Author: Christopher Mele
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816631810
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
The Lower East Side of Manhattan is rich in stories -- of poor immigrants who flocked there in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; of beatniks, hippies, and artists who peopled it mid-century; and of the real estate developers and politicians who have always shaped what is now termed the "East Village". Today, the musical Rent plays on Broadway to a mostly white and suburban audience, MTV exploits the neighborhood's newly trendy squalor in a film promotion, and on the Internet a cyber soap opera and travel-related Web pages lure members of the middle class to enjoy a commodified and sanitized version of the neighborhood. In this sweeping account, Christopher Mele analyzes the political and cultural forces that have influenced the development of this distinctive community. He describes late nineteenth-century notions of the Lower East Side as a place of entrenched poverty, ethnic plurality, political activism, and "low" culture that elicited feelings of revulsion and fear among the city's elite and middle classes. The resulting -- and ongoing -- struggle between government and residents over affordable and decent housing has in turn affected real estate practices and urban development policies. Selling the Lower East Side recounts the resistance tactics used by community residents, as well as the impulse on the part of some to perpetuate the image of the neighborhood as dangerous, romantic, and bohemian, clinging to the marginality that has been central to the identity of the East Village and subverting attempts to portray it as "new and improved". Ironically, this very image of urban grittiness has been appropriated by a cultural marketplace hungry for new fodder.Mele explores the ways that developers, media executives, and others have coopted the area's characteristics -- analyzing the East Village as a "style provider" where what is being marketed is "difference". The result is a visionary look at how political and economic actions transform neighborhoods and at what happens when a neighborhood is what is being "consumed".
Selling the Lower East Side
Author: Christopher Mele
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816631810
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
The Lower East Side of Manhattan is rich in stories -- of poor immigrants who flocked there in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; of beatniks, hippies, and artists who peopled it mid-century; and of the real estate developers and politicians who have always shaped what is now termed the "East Village". Today, the musical Rent plays on Broadway to a mostly white and suburban audience, MTV exploits the neighborhood's newly trendy squalor in a film promotion, and on the Internet a cyber soap opera and travel-related Web pages lure members of the middle class to enjoy a commodified and sanitized version of the neighborhood. In this sweeping account, Christopher Mele analyzes the political and cultural forces that have influenced the development of this distinctive community. He describes late nineteenth-century notions of the Lower East Side as a place of entrenched poverty, ethnic plurality, political activism, and "low" culture that elicited feelings of revulsion and fear among the city's elite and middle classes. The resulting -- and ongoing -- struggle between government and residents over affordable and decent housing has in turn affected real estate practices and urban development policies. Selling the Lower East Side recounts the resistance tactics used by community residents, as well as the impulse on the part of some to perpetuate the image of the neighborhood as dangerous, romantic, and bohemian, clinging to the marginality that has been central to the identity of the East Village and subverting attempts to portray it as "new and improved". Ironically, this very image of urban grittiness has been appropriated by a cultural marketplace hungry for new fodder.Mele explores the ways that developers, media executives, and others have coopted the area's characteristics -- analyzing the East Village as a "style provider" where what is being marketed is "difference". The result is a visionary look at how political and economic actions transform neighborhoods and at what happens when a neighborhood is what is being "consumed".
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816631810
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
The Lower East Side of Manhattan is rich in stories -- of poor immigrants who flocked there in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; of beatniks, hippies, and artists who peopled it mid-century; and of the real estate developers and politicians who have always shaped what is now termed the "East Village". Today, the musical Rent plays on Broadway to a mostly white and suburban audience, MTV exploits the neighborhood's newly trendy squalor in a film promotion, and on the Internet a cyber soap opera and travel-related Web pages lure members of the middle class to enjoy a commodified and sanitized version of the neighborhood. In this sweeping account, Christopher Mele analyzes the political and cultural forces that have influenced the development of this distinctive community. He describes late nineteenth-century notions of the Lower East Side as a place of entrenched poverty, ethnic plurality, political activism, and "low" culture that elicited feelings of revulsion and fear among the city's elite and middle classes. The resulting -- and ongoing -- struggle between government and residents over affordable and decent housing has in turn affected real estate practices and urban development policies. Selling the Lower East Side recounts the resistance tactics used by community residents, as well as the impulse on the part of some to perpetuate the image of the neighborhood as dangerous, romantic, and bohemian, clinging to the marginality that has been central to the identity of the East Village and subverting attempts to portray it as "new and improved". Ironically, this very image of urban grittiness has been appropriated by a cultural marketplace hungry for new fodder.Mele explores the ways that developers, media executives, and others have coopted the area's characteristics -- analyzing the East Village as a "style provider" where what is being marketed is "difference". The result is a visionary look at how political and economic actions transform neighborhoods and at what happens when a neighborhood is what is being "consumed".
The Lower East Side Remembered and Revisited
Author: Joyce Mendelsohn
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231519434
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
The Lower East Side has been home to some of the city's most iconic restaurants, shopping venues, and architecture. The neighborhood has also welcomed generations of immigrants, from newly arrived Italians and Jews to today's Latino and Asian newcomers. This history has become somewhat obscured, however, as the Lower East Side can appear more hip than historic, with wealth and gentrification changing the character of the neighborhood. Chronicling these developments, along with the hidden gems that still speak of a vibrant immigrant identity, Joyce Mendelsohn provides a complete guide to the Lower East Side of then and now. After an extensive history that stretches back to Manhattan's first settlers, Mendelsohn offers 5 self-guided walking tours, including a new passage through the Bowery, that take the reader to more than 150 sites and highlight the dynamics of a community of contrasts: aged tenements nestled among luxury apartment towers abut historic churches and synagogues. With updated and revised maps, historical data, and an entirely new community to explore, Mendelsohn writes a brand-new chapter in an old New York story.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231519434
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
The Lower East Side has been home to some of the city's most iconic restaurants, shopping venues, and architecture. The neighborhood has also welcomed generations of immigrants, from newly arrived Italians and Jews to today's Latino and Asian newcomers. This history has become somewhat obscured, however, as the Lower East Side can appear more hip than historic, with wealth and gentrification changing the character of the neighborhood. Chronicling these developments, along with the hidden gems that still speak of a vibrant immigrant identity, Joyce Mendelsohn provides a complete guide to the Lower East Side of then and now. After an extensive history that stretches back to Manhattan's first settlers, Mendelsohn offers 5 self-guided walking tours, including a new passage through the Bowery, that take the reader to more than 150 sites and highlight the dynamics of a community of contrasts: aged tenements nestled among luxury apartment towers abut historic churches and synagogues. With updated and revised maps, historical data, and an entirely new community to explore, Mendelsohn writes a brand-new chapter in an old New York story.
Lower East Side
Author: Eric Ferrara
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 0738597716
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 98
Book Description
Eric Ferrara and David Bellel of the Lower East Side History Project explore a century of neighborhood history through rare photographs supplied by local museum archives and private collections. New York City's legendary Lower East Side is one of the oldest, most historically significant and complex quarters in America. Though recent gentrification has displaced most multigenerational immigrant families and mom-and-pop shops, the district still retains some of the character that made it so unique to the rest of the city.
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 0738597716
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 98
Book Description
Eric Ferrara and David Bellel of the Lower East Side History Project explore a century of neighborhood history through rare photographs supplied by local museum archives and private collections. New York City's legendary Lower East Side is one of the oldest, most historically significant and complex quarters in America. Though recent gentrification has displaced most multigenerational immigrant families and mom-and-pop shops, the district still retains some of the character that made it so unique to the rest of the city.
DIY on the Lower East Side
Author: Andrew Strombeck
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438479824
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
The severe financial austerity imposed on New York City during the 1975 fiscal crisis resulted in a city falling apart. Broken windows, crumbling walls, and piles of bricks were everywhere. While, for many, this physical decay was a sign that the postwar welfare state had failed, for others, it represented a site of risky opportunity that could stimulate novel forms of creativity and community. In this book, Andrew Strombeck explores the legacy of this crisis for the city's literature and art, focusing on one neighborhood where changes were acutely felt—the Lower East Side. In what became a paradigmatic example of gentrification, the Lower East Side's population shifted from working-class people to Wall Street traders and ad agents. This transformation occurred, in part, because of high-profile local artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Jeff Koons, and Kiki Smith, but Strombeck argues that neighborhood writers also played a role. Drawing on archival research and original author interviews, he examines the innovative work of Kathy Acker, David Wojnarowicz, Miguel Piñero, Sylvère Lotringer, Lynne Tillman, and others and concludes that these writers still have much to teach us about changes in the nature of work and the emergence of a do-it-yourself ethos. DIY on the Lower East Side shows how place and politics shaped literature, and how New York City policies adopted at the time continue to shape our world.
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438479824
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
The severe financial austerity imposed on New York City during the 1975 fiscal crisis resulted in a city falling apart. Broken windows, crumbling walls, and piles of bricks were everywhere. While, for many, this physical decay was a sign that the postwar welfare state had failed, for others, it represented a site of risky opportunity that could stimulate novel forms of creativity and community. In this book, Andrew Strombeck explores the legacy of this crisis for the city's literature and art, focusing on one neighborhood where changes were acutely felt—the Lower East Side. In what became a paradigmatic example of gentrification, the Lower East Side's population shifted from working-class people to Wall Street traders and ad agents. This transformation occurred, in part, because of high-profile local artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Jeff Koons, and Kiki Smith, but Strombeck argues that neighborhood writers also played a role. Drawing on archival research and original author interviews, he examines the innovative work of Kathy Acker, David Wojnarowicz, Miguel Piñero, Sylvère Lotringer, Lynne Tillman, and others and concludes that these writers still have much to teach us about changes in the nature of work and the emergence of a do-it-yourself ethos. DIY on the Lower East Side shows how place and politics shaped literature, and how New York City policies adopted at the time continue to shape our world.
Tenement
Author: Raymond Bial
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547561989
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 53
Book Description
Life on the Lower East Side was bustling. Immigrants from many European countries had come to make a better life for themselves and their families in the United States. But the wages they earned were so low that they could afford only the most basic accommodations—tenements. Unfortunately, there were few laws protecting the residents of tenements, and landlords took advantage of this by allowing the buildings to become cramped and squalid. There was little the tenants could do; their only other choice was the street. Though most immigrants struggled in these buildings, many overcame a difficult start and saw generations after them move on to better apartments, homes, and lives. Raymond Bial reveals the first, challenging step in this process as he leads us on a tour of the sights and sounds of the Lower East Side, guiding us through the dark hallways, staircases, and rooms of the tenements.
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547561989
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 53
Book Description
Life on the Lower East Side was bustling. Immigrants from many European countries had come to make a better life for themselves and their families in the United States. But the wages they earned were so low that they could afford only the most basic accommodations—tenements. Unfortunately, there were few laws protecting the residents of tenements, and landlords took advantage of this by allowing the buildings to become cramped and squalid. There was little the tenants could do; their only other choice was the street. Though most immigrants struggled in these buildings, many overcame a difficult start and saw generations after them move on to better apartments, homes, and lives. Raymond Bial reveals the first, challenging step in this process as he leads us on a tour of the sights and sounds of the Lower East Side, guiding us through the dark hallways, staircases, and rooms of the tenements.
Selling the Lower East Side
Author: Christopher Mele
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816631827
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386
Book Description
The Lower East Side of Manhattan is rich in stories -- of poor immigrants who flocked there in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; of beatniks, hippies, and artists who peopled it mid-century; and of the real estate developers and politicians who have always shaped what is now termed the "East Village". Today, the musical Rent plays on Broadway to a mostly white and suburban audience, MTV exploits the neighborhood's newly trendy squalor in a film promotion, and on the Internet a cyber soap opera and travel-related Web pages lure members of the middle class to enjoy a commodified and sanitized version of the neighborhood. In this sweeping account, Christopher Mele analyzes the political and cultural forces that have influenced the development of this distinctive community. He describes late nineteenth-century notions of the Lower East Side as a place of entrenched poverty, ethnic plurality, political activism, and "low" culture that elicited feelings of revulsion and fear among the city's elite and middle classes. The resulting -- and ongoing -- struggle between government and residents over affordable and decent housing has in turn affected real estate practices and urban development policies. Selling the Lower East Side recounts the resistance tactics used by community residents, as well as the impulse on the part of some to perpetuate the image of the neighborhood as dangerous, romantic, and bohemian, clinging to the marginality that has been central to the identity of the East Village and subverting attempts to portray it as "new and improved". Ironically, this very image of urban grittiness has been appropriated by a cultural marketplace hungry for new fodder.Mele explores the ways that developers, media executives, and others have coopted the area's characteristics -- analyzing the East Village as a "style provider" where what is being marketed is "difference". The result is a visionary look at how political and economic actions transform neighborhoods and at what happens when a neighborhood is what is being "consumed".
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816631827
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386
Book Description
The Lower East Side of Manhattan is rich in stories -- of poor immigrants who flocked there in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; of beatniks, hippies, and artists who peopled it mid-century; and of the real estate developers and politicians who have always shaped what is now termed the "East Village". Today, the musical Rent plays on Broadway to a mostly white and suburban audience, MTV exploits the neighborhood's newly trendy squalor in a film promotion, and on the Internet a cyber soap opera and travel-related Web pages lure members of the middle class to enjoy a commodified and sanitized version of the neighborhood. In this sweeping account, Christopher Mele analyzes the political and cultural forces that have influenced the development of this distinctive community. He describes late nineteenth-century notions of the Lower East Side as a place of entrenched poverty, ethnic plurality, political activism, and "low" culture that elicited feelings of revulsion and fear among the city's elite and middle classes. The resulting -- and ongoing -- struggle between government and residents over affordable and decent housing has in turn affected real estate practices and urban development policies. Selling the Lower East Side recounts the resistance tactics used by community residents, as well as the impulse on the part of some to perpetuate the image of the neighborhood as dangerous, romantic, and bohemian, clinging to the marginality that has been central to the identity of the East Village and subverting attempts to portray it as "new and improved". Ironically, this very image of urban grittiness has been appropriated by a cultural marketplace hungry for new fodder.Mele explores the ways that developers, media executives, and others have coopted the area's characteristics -- analyzing the East Village as a "style provider" where what is being marketed is "difference". The result is a visionary look at how political and economic actions transform neighborhoods and at what happens when a neighborhood is what is being "consumed".
Life on the Lower East Side
Author: Rebecca Lepkoff
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
ISBN: 9781568986067
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 218
Book Description
"Life on the Lower East Side, the first monograph of Lepkoff's work, highlights the area between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges from the Bowery to the East River. Over 170 beautifully reproduced duotone photographs and essays by Peter E. Dans and Suzanne Wasserman uncover a forgotten time and place and reveal how the Lower East Side remains both unaltered and forever changed."--BOOK JACKET.
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
ISBN: 9781568986067
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 218
Book Description
"Life on the Lower East Side, the first monograph of Lepkoff's work, highlights the area between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges from the Bowery to the East River. Over 170 beautifully reproduced duotone photographs and essays by Peter E. Dans and Suzanne Wasserman uncover a forgotten time and place and reveal how the Lower East Side remains both unaltered and forever changed."--BOOK JACKET.
Lower East Side Memories
Author: Hasia R. Diner
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691095455
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262
Book Description
Manhattan's Lower East Side stands for Jewish experience in America. With the possible exception of African-Americans and Harlem, no ethnic group has been so thoroughly understood and imagined through a particular chunk of space. Despite the fact that most American Jews have never set foot there--and many come from families that did not immigrate through New York much less reside on Hester or Delancey Street--the Lower East Side is firm in their collective memory. Whether they have been there or not, people reminisce about the Lower East Side as the place where life pulsated, bread tasted better, relationships were richer, tradition thrived, and passions flared. This was not always so. During the years now fondly recalled (1880-1930), the neighborhood was only occasionally called the Lower East Side. Though largely populated by Jews from Eastern Europe, it was not ethnically or even religiously homogenous. The tenements, grinding poverty, sweatshops, and packs of roaming children were considered the stuff of social work, not nostalgia and romance. To learn when and why this dark warren of pushcart-lined streets became an icon, Hasia Diner follows a wide trail of high and popular culture. She examines children's stories, novels, movies, museum exhibits, television shows, summer-camp reenactments, walking tours, consumer catalogues, and photos hung on deli walls far from Manhattan. Diner finds that it was after World War II when the Lower East Side was enshrined as the place through which Jews passed from European oppression to the promised land of America. The space became sacred at a time when Jews were simultaneously absorbing the enormity of the Holocaust and finding acceptance and opportunity in an increasingly liberal United States. Particularly after 1960, the Lower East Side gave often secularized and suburban Jews a biblical, yet distinctly American story about who they were and how they got here. Displaying the author's own fondness for the Lower East Side of story books, combined with a commitment to historical truth, Lower East Side Memories is an insightful account of one of our most famous neighborhoods and its power to shape identity.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691095455
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262
Book Description
Manhattan's Lower East Side stands for Jewish experience in America. With the possible exception of African-Americans and Harlem, no ethnic group has been so thoroughly understood and imagined through a particular chunk of space. Despite the fact that most American Jews have never set foot there--and many come from families that did not immigrate through New York much less reside on Hester or Delancey Street--the Lower East Side is firm in their collective memory. Whether they have been there or not, people reminisce about the Lower East Side as the place where life pulsated, bread tasted better, relationships were richer, tradition thrived, and passions flared. This was not always so. During the years now fondly recalled (1880-1930), the neighborhood was only occasionally called the Lower East Side. Though largely populated by Jews from Eastern Europe, it was not ethnically or even religiously homogenous. The tenements, grinding poverty, sweatshops, and packs of roaming children were considered the stuff of social work, not nostalgia and romance. To learn when and why this dark warren of pushcart-lined streets became an icon, Hasia Diner follows a wide trail of high and popular culture. She examines children's stories, novels, movies, museum exhibits, television shows, summer-camp reenactments, walking tours, consumer catalogues, and photos hung on deli walls far from Manhattan. Diner finds that it was after World War II when the Lower East Side was enshrined as the place through which Jews passed from European oppression to the promised land of America. The space became sacred at a time when Jews were simultaneously absorbing the enormity of the Holocaust and finding acceptance and opportunity in an increasingly liberal United States. Particularly after 1960, the Lower East Side gave often secularized and suburban Jews a biblical, yet distinctly American story about who they were and how they got here. Displaying the author's own fondness for the Lower East Side of story books, combined with a commitment to historical truth, Lower East Side Memories is an insightful account of one of our most famous neighborhoods and its power to shape identity.
A Secret Location on the Lower East Side
Author: Steven Clay
Publisher: Granary Books
ISBN:
Category : American poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
By Jerome Rothenberg. Contributions by Steven Clay, Rodney Phillips.
Publisher: Granary Books
ISBN:
Category : American poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
By Jerome Rothenberg. Contributions by Steven Clay, Rodney Phillips.
Captured
Author: Clayton Patterson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 614
Book Description
Captured tells the story of film and video in the Lower East Side and the East Village in the artists' own words. It is part formal history and part inspirational text, to remind people on the outside looking in how often their contributions form the invisible pillars of American art and popular life. Movements such as No Wave and the Cinema of Transgression are covered, as is the story of Pull My Daisy, considered among the true progenitors of indie film. Captured is a must-have for fans of independent film and students of cinema everywhere.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 614
Book Description
Captured tells the story of film and video in the Lower East Side and the East Village in the artists' own words. It is part formal history and part inspirational text, to remind people on the outside looking in how often their contributions form the invisible pillars of American art and popular life. Movements such as No Wave and the Cinema of Transgression are covered, as is the story of Pull My Daisy, considered among the true progenitors of indie film. Captured is a must-have for fans of independent film and students of cinema everywhere.