East Village blog EV Grieve, has an interesting post today highlighting a 52-year old New York Times Article that they claim contains the first mention (according to the research of someone named "Pinhead") of the "East Village." Apparently this area, between Houston and 14th Street, 3rd Ave. and the East River, came into existance as the 3rd Avenue El came down and the Village exapanded east (the "Village atmosphere" came to this area in "tiny, scattered islands of Bohemia" according to my favorite sentence).
For myself and other Lower East Siders, our particular angle on this - oh, and how different we are from the East Villagers! - is to note that this new term apparently changed an area that had been part of our territory to this newly-named area. The article refers to the area as the "Lower East Side" - and then goes on to say that it is now referred to as the "East Village."
And who named it "East Village"? I'll give you two guesses. . . .and it was not the bohemians themselves.
That's right, it was the "rental agents", as always. (The same people who now want to call the area north of the East Village "NoEVil" - no joke.) Apparently 50 years ago, people thought that the "Lower East Side" was "a slum area without comfort or prestige." (The horror!)
And there you have it. Realtors, money, gentrification: the East Village was born, and the Lower East Side shrunk.
No comments:
Post a Comment