Lower East Side - The Lower East Side As An Immigrant Neighborhood

The Lower East Side As An Immigrant Neighborhood

One of the oldest neighborhoods of the city, the Lower East Side has long been a lower-class worker neighborhood and often a poor and ethnically diverse section of New York. As well as Irish, Italians, Poles, Ukrainians, and other ethnic groups, it once had a sizeable German population and known as Little Germany (Kleindeutschland). Today it is a predominantly Puerto Rican and Dominican community, and in the process of gentrification (as documented by the portraits of its residents in the Clinton+Rivington chapter of The Corners Project.)

The Lower East Side is perhaps best known as having once been a center of Jewish culture. In her 2000 book Lower East Side memories: A Jewish place in America, Hasia Diner explains that the Lower East Side is especially remembered as a place of Jewish beginnings in contemporary American Jewish culture. Vestiges of the area's Jewish heritage exist in shops on Hester Street and Essex Street and on Grand Street near Pike. There is still an Orthodox Jewish community with yeshiva day schools and a mikvah. A few Judaica shops can be found along Essex Street and a few Jewish scribes and variety stores. Some kosher delis and bakeries as well as a few "kosher style" delis, including the famous Katz's Deli, are located in the neighborhood. Downtown Second Avenue on the Lower East Side was the home to many Yiddish theatre productions during the early part of the 20th century, and Second Avenue came to be known as 'Yiddish Broadway', though most of the theaters are gone. Songwriter Irving Berlin, actor John Garfield and singer Eddie Cantor grew up here. More recently, it has been settled by immigrants, primarily from Latin America.

In what is now the East Village, the earlier population of Poles and Ukrainians has been largely supplanted with newer immigrants, and the arrival of large numbers of Japanese people over the last fifteen years or so has led to the proliferation of Japanese restaurants and specialty food markets. There is also a notable population of Bangladeshis and other immigrants from Muslim countries, many of whom are congregants of the small Madina Masjid (Mosque), located on First Avenue and 11th Street.

The neighborhood also presents many historic synagogues, such as the Bialystoker Synagogue, Beth Hamedrash Hagadol, the Eldridge Street Synagogue, Kehila Kedosha Janina (the only Greek synagogue in the Western Hemisphere), the Angel Orensanz Center, the fourth oldest synagogue building in the United States, and various smaller synagogues along East Broadway. Another landmark, the First Roumanian-American congregation (the Rivington Street synagogue) partially collapsed in 2006, and was subsequently demolished. In addition, there is a major Hare Krishna temple and several Buddhist houses of worship.

Incoming Chinese people have also made their mark on the Lower East Side in recent decades. The part of the neighborhood south of Delancey Street and west of Allen Street has in large measure become part of Chinatown, and Grand Street is one of the major business and shopping streets of Chinatown. Also contained within the neighborhood are strips of lighting and restaurant supply shops on the Bowery.