Your city's "Lower East Side"

[CaliNative]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

I know nothing about the "Lower East Side," so I don't know if or how/why Los Angeles would have an equivalent of it...

Boyle Heights used to be a center of the L.A. Jewish community in the first half of the last century. Today it is mostly Latino, and shows gentrification signs. Not sure if many Jewish residents remain. Now the westside is the center of the Jewish community, especially in the Fairfax area. Parts of the southern San Fernando Valley, especially North Hollywood, also have significant Jewish populations, including Orthodox. Well over half a million Jewish people live in the L.A. area, second only to NYC in the U.S.

[ilcapo]

Originally Posted by Chef

In Minneapolis it is probably Cedar - Riverside, which is also known as the West Bank. It was never the city's old Jewish neighborhood but has always been a combination of immigrants, bohemian types and college students. In terms of fabric it is a mix of old storefronts and houses and mid 20th century tower in the park developments:

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9696...7i16384!8i8192

This area has a high % of Somalian immigrants, no?
Ive heard some media outlets in Sweden refer to this area as
somewhat successfull when it comes to integration of people of Somali background.

[Randomguy34]

Maxwell Street in Chicago. Even urban renewal, expressways, and vacant lots weren't enough to kill it. The final nail in the coffin was UIC's expansion in 1994

Undated: pre-Dan Ryan Expressway


March 19, 1926


May 18, 1934


Undated: pre-Dan Ryan Expressway


November 25, 1955


Feb. 1965


October 30, 1988


Oct. 1990


October 1, 1993

https://drloihjournal.blogspot.com/2...t-chicago.html

[McBane]

Following this thread but haven't been able to figure out what is being asked. Historic Jewish immigrant enclaves or traditional immigrant neighborhoods?

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Chinatown doesn't really have hard boundaries. There are tentacles up to Delancey Street, and yet there are SoHo-type bars right on Mott Street, in the traditional core. I'd say Chinatown was growing from the 1960's through the 1990's, and has since been shrinking. Little Italy, if anything, has been growing in the last few years, but not via Italian immigration, just a cluster of new Italian-American remix-type restaurants.

The LES traditional core is mostly intact and mostly gentrified. Of course it's youth-oriented, not particularly Jewish anymore, even though there's a small Orthodox community that never left. Near the river are urban renewal era housing projects and middle income coop towers, the former traditionally Puerto Rican, but now increasingly Chinese, the latter traditionally Jewish, but now increasingly affluent urbanites.

It seems that the housing projects are kind of a sanctuary for keeping the Chinese presence, as the traditional Chinatown core shrinks. Of course newer mainland immigrants have headed to the half-dozen newer Brooklyn-Queens Chinatowns for decades now.

There are also a number of very large luxury towers going up along the East River. Urban renewal resulted in a lot of underutilzed leftover land, and that land is finally being developed.

Looking here, it seems like there are only a handful of white blocks on the LES, mostly a few blocks south of the Williamsburg Bridge. Mostly it's either Asian or Latino. Doesn't get really white till you get up to Ukrainian Village.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Looking here, it seems like there are only a handful of white blocks on the LES, mostly a few blocks south of the Williamsburg Bridge. Mostly it's either Asian or Latino. Doesn't get really white till you get up to Ukrainian Village.

I think the "Asian" north of Delancey, maybe even north of Grand St, is more high-income yuppie than immigrant.

[hipster duck]

Maxwell Street was a huge loss.

I like Chicago a lot, but every urban neighborhood in the city feels very neat and ordered. It would have been nice to have one area that still felt chaotic.

[craigs]

The idea that the Lower East Side is widely used as shorthand for Jewish, or that the area is primarily defined by Jewishness, is not obviously true. It wasn't always Jewish--decades before mass migration of Jews to the LES, its tenements were so packed with (Christian) Germans that the area was called Kleindeutschland, "Little Germany." Various other groups flooded in during subsequent decades, and even when its Jewish community was in its heyday, there were still other parts of the LES that were not Jewish. Meanwhile, in the last six, seven decades, the LES has been most notable for decline, bohemianism, and subsequent rapid gentrification. Paul's Boutique was in the Lower East Side. Rent is set in the Lower East Side. Lady Gaga got noticed in the Lower East Side. "Your city's Lower East Side" would correctly encompass much more than merely being a previously Jewish neighborhood.

[Docere]

The German population in NYC was big in the 19th century, rivalling the Irish in numbers. But NYC became such a "Jewish" city in the 20th that the German presence was "forgotten."

[craigs]

From Wikipedia:

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 . . . .

By the turn of the twentieth century, the neighborhood had become closely associated with radical politics, such as anarchism, socialism and communism, and was also known as a place where many popular performers had grown up . . . . 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.

The German population decreased in the early twentieth century as a result of the General Slocum disaster and due to anti-German sentiment prompted by World War I. After World War II, the Lower East Side became New York City's first racially integrated neighborhood with the influx of African Americans and Puerto Ricans. Areas where Spanish speaking was predominant began to be called Loisaida.

By the 1960s, the influence of the Jewish and eastern European groups declined as many of these residents had left the area, while other ethnic groups had coalesced into separate neighborhoods, such as Little Italy. The Lower East Side then experienced a period of "persistent poverty, crime, drugs, and abandoned housing". . . .

By the 1980s, the Lower East Side had begun to stabilize after its period of decline, and once again began to attract students, artists and adventurous members of the middle-class, as well as immigrants from countries such as Bangladesh, China, the Dominican Republic, India, Japan, Korea, the Philippines and Poland.

In the early 2000s, the gentrification of the East Village spread to the Lower East Side proper, making it one of the trendiest neighborhoods in Manhattan . . . .

The Lower East Side has a centuries-long history of being many things to many different kinds of people, and the former Jewish enclave there was part of that story--but not the exclusive story, or more important than any other. Not by a longshot. I don't know why you are using the Lower East Side as shorthand for "Jewish" considering that historical reality.

Fun fact: there was a part of the LES called Corlear's Hook, and per Wikipedia, 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". In the course of the 19th century they came to be called hookers.

[TempleGuy1000]

Originally Posted by craigs

I don't know why you are using the Lower East Side as shorthand for "Jewish" considering that historical reality.

Fun fact: there was a part of the LES called Corlear's Hook, and per Wikipedia, 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". In the course of the 19th century they came to be called hookers.

Yeah, I have been real confused by the conversation that has taken place so far lol. I thought I knew what the "LES"-stereotype was, but reading these comments, it brought my understanding into question.

However, given all things, I'm pretty certain Philly's equivalent to the lower east side, given the various descriptions, would be Northern Liberties and Fishtown.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Docere

The German population in NYC was big in the 19th century, rivalling the Irish in numbers. But NYC became such a "Jewish" city in the 20th that the German presence was "forgotten."

actually german ny was more abruptly ended than forgotten.

along with immigration changes and the coming wars, the timing and utter tragedy of the general slocum disaster instantly took the wind out of germans in nyc:


https://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/06/13...r-june-15-1904


there is still a bit out in ridgewood and glendale, but not much. i even know a few german families from there. non-jewish that is. later most remaining germans spread out to the suburbs like everyone else who could.

[Crawford]

There was some postwar German immigration to the U.S. and Canada. Especially true for German refugees from Eastern Europe.

There's also a German Jewish refugee community in far Upper Manhattan (Hudson Heights). It's still around, to an extent, though obviously aging.

[Steely Dan]

German-american heritage/ethnic celebration was greatly knee-capped in NYC, and every other US city, by the two world wars.

It's why you can find 5th generation "Irish" kids still getting shamrock tattoos, while the 5th generation "german" kid might not even be aware of his German roots.

[mrnyc]

^ definitely, but the slocum knee capped it earlier on locally in nyc. it destroyed a whole neighborhood and culture in one tragic swoop.

Originally Posted by Crawford

There was some postwar German immigration to the U.S. and Canada. Especially true for German refugees from Eastern Europe.

There's also a German Jewish refugee community in far Upper Manhattan (Hudson Heights). It's still around, to an extent, though obviously aging.

that's all post-les germans or not nyc, which is why it went unmentioned.

the queens neighborhoods are descendants of the manhattan germans, or so i have heard.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

^ definitely, but the slocum knee capped it earlier on locally in nyc. it destroyed a whole neighborhood and culture in one tragic swoop.

while the staggering loss of 1,000 lives was certainly a terrible tragedy, it didn't force german-american heritage itself into hiding the way that the two world wars did.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

while the staggering loss of 1,000 lives was certainly a terrible tragedy, it didn't force german-american heritage itself into hiding the way that the two world wars did.

it was a local tragedy, not the plight of german-americans across america during the wars.

which was actually, not so bad. at least vs the japanese-americans. white privilege.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

it was a local tragedy,

right, but my point was that the slocum disaster did not cause any german-americans in NYC to start hiding/down-playing their german ancestry the way that the two world wars did.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

right, but my point was that the slocum disaster did not cause any german-americans in NYC to start hiding and down-playing their german ancestry the way that the two world wars did.

of course not, because the wars hadn't happened yet.

but after slocum many nyc germans were dead, the community destroyed and dispersed -- which paved a way for newer immigrants to move in. italians, jews and the like.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

the queens neighborhoods are descendants of the manhattan germans, or so i have heard.

My father's family was from Queens, and to a large extent German (both of his parents were half-German).

All his cousins/their children have long since decamped to Nassau County however.