a neighborhood overview

Bordered by Chinatown and Little Italy, the Lower East Side has been a haven for diverse immigrant groups for generations. During the Irish potato famine, Irish immigrants flocked to the neighborhood. After the 1860s German immigrants began moving to the area, so much so that the neighborhood became known as Little Germany, or Kleindeutschland.

The group that has perhaps had the most influence on the Lower East Side is the Eastern European Jews that moved to New York beginning in the mid 1880s. Previous immigrant groups moved north but the Jews stuck around, leaving their mark, defining the character of the neighborhood. The tenements, the storefront synagogues along Schtiebel Row on East Broadway and the many Jewish delis still stand as a reminder of the neighborhood’s past.

In 2000, 35 percent of LES residents were foreign born. Today, the main demographics are Hispanic, partially due to a large influx of Puerto Ricans in the 1950s, and Chinese, with Chinatown lying just to the west of the neighborhood.

Longtime residents living in affordable housing are beginning to feel the threat of eviction as more people become willing to pay sky-rocketing prices to live in the changing area. A transition that I doubt any former immigrant could have predicted.

Now a destination for shoppers, the LES was marketed as a bargain district beginning in 1992 to attract people to the area. The signs announcing it as such are still there though shoppers are more apt to make a trip down to the neighborhood for the vintage stores and boutiques featuring independent designers than to bargain hunt. Some of the same people that frequent the shopping scene return at night for the bars, clubs and music venues like The Slipper Room, Arlene’s Grocery and the Bowery Ballroom.

Tourists like the LES too. The Lower East Side Tenement Museum, The University Settlement and the Henry Street Settlement are just a few of the historical landmarks in the area. Katz’s Delicatessen on East Houston and Ludlow has also become a major tourist destination.

Despite the touristy turn the neighborhood has taken recently, the character of the Lower East Side is alive with memories of the various immigrant groups that have called it home. Like New York City as a whole, it is a continually shifting blend of the historic and the trendy. Hopefully, I can keep up.