The Real Deal New York

The East Village is a neighborhood in downtown Manhattan, bounded by Broadway, 14th Street, Houston Street and the East River. Like many other New York neighborhoods, it is the site of real estate development and gentrification that is reducing its population of artists and nightlife party people and increasing its population of families and upper-middle-class professionals. In the 1950s and 1960s, those artists, musicians, hippies, and students replaced the neighborhood's previous residents, working-class immigrant families. The Bowery, a street in the neighborhood once lined with flophouses has been transformed along with rising real estate prices. Punk music venue CBGB, on the Bowery, closed and was replaced by upscale men's clothing boutique John Varvatos in 2007. Other vanguards of gentrification included the Cooper Square Hotel and Avalon Bowery Place. High-end condominiums, like the curvy Astor Place tower, have replace some walkup rental buildings. Alphabet City is a subsection of the East Village and derives its name from the single-letter avenues that travel through it: Avenues A, B, C and D.