![]() 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. The term first appeared in the Times several months earlier, in an April 1984 editorial by Mayor Ed Koch justifying recent police operations: 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)." who spend their weekends in alphabet city (Avenues A, B, C, and D) on the Lower East Side." Similarly, a November 1984 article in The New York Times reported "Younger artists. The Official Preppy Handbook, published in October 1980, caricatured a subgroup of preppies as "connoisseurs of punk. 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. A December 1980 article in the Daily News reported on the eastward flow of gentrification:Īve A. Whatever its origins, the name began to appear in print around 1980 with all three associations-crime, art, and gentrification. Cops, he claims, referred to the most degraded areas east of Avenue B as Alphabet City in the 50s and 60s. As such, argues Mele, Alphabet City and its many variants-Alphaville, Alphabetland, etc.-were "playful" but also "concealed the area's rampant physical and social decline and downplayed the area’s Latino identity." Pete Hamill, a longtime New York City journalist, cites an earlier and darker usage. ![]() However, sociologist Christopher Mele connects the term to the arts scene of the late 70s which in turn attracted real estate investors. It is often characterized as a marketing invention of realtors and other gentrifiers who arrived in the 1980s. There is disagreement about the earliest uses of the name. What remained of 1811's lettered avenues came to be called, by some, Alphabet City. 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). ![]() The plan called for stretches of Avenue A and Avenue B north of midtown, all of which have been renamed. 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 4 lettered ones-A, B, C and D-appeared intermittently wherever the island widened east of First Avenue. It is patrolled by the 9th Precinct of the New York City Police Department. The area's German presence in the early 20th century, in decline, virtually ended after the General Slocum disaster in 1904.Īlphabet City is part of Manhattan Community District 3 and its primary ZIP Code is 10009. ![]() Historically, Manhattan's Lower East Side was 14th Street at the northern end, bound on the east by East River and on the west by First Avenue today, that same area is Alphabet City. However, there is much dispute over the borders of the Lower East Side, Alphabet City, and East Village. The neighborhood has a long history, serving as a cultural center and ethnic enclave for Manhattan's German, Polish, Hispanic, and Jewish populations. Some famous landmarks include Tompkins Square Park, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and the Charlie Parker Residence. It is bounded by Houston Street to the south and 14th Street to the north, and extends roughly from Avenue A to the East River. Its name comes from Avenues A, B, C, and D, the only avenues in Manhattan to have single-letter names. Alphabet City is a neighborhood located within the East Village in the New York City borough of Manhattan.
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