The East Village today is famous for its night life and variety of affordable eateries. You can feel its energy, vitality, and creative pace throughout its streets. With institutions like the Cooper-Union and NYU anchoring the area, it has a student population that adds vitality 24/7. Tompkins Square Park, which is in many ways the lively center of of East Village life, is a gathering place for all walks of life.

The rich and varied history of the East Village begins as farmland, with an upscale neighborhood emerging in the 1830’s with Greek Revival and Federal-style townhouses. The neighborhood’s prestige grew with the influence of several factors, including new commerce and residents following the Erie Canal’s opening in the 1820s, causing an exponential growth in the population and fortunes of New York City; as a port city with shipping access to the country’s interior. As wealthy residents began moving uptown in the 19th Century, it transformed into an immigrant melting pot with Germans, Italians, Eastern European Jews, Greeks, Hungarians, Poles, Romanians, Russians, Slovaks and Ukrainians. It became a center of Yiddish theatre in the early 20th Century.

In the 1960s the East Village became a center of gravity for Manhattan’s counterculture, and retains a distinct patina of that to this day. It was home to legendary nightspots like the Fillmore East and the Electric Circus on Saint Mark’s Place; which famously hosted Andy Warhol, Nico, and the Velvet Underground’s ‘Exploding Plastic Inevitable’ experience. Later in the 1980s, places like Club 57 and the Pyramid Club emerged where you might run into artists like Jean Michel Basquiat or my SVA classmate Keith Haring.  Its unique contributions to New York history, culture, and architecture has been preserved by local advocacy for its Landmark Districts.