East Village
Neighborhood Intelligence

The East Village is roughly the area east of the Bowery and Fourth Avenue, south of 14th Street, and north of Houston Street. It was long considered part of the Lower East Side, and in the nineteenth century it was a center of German immigrant life. Beginning in the late 1960s, artists, musicians, and students moved in and the neighborhood gained its own identity, giving it a long reputation for music, theater, and independent culture. It includes Alphabet City, the lettered avenues east of First Avenue, and Little Ukraine around Second Avenue and East 6th and 7th Streets.

Tompkins Square Park, laid out in the nineteenth century, is the neighborhood's central green space and a long-standing site of public gatherings. St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, the Cooper Union Foundation Building, and Webster Hall are three of its best-known historic buildings, while The Ukrainian Museum, La MaMa, and Theater for the New City reflect its cultural institutions. The Liz Christy Garden, established in the 1970s, is one of the city's earliest community gardens.