The area that is today known as the East Village was originally a farm owned by Dutch Governor-General Wouter van Twiller. Petrus 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 largest urban populations of Germans outside of Vienna and Berlin, and was 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, 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-American died.
Later waves of immigration also brough many Poles and, especially, Ukrainians to the area. Since the 1890s there has been a large concentration roughly from 10th Street to 5th Street, between 3rd Avenue and Avenue A. The post-World War II diaspora, consisting primarily of Western Ukrainian intelligentsia, also settled down in the area. Several churches, including St. George's Catholic Church; Ukrainian restaurants and butcher shops; The Ukrainian Museum; the Shevchenko Scientific Society; and the Ukrainian Cultural Center are evidence of the impact of this culture on the area.
The area originally ended at the East River, where Avenue C is now located, until landfill – including World War II debris and rubble shipped from London – was used to extend the shoreline outward to provide foundation for the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive.
Until the mid-1960s, the area was simply the northern part of the Lower East Side, with a similar culture of immigrant, working class life. In the 1950s the migration of Beatniks into the neighborhood later attracted hippies, musicians and artists well into 1960s. The area was dubbed the "East Village", to dissociate it from the image of slums evoked by the Lower East Side. According to the New York Times, a 1964 guide called Earl Wilson's New York wrote that "artists, poets and promoters of coffeehouses from Greenwich Village are trying to remelt the neighborhood under the high-sounding name of 'East Village.'"
Newcomers and real estate brokers popularized the new name, and the term was adopted by the popular media by the mid-1960s. In 1966 a weekly newspaper, The East Village Other, appeared and the New York Times declared that the neighborhood "had come to be known" as the East Village in the June 5, 1967 edition.
Many local community groups actively worked and are working to gain individual and district landmark designations for the East Village to preserve and protect the architectural and cultural identity of the neighborhood. One such group is the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. They have undertaken a complete survey of the East Village, documenting the history of every single building in the area. This information will be made public in the fall of 2011. In the spring of 2011 the Landmarks Preservation Commission proposed two East Village Historic Districts, one small district covering the block of East 10th Street known as Tompkins Square North and one larger district focused around lower Second Avenue that would encompass 15 blocks and 330 buildings. The original proposal for the larger district excluded buildings such as the Pyramid Club and the Russian Orthodox Cathedral on East 2nd Street. Thanks to efforts made by local community groups such as the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative, East Village Community Coalition, Historic Districts Council, and Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, however, the proposed district now includes these worthy buildings. The districts are calendared to go up before the entire Landmarks Preservation Commission, but a hearing has yet to be scheduled.
Some of the individual sites that are already protected by landmark status are: PS 64/Old Charas Cultural Center, the former Yiddish Art Theater, Webster Hall, which was designated a New York City landmark on March 18, 2008, and Stuyvesant Polyclinic, one of the East Village's earliest designated landmarks. Some specific sites that are still in need of landmark designation are: the Russian Orthodox Cathedral, 101 Avenue A, the current home of the Pyramid Club, 128 East 13th Street, a former horse auction market and home to Frank Stella's studio, the 170-year old rowhouses at 326-328 East 4th Street, and the Congregation Mezritch Synagogue, the East Village's last operating tenement synagogue.
Along with gentrification, the East Village has seen an increase in the number of buildings owned and maintained by New York University, particularly dormitories for undergraduate students, and this influx has given rise to conflict between the community and the university.
St. Ann's Church, a rusticated-stone structure with a Romanesque tower on East 12th Street that dated to 1847, was sold to NYU to make way for a 26-story, 700 bed dormitory. After community protest about the destruction of the church, the university promised to protect and maintain the original facade which it did, literally by having it stand alone in front of the new building, which is the tallest structure in the area. NYU's destruction or purchasing of many historic buildings – such as the Peter Cooper Post Office – have made it symbolic of change that many long-time residents fear is destroying what made the neighborhood interesting and attractive.
NYU has often been at odds with residents of both the East and West Villages; urban preservationist Jane Jacobs battled the school in the 1960s. "She spoke of how universities and hospitals often had a special kind of hubris reflected in the fact that they often thought it was OK to destroy a neighborhood to suit their needs," said Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.
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