East Village, New York City

East Village, Manhattan
Neighborhood in Manhattan
Second Avenue and 6th Street, facing south.
Location of the East Village in Lower Manhattan, denoted in gray
East Village, Manhattan Map of New York City, with the dot showing the position of East Village in Manhattan
Coordinates: 40°43′39″N 73°59′09″W / 40.72750°N 73.98583°W / 40.72750; -73.98583Coordinates: 40°43′39″N 73°59′09″W / 40.72750°N 73.98583°W / 40.72750; -73.98583
Country	United States
State	New York
City	New York City
Borough	Manhattan
Named	1960s
Streets	2nd Avenue, 1st Avenue, Avenue A, Bowery, St. Marks Place
Population (2010)
• Total	62,832
Demonym(s)	East Villager
ZIP code	10002, 10003, 10009, 10012
Congressional Districts	8, 12, and 14
New York State Assembly	Districts 64, 66, and 74
New York State Senate	Districts 25 and 29
City Council District	New York City Council District 2
Community Board	Manhattan Community Board 3
Police precinct	NYPD 9th Precinct
Fire protection	4th and 6th Battalions

East Village is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly defined as the neighborhood east of the Bowery and Third Avenue, between 14th Street on the north and Houston Street on the south.

The area was once generally considered to be part of the Lower East Side with a large Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish population but gradually changed and by the late 1960s, many artists, musicians, students and hippies began to move into the area, attracted by cheap rents and the base of Beatniks who had lived there since the 1950s. The neighborhood has become a center of the counterculture in New York, and is known as the birthplace and historical home of many artistic movements, including punk rock and the Nuyorican literary movement. It has also been the site of protests and riots.

East Village is still known for its diverse community, vibrant nightlife and artistic sensibility, although in recent decades it has been argued that gentrification has changed the character of the neighborhood.

The area that is today known as the East Village was originally a farm owned by Dutch Governor-General Wouter van Twiller. Peter Stuyvesant received the deed to this farm in 1651, and his family held on to the land for over seven generations, until a descendant began selling off parcels of the property in the early 19th century. Wealthy townhouses dotted the dirt roads for a few decades until the great Irish and German immigration of the 1840s and 1850s.

Speculative land owners began building multi-unit dwellings on lots meant for single family homes, and began renting out rooms and apartments to the growing working class, including many immigrants from Germany. From roughly the 1850s to first decade of the 20th century, the neighborhood has the third largest urban population of Germans outside of Vienna and Berlin, known as Klein Deutschland ("Little Germany"). It was America's first foreign language neighborhood; hundreds of political, social, sports and recreational clubs were set up during this period, and some of these buildings still exist. However, the vitality of the community was sapped by the General Slocum disaster on June 15, 1904, in which over a thousand German-Americans died.