village Won't Stop Project |website=City Room |date=January 19, 2012 |url=http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/designation-of-historic-district-in-east-village-wont-stop-project/ |access-date=September 29, 2019}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|ps=.|Brazee|Most|2012}}</ref>

Several notable buildings are designated as individual landmarks. These include:

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="width:100%"
! class="unsortable"| '''Image'''
! '''Name'''
! '''Address'''
! '''Year(s) built'''
! '''Designation(s)'''
|-
| [[File:Charlie_Parker_Residence_151_Avenue_B.jpg|125px]]
| [[Charlie Parker#Charlie Parker residence|Charlie Parker Residence]]
| 151 Avenue B between 9th and 10th Streets
| 1849
| National Register of Historic Places (1994), New York City Landmark (1999)<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.neighborhoodpreservationcenter.org/db/bb_files/1999CharlieParkerResidence.pdf |title=Charlie Parker Residence |date=May 18, 1999 |publisher=[[New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission]]}}</ref>
|-
| [[File:295 East 8th Street.jpg|125px]]
| [[Children's Aid Society]]'s Tompkins Square Lodging House for Boys and Industrial School aka Eleventh Ward Lodging House (former)
| 295 East 8th Street at Avenue B
| 1886
| New York City Landmark (2000)<ref>{{cite web |url=http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/2055.pdf |title=Children's Aid Society, Tompkins Square Lodging House for Boys and Industrial School |date=May 16, 2000 |publisher=[[New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission]] |access-date=September 28, 2019}}</ref>
|-
| [[File:Christodora House, Alphabet City, New York City.jpg|125px]]
| [[Christodora House]]
| 143 Avenue B at 9th Street
| 1928
| National Register of Historic Places (1986)<ref>{{Cite web |title=East 10th Street Historic District and Christodora House {{!}} Historic Districts Council's Six to Celebrate|url=https://6tocelebrate.org/site/east-10th-street-historic-district-and-christodora-house/|access-date=2020-07-12|website=6tocelebrate.org}}</ref>
|-
| [[File:Congregation Beth Hamedrash Hagodol Anshe Ungarn.jpg|125px]]
| Congregation Beth Hamedrash Hagadol Anshe Ungarin (former)
| 242 East 7th Street between Avenues C and D
| 1908
| New York City Landmark (2008)<ref>{{cite web |url=http://neighborhoodpreservationcenter.org/db/bb_files/2008FormerCongregBethHamedrashHagadolAnshe.pdf |title=Congregation Beth Hamedrash Hagadol Anshe Ungarin |date=March 18, 2008 |publisher=[[New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission]]}}</ref>
|-
| [[File:Father's Heart Ministry Center.jpg|125px]]
| [[Eleventh Street Methodist Episcopal Chapel]] (former)
| 543-547 East 11th Street between Avenues A and B
| 1867–1868
| New York City Landmark (2010)<ref>{{cite web |url=http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/2398.pdf |title=Eleventh Street Methodist Episcopal Chapel |date=September 14, 2010 |publisher=[[New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission]]}}</ref>
|-
| [[File:First_Houses_in_winter_from_west.jpg|125px]]
| [[First Houses]]
| East 3rd Street and Avenue A
| 1935–1936
| New York City Landmark (1974)<ref>{{cite web |url=http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/0876.pdf |title=First Houses |date=November 12, 1974 |publisher=[[New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission]] |access-date=September 28, 2019}}</ref>
|-
| [[File:Free Public Baths 538 East 11th Street.jpg|125px]]
| Free Public Baths of the City of New York (former)
| 538 East 11th Street between Avenues A and B
| 1904–1905
| New York City Landmark (2008)<ref>{{cite web |url=https://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/2252.pdf |title=Free Public Baths of the City of New York |date=March 18, 2008 |publisher=[[New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission]]}}</ref>
|-
| [[File:Public_National_Bank_Building_106_Avenue_C.jpg|125px]]
| Public National Bank of New York Building
| 106 Avenue C at 7th Street
| 1923
| New York City Landmark (2008)<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.neighborhoodpreservationcenter.org/db/bb_files/2008PublicNationalBankofNewYorkBuilding.pdf |title=Public National Bank of New York Building |date=September 16, 2008 |publisher=[[New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission]] |access-date=December 2, 2021 |archive-date=January 19, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210119090546/http://www.neighborhoodpreservationcenter.org/db/bb_files/2008PublicNationalBankofNewYorkBuilding.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>
|-
| [[File:Public School 64.jpg|125px]] 
| Public School 64 (former)
| 350 East 10th Street between Avenues B and C
| 1904–1906
| New York City Landmark (2006)<ref>{{cite web |title=LPC Designation Report: Former P.S. 64 |url=http://www.nyc.gov/html/lpc/downloads/pdf/reports/ps64.pdf |publisher=NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission |access-date=August 18, 2014}}</ref>
|-
| [[File:St. Nicholas of Myra Church 2.jpg|125px]]
| [[St. Nicholas of Myra Church (Manhattan)|St. Nicholas of Myra Church]]
| 288 East 10th Street at Avenue A
| 1882–3
| New York City Landmark (2008)<ref>{{cite web |url=http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/2312.pdf |title=Saint Nicholas of Myra Orthodox Church |date=December 16, 2008 |publisher=[[New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission]] |access-date=September 28, 2019}}</ref>
|-
| [[File:Wheatsworth Bakery Building from west in summer.jpg|125px]]
| Wheatsworth Bakery Building
| 444 East 10th Street between Avenues C and D
| 1927–1928
| New York City Landmark (2008)<ref>{{cite web |url=http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/2262.pdf |title=Wheatsworth Bakery Building |date=September 16, 2008 |publisher=[[New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission]] |access-date=September 28, 2019}}</ref>
|}

===Other structures===
Other buildings of note include "Political Row", a block of stately rowhouses on East 7th Street between Avenues C and D, where political leaders of every kind lived in the 19th century; the landmarked Wheatsworth Bakery building on East 10th Street near Avenue D; and next to it, 143-145 Avenue D, a surviving vestige of the Dry Dock District, which once filled the East River waterfront with bustling industry.

Alphabet City has a large number of surviving early 19th century houses connected to the maritime history of the neighborhood, which also are the first houses ever to be built on what had been farmland. Despite efforts by the GVSHP to preserve these houses, the LPC has not done so.<ref>{{cite web |title=Historic East Village House Rejected by Landmarks |url=http://www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/preservation/east_village/ev-09-14-11.htm |publisher=Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation |access-date=2014-09-04 |archive-date=2017-03-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170316020712/http://www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/preservation/east_village/ev-09-14-11.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> An 1835 rowhouse at 316 East 3rd Street was demolished in 2012 for the construction of a 33-unit rental called "The Robyn".<ref>{{cite web |title=The Robyn is now fully exposed on East 3rd Street |url=http://evgrieve.com/2014/07/the-robyn-is-now-fully-exposed-on-east.html |publisher=EV Grieve blog}}</ref> In 2010, GVSHP and the East Village Community Coalition asked the LPC to consider for landmark designation 326 and 328 East 4th Street, two Greek Revival rowhouses dating from 1837–41, which over the years housed merchants affiliated with the shipyards, a synagogue, and most recently an art collective called the [[Uranian Phalanstery]]. However, the LPC has not granted these rowhouses landmark status.<ref>{{cite web |title=326 & 328 East 4th Street |url=http://www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/preservation/326-328-e4/326-328-e4-main.htm |publisher=Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation |access-date=2014-09-04 |archive-date=2020-09-27 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200927073335/https://www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/preservation/326-328-e4/326-328-e4-main.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> The LPC also declined to add 264 East 7th Street (the former home of illustrator [[Felicia Bond]]) and four neighboring rowhouses to the East Village/Lower East Side Historic District.<ref>{{cite web |title=An Uncertain Future for East Village Rowhouses |work=The New York Times |issn=0362-4331 |date=November 25, 2016 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/realestate/an-uncertain-future-for-east-village-rowhouses.html |access-date=September 30, 2019}}</ref>

In 2008, nearly the entire Alphabet City area was "downzoned" as part of an effort led by local community groups including GVSHP, the local community board, and local elected officials.<ref name="Haughney 2008">{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/nyregion/15zoning.html?scp=2&sq=east%20village%20rezoning&st=cse |title=High-Rises Are at Heart of Manhattan Zoning Battle |work=The New York Times |issn=0362-4331 |first=Christine |last=Haughney |date=November 15, 2008 |access-date=May 1, 2010}}</ref> In most parts of Alphabet City, the rezoning requires that new development occur in harmony with the low-rise character of the area.<ref>{{cite web |title=Keeping in Character: A Look at the Impacts of Recent Community-Initiated Rezonings in the East Village |url=http://www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/preservation/east_village/doc/keeping-in-character.pdf |publisher=Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation}}</ref>

[[File:LoisaidaGentrification.JPG|thumb|left|275px|A homeless man walks past a trendy sidewalk bar on Avenue C.]]

==Loisaida==
{{Unreferenced section|date=August 2025}}

'''Loisaida''' {{IPAc-en|ˌ|l|oʊ|.|iː|ˈ|s|aɪ|d|ə}} is a term derived from the [[Spanish language|Spanish]] (and especially [[Nuyorican]]) pronunciation of "[[Lower East Side]]". Originally coined by poet/activist [[Bimbo Rivas|Bittman "Bimbo" Rivas]] in his 1974 poem "Loisaida", it now refers to [[Avenue C (Manhattan)|Avenue C]] in [[Alphabet City]], whose population has largely been [[Hispanic]] (mainly [[Nuyorican]]) since the 1960s.

Since the 1940s the demography of the neighborhood has changed markedly several times: the addition of the large [[organized labor|labor]]-backed [[Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village]] after [[World War II]] at the northern end added a lower-middle to middle-class element to the area, which contributed to the eventual [[gentrification]] of the area in the 21st century; the construction of large government housing projects south and east of those and the growing Latino population transformed a large swath of the neighborhood into a Latin one until the late 1990s, when low rents outweighed high crime rates and large numbers of artists and students moved to the area. Manhattan's growing [[Chinatown, Manhattan|Chinatown]] then expanded into the southern portions of the Lower East Side, but Hispanics are still concentrated in Alphabet City. With crime rates down, the area surrounding Alphabet City, the East Village, and the Lower East Side, is quickly becoming gentrified; the borders of the Lower East Side differ from its historical ones in that [[Houston Street (Manhattan)|Houston Street]] is now considered the northern edge, and the area north of that between Houston Street and 14th Street is considered Alphabet City. But, because the Alphabet City term is largely a relic of a high-crime era, English-speaking residents refer to Alphabet City as part of the East Village, while Spanish-speaking residents continue to refer to Alphabet City as ''Loisaida''.

==Police and crime==
Alphabet City is patrolled by the [[9th Precinct]] of the [[New York City Police Department|NYPD]], located at 321 East 5th Street.<ref name="NYPD 9th Precinct">{{Cite web |url=https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/bureaus/patrol/precincts/9th-precinct.page |title=NYPD – 9th Precinct |website=www.nyc.gov |publisher=[[New York City Police Department]] |access-date=October 3, 2016}}</ref> The 9th Precinct ranked 58th safest out of 69 patrol areas for per-capita crime in 2010.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/crime-safety-report/manhattan/east-village/ |title=East Village and Alphabet City – DNAinfo.com Crime and Safety Report |website=www.dnainfo.com |access-date=October 6, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170415065249/https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/crime-safety-report/manhattan/east-village |archive-date=April 15, 2017 |url-status=dead |df=mdy-all}}</ref>

The 9th Precinct has a lower crime rate than in the 1990s, with crimes across all categories having decreased by 78.3% between 1990 and 2018. The precinct reported 0 murders, 40 rapes, 85 robberies, 149 felony assaults, 161 burglaries, 835 grand larcenies, and 32 grand larcenies auto in 2018.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs-en-us-007pct.pdf |title=9th Precinct CompStat Report |website=www.nyc.gov |publisher=[[New York City Police Department]] |access-date=July 22, 2018}}</ref>

==Fire safety==
[[File:Firehouse 108 East 13th St.jpg|thumb|250px|Ladder Co. 3/Battalion 6]]
Alphabet City is served by two [[New York City Fire Department]] (FDNY) fire stations:<ref>{{Cite FDNY locations}}</ref>

* Ladder Co. 3/Battalion 6 – 103 East 13th Street<ref>{{cite web |title=Ladder Company 18/Battalion 4 |website=FDNYtrucks.com |url=http://www.fdnytrucks.com/files/html/manhattan/l3.htm |access-date=March 14, 2019}}</ref>
* Engine Co. 28/Ladder Co. 11 – 222 East 2nd Street<ref>{{cite web |title=Engine Company 9/Ladder Company 6 |website=FDNYtrucks.com |url=http://www.fdnytrucks.com/files/html/manhattan/e9.htm |access-date=March 14, 2019}}</ref>

==Post offices and ZIP Code==
Alphabet City is located within the [[ZIP Code]] 10009.<ref>{{cite web |title=East Village, New York City-Manhattan, New York Zip Code Boundary Map (NY) |website=United States Zip Code Boundary Map (USA) |url=https://www.zipmap.net/New_York/New_York_County/Z_East_Village.htm |access-date=March 21, 2019 |archive-date=November 9, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221109155442/https://www.zipmap.net/New_York/New_York_County/Z_East_Village.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> The [[United States Postal Service]] operates two post offices near Alphabet City:
* Peter Stuyvesant Station – 335 East 14th Street<ref>{{cite web |title=Location Details: Peter Stuyvesant |website=USPS.com |url=https://tools.usps.com/go/POLocatorDetailsAction!input.action?locationTypeQ=po&address=10003&radius=20&locationType=po&locationID=1464314&locationName=PETER+STUYVESANT&address2=&address1=335+E+14TH+ST |access-date=March 7, 2019}}</ref>
* Tompkins Square Station – 244 East 3rd Street<ref>{{cite web |title=Location Details: Tompkins Square |website=USPS.com |url=https://tools.usps.com/go/POLocatorDetailsAction!input.action?locationTypeQ=po&address=10003&radius=20&locationType=po&locationID=1384801&locationName=TOMPKINS+SQUARE&address2=&address1=244+E+3RD+ST |access-date=March 7, 2019}}</ref>

==Notable residents==
* [[Louis Abolafia]] (1941-1995) — artist, social activist, folk figure, and hippie candidate for President of the United States
* [[Joaquín Badajoz]] (born 1972) — poet, writer
* [[David Byrne]], (born 1952) — musician, artist
* [[Cro-Mags]] - hardcore punk band
* [[Rosario Dawson]] (born 1979) — Cuban/Puerto Rican American actress
* [[Bobby Driscoll]] (1937-1968) — actor
* [[Eden and John's East River String Band]] - musicians who sometimes record and perform with cartoonist / musician [[Robert Crumb]]
* [[Allen Ginsberg]] (1926-1997) — poet, 206 E. 7th Street<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.allenginsberg.org/index.php?page=allen-ginsberg-1953-2 |title=The Allen Ginsberg Project - AllenGinsberg.org |website=The Allen Ginsberg Project |access-date=8 June 2018}}</ref>
* [[Luis Guzman]] (born 1956) — Puerto Rican actor
* [[Jonathan Larson]] (1960-1996) — composer and playwright, resident during the 80s & 90s
* [[Leftöver Crack]] (formed 1998) — punk rock band
* [[John Leguizamo]] (born 1964) — Hispanic actor, stand-up comedian, filmmaker, playwright
* [[Madonna]] (born 1958) — singer<ref>{{Cite web |title=Photographer Richard Corman: I Shot Madonna |url=https://www.out.com/2015/3/10/photographer-richard-corman-i-shot-madonna |access-date=2025-06-01 |website=www.out.com |language=en |quote=So I got this girl’s number and called. It was Madonna. At the time she was living in Alphabet City, and she suggested I go to her apartment and chat about what I wanted to do}}</ref>
* [[Charlie Parker]] (1920–1955) — jazz musician lived at [[Charlie Parker Residence|151 Avenue B]] between East 9th and East 10th Streets<ref>{{Cite web |last=Gould |first=Jennifer |date=2015-10-21 |title=All that jazz: Charlie Parker’s townhouse listed for $9.25M |url=https://nypost.com/2015/10/21/all-that-jazz-charlie-parkers-townhouse-listed-for-9-25m/ |access-date=2025-06-01 |language=en-US |quote=The historic Charlie Parker residence in Alphabet City is now on the market for $9.25 million. The Gothic Revival-style, 23-foot-wide, landmarked brownstone at 151 Ave. B boasts original details — it was built around 1849 — including double-wood doors, a decorative relief beneath the cornice and a pointed archway with 'clustered colonettes,' according to the listing."}}</ref>
* [[Geraldo Rivera]] (born 1943) — television personality, resident during the late 60s - early 70s<ref>[[Geraldo Rivera|Rivera, Geraldo]]. [http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/opinion/2013/11/08/geraldo-rivera-call-11-remembering-mean-streets/ "Geraldo Rivera: Call 911! Remembering The Mean Streets Of New York City"], [[Fox News Latino]], November 8, 2013. Accessed August 31, 2016. "Why do I tell this old story, almost quaint when you realize that aside from my mop the only weapons in the battle were the bottles used to crack open my head? Well, I could have told of my two decades in Alphabet City, like the four times my various apartments were burglarized or the numerous muggings, car vandalisms, robberies, murders or other scenes from ''Once Upon a Time in New York'' that I've seen close-up, but you get the idea."</ref>
* [[Kiki Smith]] (born 1954) — artist
* [[John Spacely]] (died 1993) — musician, actor, and nightlife personality
* [[The Strokes]] (formed 1998) — rock band
* [[William H. Webb]] (1816-1899) — shipbuilder and philanthropist
* [[Bruce Willis]] — actor, resident during the early 1980s


==In popular culture==
{{div col|colwidth=22em}}
'''Novels and poetry'''
* [[Henry Roth]]'s novel ''[[Call It Sleep]]'' (1934) takes place in Alphabet City, with the novel's main character, David and his family, living there.
* [[Allen Ginsberg]] wrote many poems relating to the streets of his neighborhood in Alphabet City.
* David Price's novel ''Alphabet City'' (1983) tells the story of a man who leaves London to explore his homosexuality in the "wilderness of Avenues A, B, C and D."<ref>{{cite book |title=Alphabet City: A Novel |publisher=Olive Press |year=1985 |orig-date=1983 |isbn=9780946889006 |author=David Price |url=https://archive.org/details/alphabetcitynove0000pric/page/40/ |page=40}}</ref>
* [[Jerome Charyn]]'s novel ''War Cries Over Avenue C'' (1985) takes place in Alphabet City.
* A fictional version of NYC's Alphabet City is explored in the ''Fallen Angels'' (1994) supplement to ''[[Kult (role-playing game)|Kult]]''.
* In his book ''[[Kitchen Confidential (book)|Kitchen Confidential]]'' (2000), [[Anthony Bourdain]] says, "Hardly a decision was made without drugs. Cannabis, methaqualone, cocaine, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms soaked in honey and used to sweeten tea, secobarbital, tuinal, amphetamine, codeine and, increasingly, heroin, which we'd send a Spanish-speaking busboy over to Alphabet City to get."
* The protagonist of the novel ''[[The Russian Debutante's Handbook]]'' (2002) by [[Gary Shteyngart]] lives in Alphabet City in the mid-1990s.
* The Brendan Deneen horror/SF novel ''The Chrysalis'' (2018) begins in Alphabet City, but ends in a New Jersey suburb.
* The [[Adam Silvera]] and [[Becky Albertalli]] novel [[What If It's Us]] (2018) features the characters of Ben and Dylan who live in Alphabet City, respectively in Avenue B and Avenue C.

'''Comics'''
* In [[Marvel Comics]], Alphabet City is home to [[District X]], also known as Mutant Town, a ghetto primarily populated by [[Mutant (Marvel Comics)|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.

'''Photo books'''
* The photo and text book "Alphabet City" by Geoffrey Biddle<ref>{{cite web |url=http://geoffreybiddle.com/ |title=Geoffrey Biddle |access-date=24 October 2010}}</ref> chronicles life in Alphabet City over the years 1977 to 1989.
* The photo book "Street Play" by [[Martha Cooper]]<ref>{{cite web |author=whatyouwrite |url=http://whatyouwrite.wordpress.com/2006/09/13/street-play-photographs-by-martha-cooper/ |title=Street Play, Photographs By Martha Cooper « Whatyouwrite.Com |publisher=Whatyouwrite.wordpress.com |date=2006-09-13 |access-date=2010-10-15}}</ref>

'''Places'''
* 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]], 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]]''.

'''Television'''
* 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 [[Scrubs (season 4)|Season 4]] of ''[[Scrubs (TV show)|Scrubs]]'', [[J.D. (Scrubs)|J.D.]] ([[Zach Braff]]) wears a T-shirt with "Alphabet City, NYC" on it.
* The 1996 TV movie ''[[Mrs. Santa Claus]]'' is primarily set on Avenue A in Alphabet City in 1910.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117103/ |title=Mrs. Santa Claus |date=8 December 1996 |access-date=8 June 2018 |via=www.imdb.com}}</ref>
* In episode 6 of the 2009 police drama ''[[The Unusuals]]'', "The Circle Line", an identity thief buys his ID from a dealer in Alphabet City.
* The episode "The Pugilist Break" of ''[[Forever (2014 TV series)|Forever]]'' is about a murder that takes place in Alphabet City; the episode highlights the history of the neighborhood and its current development and gentrification.
* In the episode "The Safety Dance" in "[[The Carrie Diaries (season 2)|Season 2]]" of "[[The Carrie Diaries (TV series)|The Carrie Diaries]]", Walt helps his boyfriend move into an apartment in Alphabet City.
* The [[Netflix]] series ''[[Russian Doll (TV series)|Russian Doll]]'' features several scenes in Tompkins Square Park and other locations in Alphabet City.

'''Films'''
* ''[[The Godfather Part II]]'' (1974) was filmed in part on 6th Street, between Avenues B and C. Proving what injection of money can do, they transformed a run-down block, with several empty buildings into a bustling immigrant neighborhood from 1917. Local residents were kept out of the filming area unless they happened to live on that block or joined on as extras.
* ''[[Alphabet City (film)|Alphabet City]]'' (1984), about a drug dealer's attempts to flee his life of crime, takes place in the neighborhood. Director [[Amos Poe]] had long covered the local punk scene. This was his first commercial film, starring [[Vincent Spano]], [[Zohra Lampert]] and [[Jami Gertz]].
* ''[[Mixed Blood (1984 film)|Mixed Blood]]'' (1984), directed by [[Paul Morrissey]], was set and filmed in the pre-gentrification Alphabet City of the early 1980s.
* ''[[Batteries Not Included]]'' (1987), produced by [[Steven Spielberg]], was shot on 8th Street between Avenues C and D. [[Hume Cronyn]] and [[Jessica Tandy]] play an elderly couple who resist gentrification-induced displacement with the aid of extraterrestrials.
* ''[[Flawless (1999 film)|Flawless]]'' (1999), starring [[Philip Seymour Hoffman]], [[Robert De Niro]], and [[Wilson Jermaine Heredia]], takes place in Alphabet City with all filming taking place there.
* Alphabet City is featured in the film ''[[200 Cigarettes]]'' (1999).
* [[Downtown 81]] (2000) was shot in the area around 1981, but only completed and released decades later. Characterized as "a road movie through Alphabet City,"<ref>{{cite news |work=IndieWire |title=INTERVIEW: Out of the Past: "Downtown 81's" New York Odyssey |url=https://www.indiewire.com/2001/07/interview-out-of-the-past-downtown-81s-new-york-odyssey-80880/ |first=Anthony |last=Kaufman |date=2001-07-13}}</ref> the film follows then-practically-unknown artist [[Jean-Michel Basquiat]] as he encounters an assortment of downtown musicians and scenesters.
* Alphabet City is mentioned in the monologue by Montgomery Brogan in the movie ''[[25th Hour]]'' (2002).
* Character actor [[Josh Pais]], who grew up in Alphabet City, conceived and directed a very personal documentary film, [http://7thstreetmovie.com/index.html ''7th Street''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927220612/http://7thstreetmovie.com/index.html |date=2007-09-27 }} (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.
* Much of the independent film ''[[Supersize Me]]'' (2004) takes place in Alphabet City, near the residence of director [[Morgan Spurlock]].
* The film ''[[Rent (film)|Rent]]'' (2005), 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 theatre|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 is 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.
* Some of the scenes in ''[[Ten Thousand Saints]]'' (2015) take place in Alphabet City, where one of the characters lives as a [[squatter]].

'''Theatre'''
* The [[Broadway musical]] ''[[Rent (musical)|Rent]]'' takes place in Alphabet City. The characters live on East 11th Street and Avenue B. They hang out at such [[East Village, Manhattan|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 Tony Award-winning musical [[Avenue Q]] is set in a satirical Alphabet City. When the protagonist Princeton is introduced, he says, “I started at Avenue A but everything was out of my price range. But this neighborhood looks a lot cheaper! Hey look, a for rent sign!”

'''Music: Specific avenues'''
*[[Swans (band)|Swans]] released a song titled "93 Ave B blues" after the address of [[Michael Gira]]'s apartment.
* In [[Bongwater (band)|Bongwater]]'s "Folk Song" there is the repeated chorus "Hello death, goodbye Avenue A". Ann Magnuson, lead singer of Bongwater, lives on Avenue A.
* "Avenue A" is a song by [[The Dictators]], from their 2001 CD, ''[[DFFD]]''.
* The [[Pink Martini]] song "Hey Eugene" takes place "at a party on Avenue A."
* "Avenue A" is a song by [[Red Rider]] off their 1980 album, ''[[Don't Fight It (album)|Don't Fight It]]''.
* "The Belle of Avenue A" is a song by [[Ed Sanders]].
* [[Escort (band)|Escort]] refers to Avenue A in the song "Cabaret" on their album ''Animal Nature''.
* Singer-songwriter [[Ryan Adams]] refers to Avenue A and Avenue B in his track "[[New York, New York (Ryan Adams song)|New York, New York]]".
* The 1978 classical salsa hit "Pedro Navaja", by Panamanian singer [[Rubén Blades]], says at the end that the "lifeless bodies" of Pedro Barrios (Pedro Navaja) and Josefina Wilson were found on "lower Manhattan" "between Avenues A and B"...
* In [[Lou Reed]]'s "Halloween Parade", from his highly acclaimed concept album ''[[New York (album)]]'', he mentions "the boys from Avenue B and the girls from Avenue D."
* "Avenue B" is a song by [[Gogol Bordello]]
* ''[[Avenue B (album)|Avenue B]]'' is an album by [[Iggy Pop]], who wrote the album while living at the Christodora House on Avenue B.
* "Avenue B" is a song by [[Mike Stern]]
* "Avenue C" is a [[Count Basie|Count Basie Band]] song, recorded by [[Barry Manilow]] in 1974 for his album ''Barry Manilow II''.
* It is mentioned in Sunrise on Avenue C, [[James Maddock]] from the album ''Fragile''.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://jamesmaddock.net/ |title=James Maddock}}</ref>
* "Venus of Avenue D" is a song by [[Mink DeVille]].
* Avenue D is referred to in the [[Steely Dan]] song, "Daddy Don't Live In That New York City No More" off the 1975 album ''[[Katy Lied]]''.
* Avenue D is referred to in the song "Capital City", sung by [[Tony Bennett]] in [[The Simpsons]] episode "[[Dancin' Homer]]".

'''Music: General'''
*[[Swans (band)|Swans]] was formed on Avenue B.<ref>Neal, Charles. [https://books.google.com/books?id=C4PF5JaiyAMC&pg=PA144 ''Tape Delay: Confessions from the Eighties Underground''], p. 144. SAF Publishing Ltd, 1987. {{ISBN|9780946719020}}. Accessed August 1, 2016. "Suitably located in New York's Alphabet City on the lower East side Swans are led by writer and singer Michael Gira."</ref>
* Elliott Smith refers to "Alphabet City" in his song, "Alphabet Town", from his self-titled album.
* ''[[Alphabet City (album)|Alphabet City]]'' is an album by [[ABC (band)|ABC]].
* "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 mentioned in the song "Poster Girl" by the [[Backstreet Boys]].
* In the song "New York City", written by Cub and popularized by [[They Might Be Giants]], Alphabet City is mentioned in the chorus.
* [[The Clash]] mentions the neighborhood in the song "[[Straight to Hell (The Clash song)|Straight to Hell]]": "From Alphabet City all the way a to z, dead, head"
* [[U2]] refer to the neighborhood as "Alphaville" in their song "[[New York (U2 song)|New York]]".
* In their song "Click Click Click Click" on the 2007 album ''[[Bishop Allen & The Broken String|The Broken String]]'', [[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".
* On [[Dan the Automator]]'s "A Better Tomorrow", rapper [[Kool Keith]] quips that he is the "King of New York, running Alphabet City".
* "Alphabet City" is the name of the fifth track on the 2004 release, ''The Wall Against Our Back'' from the [[Columbus, Ohio]] band [[Two Cow Garage]].
* [[Steve Earle]]'s expressionistic "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"
* The dance hit "Sugar is Sweeter (Danny Saber Mix)" by [[CJ Bolland]] refers to the neighborhood with the lyrics, "Down in Alphabet City..."
* [[Mano Negra (band)|Mano Negra]] refers to Alphabet City in the song "El Jako", on the album ''[[King of Bongo]]'' (1991): "''Avenue A: Here comes the day/Avenue B: Here goes the junky/Avenue C: There's no rescue/Death avenue is waiting for you''" and "''Avenue A: Here comes the day/Avenue B: Here goes the junky/Avenue C: It's an emergency/O.D.O.D. in Alphabet City''".
*[[Joe Jackson (musician)|Joe Jackson's]] 1984 album [[Body and Soul (Joe Jackson album)|Body and Soul]] features an instrumental track titled "Loisaida".
{{div col end}}

==See also==
*[[Community gardening]]
*[[Dos Blockos]]
*[[Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space]]
*[[Nuyorican Poets Cafe]]
*[[Riis Houses]]
*[[Saint Brigid's Roman Catholic Church, New York|St. Brigid's Church]]

==References==
===Notes===
{{notelist}}

===Citations===
{{Reflist|30em}}

===Sources===
{{Refbegin}}
* {{cite book |last=Albion |first=Robert Greenhalgh |title=The Rise of New York Port, 1815-1860 |publisher=Scribner |year=1939 |oclc=1065011358}}
* {{cite report |first1=Christopher D. |last1=Brazee |first2=Jennifer L. |last2=Most |url=http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/2492.pdf |title=East 10th Street Historic District |date=January 17, 2012 |publisher=[[New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission]]}}
* {{cite report |first1=Christopher D. |last1=Brazee |first2=Jennifer L. |last2=Most |first3=Donald G. |last3=Presa |first4=Virginia |last4=Kurshan |url=http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/2491.pdf |title=East Village/Lower East Side Historic District |date=October 9, 2012 |publisher=[[New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission]] |ref={{harvid|Brazee et al.|2012}}}}
* {{cite book |title=Map of the City of New York and Island of Manhattan with Explanatory Remarks and References |last=Bridges |first=William |url=https://archive.org/details/mapofcityofnewyo00brid |year=1811}}
* {{cite gotham}}<!--Burrows Wallace 1999-->
* {{cite book |last=Greider |first=Katharine |title=The Archaeology of Home: An Epic Set on a Thousand Square Feet of the Lower East Side |publisher=PublicAffairs |publication-place=New York |year=2011 |isbn=978-1-58648-712-6 |oclc=657595498 |page=[https://archive.org/details/archaeologyofhom0000grei/page/10 10] |url=https://archive.org/details/archaeologyofhom0000grei}}
* {{cite book |title=Historic New York; being the first series of the Half Moon papers |editor-first=Maud Wilder |editor-last=Goodwin |chapter=Old Wells and Water Courses of The Island of Manhattan, Part II |first1=Geo. Everett |last1=Hill |first2=Geo. E Jr. |last2=Waring |year=1897 |publisher=Putnam |url=https://archive.org/details/historicnewyorkb00good/}}
* {{cite book |last=Koeppel |first=Gerard |title=City on a Grid: How New York Became New York |publisher=Da Capo Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group |publication-place=Boston, MA |year=2015 |isbn=978-0-306-82549-1 |oclc=902657028 |pages=11–12}}
* {{cite book |last=Lockwood |first=Charles |title=Bricks & brownstone; the New York row house, 1783-1929, an architectural & social history |publisher=McGraw-Hill |location=New York |year=1972 |isbn=978-0-07-038310-4 |oclc=571984}}
* {{cite report |title=Field Investigation: Lower East Side Girls Club, Block 377, Lots 35, 41, 42, 43, 47, and 48 Avenue D between 7th and 8th Streets New York, New York |date=October 2009 |first=Sara F. |last=Mascia |url=http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/arch_reports/1207.pdf}}
* {{cite book |last=McKay |first=Richard C. |title=South Street: A Maritime History of New York |publisher=G.P. Putnam |year=1934 |oclc=476905655 |url=https://archive.org/details/southstreetmarit00mcka_0 }}
* {{cite book |last=Mele |first=Christopher |title=Selling the Lower East Side: Culture, Real Estate, and Resistance in New York City |publisher=University of Minnesota Press |series=Globalization and Community |volume=5 |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-8166-3182-7 |url=https://archive.org/details/sellinglowereast0000mele}}
* {{cite book |last=Morrison |first=John H. |title=History of New York Ship Yards |publisher=Press of W.F. Sametz & Co |year=1909 |oclc=7391026822 |url=https://archive.org/details/ldpd_8446801_000/}}
* {{cite book |author=New York (State) |chapter=An act making certain alterations in the map or plan of the city of New York, Passed April 11, 1815 |title=A compilation of the laws of the state of New York, relating particularly to the city of New York |publisher=Banks, Gould & Co. |year=1855 |oclc=20464261}}
* {{cite journal |journal=Annals of the Association of American Geographers |title=Manufacturing in the American Mercantile City: 1800-1840 |date=June 1966 |first=Allan |last=Pred |volume=56 |issue=2 |pages=327–329 |doi=10.1111/j.1467-8306.1966.tb00560.x}}
* {{cite magazine |magazine=Harper's New Monthly Magazine |date=July 1, 1882 |issue=65 |title=The Old Ship-Builders of New York |first=G.W. |last=Sheldon |ref={{sfnref|Sheldon|1882a}}}}
* {{cite book |chapter=The Greatest Grid: the New York Plan of 1811 |first=Edward K. |last=Spann |editor-last=Schaffer |editor-first=Daniel |title=Two Centuries of American Planning |publisher=Mansell |publication-place=London |year=1988 |isbn=978-0-7201-1803-2 |oclc=15196516}}
* {{cite book |last=Stokes |first=Isaac Newton Phelps |title=The Iconography of Manhattan Island Vol |url=https://archive.org/details/iconographyofman05stok?view=theater#page/n13/mode/2up |year=1926 |publisher=Robert H. Dodd |location=New York}}
* {{cite web |title=The iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909 : compiled from original sources and illustrated by photo-intaglio reproductions of important maps, plans, views, and documents in public and private collections |last=Stokes |first=Isaac Newton Phelps |via=Internet Archive |year=1915 |url=https://archive.org/details/iconographyofman06stok}}
* {{cite book |first=I. N. Phelps |last=Stokes |title=The iconography of Manhattan Island 1498-1909 |volume=6 |year=1928 |publisher=Robert H. Dodd |url=https://archive.org/details/ldpd_5800727_006 |at=PL. 84B-b}}
* {{cite book |title=Reports and documents relative to the Stuyvesant Meadows: From the year 1825 to 1831, inclusive |publisher=George Robertson |year=1832 |oclc=505184754 |ref={{sfnref|Stuyvesant Meadows|1832}}}}
{{Refend}}

==Further reading==
* Pekarchik, Karin (June 11, 2001). "[https://web.archive.org/web/20011113210320/http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_24/b3736044.htm Alphabet City: The ABCs of Gentrification]". ''[[BusinessWeek]]''.

{{Manhattan|state=collapsed}}
{{Ethnicity in New York City|state=collapsed}}
{{East Village, Manhattan}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Alphabet City, Manhattan| ]]
[[Category:East Village, Manhattan]]
[[Category:Ethnic enclaves in New York (state)]]
[[Category:Hispanic and Latino American culture in New York City]]
[[Category:Neighborhoods in Manhattan]]
[[Category:Puerto Rican culture in New York City]]