Lower East Side

I often find myself in Straus Square, an overlooked little triangle formed by Rutgers Street, Canal Street and East Broadway. Here, two streets are generated: Canal, which roars west to…

THE Al Smith Houses were built in 1953. Its current boundaries are Madison Street, Catherine Street, St, James Place (formerly New Bowery) and Robert Wagner Senior Place. The project was…

JUST when it started to get hot in June, I wrapped up my spring 2022 Lower East Side meanderings with a walk east on Kenmare and Delancey Streets. Kenmare Street…

THE original name of St. Augustine’s Episcopal Chapel at #290 Henry near Jackson Street on the Lower East Side was All Saints Free Church, which is still carved over the…

Continued from Part 1 In the late winters and springs of 2021-2022 I found I was walking through Soho and its bordering neighborhoods, Chinatown and the Lower East Side. Already,…

THERE are some spots in Manhattan in which entire blocks of streets have been lost in the name of urban renewal or urban planning. One such area was a warren…

FOR reasons that will become apparent, I always had something of an affinity for Market Street, which sidles up to the Manhattan Bridge’s south side and runs for a few…

In no other Manhattan neighborhood has the street map changed more greatly over the decades than the Lower East Side, more specifically the easternmost section known as Corlears Hook, where…

THE mission was simple. To walk the entire length of Chrystie Street from Canal to Houston, and then 2nd Avenue as far north as I pleased, the reason being that…

TUCKED away beside the Manhattan Bridge, predating it by a century or more, was a one-lane alley called Birmingham Street, running between Henry and Madison Street east of Market Street.…

SEVERAL buildings in the Lower East Side bear Stars of David. The Lower East Side was originally known as Kleindeutschland, or “Little Germany.” After the General Slocum steamboat disaster in…

AFTER nearly a decade when it was obscured by construction netting and scaffolding, the 1912 Jarmulowsky’s Bank building, a “supertall” for its time, has completed a $190M restoration and has…