The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Historically, it was understood to encompass a much larger area, from Broadway to the East River and from East 14th Street to Fulton and Franklin Streets.
Traditionally an immigrant, working class neighborhood, it began rapid gentrification in the mid-2000s, prompting the National Trust for Historic Preservation to place the neighborhood on their list of America's Most Endangered Places in 2008.
The Lower East Side is part of Manhattan Community District 3, and its primary ZIP Code is 10002. It is patrolled by the 7th Precinct of the New York City Police Department.
Boundaries
A more extensive definition of the Lower East Side places its boundaries at East 14th Street on the north, the East River to the east, Fulton and Franklin Streets to the south, and Pearl Street and Broadway to the west. This more extensive definition of the neighborhood includes Chinatown, the East Village, and Little Italy.Hodges "Lower East Side" in A less extensive definition has the neighborhood bordered to the south and west by Chinatown – which extends north to roughly Grand Street – to the west by Nolita, and to the north by the East Village.
Historically, the "Lower East Side" referred to the area alongside the East River from about the Manhattan Bridge and Canal Street up to 14th Street, and roughly bounded on the west by Broadway. It included areas known today as East Village, Alphabet City, Chinatown, Bowery, Little Italy, and Nolita. Parts of the East Village are still known as Loisaida, a Latino pronunciation of "Lower East Side".
Political representation Politically, the neighborhood is in New York's 10th congressional district.Congressional District 10, New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment. Accessed August 28, 2026. It is in the New York State Assembly's 65th district and 74th district;Assembly District 65, New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment. Accessed May 5, 2017.Assembly District 74, New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment. Accessed May 5, 2017. the New York State Senate's 27th district;Senate District 27, New York State Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment. Accessed August 28, 2026. and New York City Council's 1st and 2nd districts.Current City Council Districts for New York County, New York City. Accessed May 5, 2017.
History Prior to Europeans As was true of all of Manhattan Island, the area now known as the Lower East Side was occupied by members of the Lenape tribe, who were organized in bands that moved from place to place according to the seasons, fishing on the rivers in the summer, and moving inland in the fall and winter to gather crops and hunt for food. Their main trail took approximately the route of Broadway. One encampment on the Lower East Side near Corlears Hook was called Rechtauck or Naghtogack.Brazee (2012), p.8
Early settlement
The population of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam was located primarily below the current Fulton Street, while north of it were a number of small plantations and large farms called "bouwerij" ("bowery", equivalent to "boerderij" in present-day Dutch). Around these farms were a number of enclaves of free or "half-free" Africans, which served as a buffer between the Dutch and the Native Americans. One of the largest of these was located along the modern Bowery between Prince Street and Astor Place, as well as the "only separate enclave" of this type within Manhattan.Brazee (2012), p.8-9 These black farmers were some of the earliest settlers of the area.Hodges, Graham. "Lower East Side" in , pp.769–770
Gradually, during the 17th century, there was an overall consolidation of the boweries and farms into larger parcels, and much of the Lower East Side was then part of the Delancey farm.
James Delancey's pre-Revolutionary farm east of post road leading from the city (Bowery) survives in the names Delancey Street and Orchard Street. On the modern map of Manhattan, the Delancey farmThe Delancey town house later became Fraunces Tavern. is represented in the grid of streets from Division Street north to Houston Street. In response to the pressures of a growing city, Delancey began to survey streets in the southern part of the "West Farm"The division between the "West Farm" and the "East farm" ran approximately along today's Clinton Street, according to Eric Homberger, The Historical Atlas of New York City: a visual celebration of nearly 400 years 2005:60–61. in the 1760s. A spacious projected Delancey Square—intended to cover the area within today's Eldridge, Essex, Hester and Broome Streets—was eliminated when the loyalist Delancey family's property was confiscated after the American Revolution. The city Commissioners of Forfeiture eliminated the aristocratic planned square for a grid, effacing Delancey's vision of a New York laid out like the West End of London.
Corlears Hook The point of land on the East River now called Corlears Hook was also called Corlaers Hook under Dutch and British rule and briefly Crown Point during British occupation in the Revolution. It was named after the schoolmaster Jacobus van Corlaer, who settled on this "plantation" that in 1638 was called by a Europeanized version of its Lenape name, NechtansVan Winkle, Edward; Vinckeboons, Joan; van Rensselaer, Kiliaen. Manhattan, 1624–1639 1916:13; Jacob, whose name was anglicised as "van Curler", leased it to William Hendriesen and Gysbert Cornelisson in September 1640; date given as "prior to 1640": or Nechtanc.Nechtanc, in K. Scott and K. Stryker-Rodda, eds. New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, vol. 1 (Baltimore) 1974 and R.S. Grumet, Native American Place-Names in New York City (New York) 1981, both noted in Eric W. Sanderson, Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City 2009:262. Corlaer sold the plantation to Wilhelmus Hendrickse Beekman (1623–1707), founder of the Beekman family of New York; his son Gerardus Beekman was christened at the plantation on August 17, 1653.
On February 25, 1643, as part of Kieft's War, volunteers from the New Amsterdam colony killed forty Wiechquaesgecks at their encampment in the Massacre at Corlears Hook, in retaliation for ongoing conflicts between the colonists and the natives of the area, including the natives' unwillingness to pay tribute and their refusal to turn over the accused killer of a colonist.
The projection into the East River that retained Corlaer's name was an important landmark for navigators for 300 years. On older maps and documents, it is usually spelled Corlaers Hook, but since the early 19th century, the spelling has been anglicized to Corlears. The rough unplanned settlement that developed at Corlaer's Hook under the British occupation of New York during the Revolution was separated from the densely populated city by rugged hills of glacial till: "this region lay beyond the city proper, from which it was separated by high, uncultivated, and rough hills", observers recalled in 1843.Edwin Francis Hatfield, Samuel Hanson Cox, Patient Continuance in Well-doing: a memoir of Elihu W. Baldwin, 1843:183.
As early as 1816, Corlears Hook was notorious for streetwalkers, "a resort for the lewd and abandoned of both sexes", and in 1821 its "streets abounding every night with preconcerted groups of thieves and prostitutes" were noted by The Christian Herald.Edwin Francis Hatfield, Samuel Hanson Cox, Patient Continuance in Well-doing: a memoir of Elihu W. Baldwin, 1843:183f. In the course of the 19th century, they came to be called hookers.Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms (1859): "hooker": 'A resident of the Hook, i.e. a strumpet, a sailor's trull. So called from the number of houses of ill-fame frequented by sailors at the Hook (i.e. Corlears Hook) in the city of New York" (quoted in the Online Etymology Dictionary); thus the usage precedes the Civil War and any supposed connection to Major-General Joseph Hooker. In the 1832 summer of New York City's cholera epidemic, a two-story wooden workshop in the neighborhood was commandeered to serve as a makeshift cholera hospital; between July 18 and September 15, when the hospital was closed as the epidemic wound down, 281 patients were admitted, both black and white, of whom 93 died.Samuel Akerley, MD (Dudley Atkins, ed.) Reports of Hospital Physicians: and other documents in relation to the epidemic cholera (New York: Board of Health) 1832:112–49.
In 1833, Corlear's Hook was the location of some of the first tenements built in New York City.
Corlears Hook is mentioned on the first page of Chapter 1 of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, first published in 1851: "Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see? ..." and again in Chapter 99—The Doubloon.
The original location of Corlears Hook is now obscured by shoreline landfill. It was near the east end of the present pedestrian bridge over the FDR Drive near Cherry Street. The name is preserved in Corlears Hook Park at the intersection of Jackson and Cherry Streets along the East River Drive.NYC Department of Parks historical sign: Corlear's Hook Park.
Immigration
The bulk of immigrants who came to New York City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries came to the Lower East Side, moving into crowded tenements there. By the 1840s, large numbers of German immigrants settled in the area, and a large part of it became known as "Little Germany" or "Kleindeutschland". This was followed by groups of Italians and Eastern European Jews, as well as Greeks, Hungarians, Poles, Romanians, Russians, Slovaks and Ukrainians, each of whom settled in relatively homogeneous enclaves. By 1920, the Jewish neighborhood was one of the largest of these ethnic groupings, with 400,000 people. Jewish culture was on display in the area, with pushcart vendors and storefronts on Orchard and Grand streets and numerous Yiddish theatres along Second Avenue between Houston and 14th Streets.
Living conditions in these "slum" areas were far from ideal, although some improvement came from a change in the zoning laws, which required "new law" tenements to be built with air shafts between them so that fresh air and some light could reach each apartment. Still, reform movements, such as the one started by Jacob Riis's book How the Other Half Lives, continued to attempt to alleviate the problems of the area through settlement houses, such as the Henry Street Settlement, and other welfare and service agencies. The city itself moved to address the problem when it built First Houses, the first such public housing project in the United States, in 1935–1936. The development, located on the south side of East 3rd Street between First Avenue and Avenue A, and on the west side of Avenue A between East 2nd and East 3rd Streets, is now considered to be located within the East Village.
20th century
By the turn of the twentieth century, the neighborhood had become closely associated with radical politics, such as anarchism, socialism, and communism. It was also known as a place where many popular performers had grown up, such as Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson, George and Ira Gershwin, Jimmy Durante, and Irving Berlin. Later, more radical artists such as the Beat poets and writers were drawn to the neighborhood – especially the parts which later became the East Village – by the inexpensive housing and cheap food.