Lower East Side - Definition and Overview

The Lower East Side is a neighborhood of New York City, lying alongside the East River from about the Manhattan Bridge up to 14th St. On the west it is essentially bounded by Broadway. It is also referred to as "Loisaida", a slurring together that derives from a Latino pronunication of the three-word name.

One of the oldest neighborhoods of the city, the Lower East Side has long been known as a lower-class, working neighborhood and often as an outright slum. The Lower East Side once was, and in a few parts still is, a center for Eastern European Jewish immigrant culture. More recently, it has been settled by immigrants from Latin America and elsewhere. Some Asian Americans from neighboring Chinatown have also moved into the area.

Parts of the Lower East Side are known by other names. The East Village lies in the Lower East Side's northwest corner alongside Greenwich Village; it received that name from real estate developers in the 1980s trying to dissociate the area from the Lower East Side's reputation. As a result, some now distinguish the Lower East Side from the East Village and use the term Lower East Side to refer particularly to the portion of the neighborhood lying south of Houston Street. In the early 2000s, the gentrification of the East Village spread to some parts of the Lower East Side south of Houston Street.

Within the East Village around Tompkins Square Park lies Alphabet City, part of which was once known as Little Germany.

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