The Landscape

If you've sauntered around the streets of the East Village and enjoyed the colorful stores, vintage shopping, vibrant nightlife, and great restaurants that characterize the neighborhood as it is nowadays, you may find it hard to imagine the landscape of boarded-up buildings and vacant storefronts that faced those who dared to venture south of 14th Street in the 1980s.

To the east of Tompkins Square Park, conditions were even worse, with blocks of abandoned, crumbling tenements and rubble-filled lots, broken asphalt and sidewalks overgrown with weeds.

Encompassing the blocks between Avenue A and Avenue D, Alphabet City was one of several working-class neighborhoods of New York City that had been devastated by the city's near-bankruptcy in the late ‘70s. City workers were laid off, and landlords, unable to get rents from their renters, abandoned their buildings and in some cases burned them down for the insurance. The result was a devastated urban landscape that contained a silver lining: cheap rent for musicians, performers, and artists of all kinds who were willing to live rough in return for the freedom to practice their art.

Preserving the housing stock that makes up the charming streets of the East Village took the combined efforts of many individuals and organizations.

habitat for humanity

As the first Carter Work Project for Habitat for Humanity, former president Jimmy Carter joined rehab efforts on a six-story tenement building housing nineteen families on East 6th Street in 1984, with his wife Rosalynn Carter handling the plumbing. The couple returned to build with Habitat NYC three more times, most recently revisiting the 6th Street building in 2013. Habitat NYC continues to this day working to preserve existing housing in New York City.

Habitat NYC and Westchester

morus (museum of reclaimed urbaN SPACE)

Known in the neighborhood as the Squatter Museum, the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space is based in C-Squat on Avenue C in Alphabet City. MoRUS chronicles the community’s history of grassroots action and celebrates the local activists who transformed abandoned spaces and vacant lots into vibrant community spaces and gardens.

Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space

LESPI (LOWER EAST SIDE PrESERVtion initiative)

LESPI is a a grassroots not-for-profit organization dedicated to preserving the historic areas and buildings of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, including the East Village, the Lower East Side below Houston Street, Chinatown, Little Italy, and the Bowery. LESPI was instrumental in the creation of two New York City Historic Districts in the East Village and is now working to preserve additional historic areas of the East Village as well as the Lower East Side below Houston Street.

Lower East Side Preservation Initiative