Avenue D runs from Houston St. on the south to 14 St. on the north.  It is the last street on the east end of "Alphabet City."  Avenue D was home to many different groups of immigrants over time.  Unfortunately, it was also plagued with crime and poverty throughout much of its history up until the 2000's.  Regardless, it is one of the last few areas downtown that still has the old New York "neighborhood" feel to it.  Not to worry though, the rich h*psters are slowly creeping east to this final NYC frontier (if not already evident.)  Avenue C has already been plagued with hungover 20-somethings eating "brunch" with their shades on.



Neighborhood Fact: Alphabet City actually sits on an ex-salt marsh that was drained around the early 1800's so that developers could build on top of the newly reclaimed land.  Today, the only natural, remaining salt marsh in Manhattan is located in Inwood Hill Park uptown.

In the mid 1800's, Avenue D was once part of a "Little Germany" that was home to many German immigrants.  The next wave of immigrants coming to this area up until the early 1900's were the Eastern European Jews, Irish and Italians.  This area became one of the worst slums in the city cluttered with tenement housing that had no running water.  Only by the 1960's did Avenue D started seeing the increase of Puerto Rican immigrants for the next two decades.  By 1980, the area was home to "a mix of Puerto Rican and African American families living alongside struggling artists and musicians (who were mostly young and white)."  Today, the area is becoming less and less associated with the low rent, violence, drugs and creative atmosphere that it once was known for.



A huge Con Edison plant is located at the north end of Avenue D.  The four towering smoke stacks from this plant are visible throughout the neighborhood.  This power plant has been blamed for high rates of asthma in the neighborhood. The Avenue D Pump Station (also known as the Manhattan Pump Station) is located just south of the Con Edison plant. Put into service in 1965, this pump station serves about one-third of Manhattan and pumps sewage beneath the East River through a tunnel that is 8.5-ft in diameter, 7500 ft long, and 300 ft deep. The tunnel connects to the Newtown Creek Water Pollution Control Plant located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn where the wastewater is treated.  Currently, the Manhattan Pump station is being upgraded and scheduled to be completed next year (2012.)

"Pretty much, this shitty pump station pushes all our shit from 1/3 of Manhattan through a big "shit tunnel" running under the shitty East River." - Jim Lahey

 
A strange East 13 Street street sign located in the Riis Housing Projects.



Jacob Riis Houses is a large public housing complex built in 1949 located between East 8th and East 13th Streets. It was named after a Danish-born photojournalist who documented New York tenement life. His stories in newspapers about slum dwellings and abuses in lower class urban life were collected in "How the Other Half Lives (1890)." Riis dwelled on the city's slum tenements and how the people there lived.  Jacob Riis Houses on Manhattan's Lower East Side has 13 buildings, covers almost 12 acres and has 1,187 apartments housing some 2,903 residents.


One of my favorite NYC photographs:  Bandit's Roost (1888) by Jacob Riis, from How the Other Half Lives. This image is Bandit's Roost at 59½ Mulberry Street, considered the most crime-ridden, dangerous part of New York City.



Dry Dock Playground is a small park with a pool on East 10th Street and Avenue D named for the neighborhood's former shipbuilding hub in the 1800's.  A recent article from DNAinfo says that the park will receive a major facelift that includes an expanded playground, improved lighting and new domino tables in a plan unveiled by the city.   When most of Alphabet City was known as the Dry Dock District, it was the center of the shipbuilding industry.  "Not only did the number of ships built in the East River Yards exceed the number built in any other section of the country, but exceed the total number produced in all the other states of the Union combined."


Photo of the Dry Dock Playground in 1987 and again in 2011.  The kids these days don't have all the crazy shit to climb in playgrounds that we used to have.  Another reason why the young kids rather stay at home on the computer instead of going out to the park.  Now, it's all about "safety" and the fear of getting sued by parents who go overboard in keeping their kids "safe."






This was the corner of 10 Street and Avenue D.  The site of Corn Exchange Bank and Trust Company in 1937.

"Off The Grid" is doing a series of research articles (1,2,3,4) about the oldest building in Alphabet City located at 143-145 Avenue D (constructed in 1827) which was originally the Dry Dock Banking House. "The General Glass Industries Corporation was also located in this building until 1973. The attached five- and six-story brick buildings, which had teemed with light manufacturing activity since the early 1900s, quickly fell into decay. Drug addicts and alcoholics increasingly used the buildings as a crash pad in the following decades."


143-145 Avenue D - This is the oldest building in Alphabet City with a lot of history behind it.


When 143-145 Avenue D was a squat known as the Glass House.  Artist(s) and year unknown.


The home of Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Solomon and family at 133 Avenue D (between 9 & 10 St) in 1936. The photo on the right shows the view out the back window of the tenement.  For some reason, there are many sources online that incorrectly label this address as 333 Avenue D (which would place it at the site of the Con Edison plant.)
 

A photo of what 133 Avenue D looks like these days right across the street from the Riis houses.


East 9 st. at FDR Drive. This is the plot that would eventually become the Jacob Riis houses.

Neighborhood Fact: Note the gas tanks in the photo above. Stuyvesant Town is located at the north end of Avenue D at 14 St. right above the Con Edison plant. Better known to locals as "Stuy Town," this housing complex was originally built over the old Gashouse District. The area got its name from the large gas storage tanks located there. (These gas tanks constantly leaked and made the area very undesirable to live in.) The Gashouse District was also the home to the Gas House Gang. "Specializing in armed robbery, the gang was estimated to have committed between 30 to 40 robberies a night as well as extorting money from local residents and operating brothels. Since there was little to steal on their own turf, they would travel to other neighborhoods and rob the criminals there. The gang would continue to control the district for over two decades until it was eventually absorbed by the Five Points Gang in 1910." As part of an urban renewal project, the Gashouse District was leveled in the 1940's. Almost 11,000 people were forced to move from the neighborhood in order to make room for the construction of Stuy Town.


Looking north on Avenue D before the Riis Houses were built in 1941 and then 70 years later in 2011.


The 8th Street Playground Igloo at the Jacob Riis Houses seems to bring back a lot of memories for those who grew up in the neighborhood.


Avenue D and East 8 Street across the street in 1987 and then again in 2011.  It looks like the store fronts have been removed.  The building to the left also seems to have been demolished since 1987.  I would only assume that new condos are coming next.


Looking north on Avenue D 24 years apart.  The tenement on the corner has been replaced with a new building.  It is now the Housing Works Day Treatment and Residential Program, declared a "special project of national significance" by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The Lillian Wald Houses, named for Lillian D. Wald (1867-1940) stretch from Houston Street to East 6 Street on Avenue D. Medical care in the city’s poorest slums was pretty nonexistent in the late 1890s. So social reformer Lillian Wald established a visiting nurses service. Her Nurses’ Settlement eventually had a staff of about 100 blue-uniformed nurses who went from tenement to tenement offering free or low-cost check-ups and treatment, mostly for immigrant mothers and kids. The housing projects has 16 buildings 10, 11, 13 and 14-stories tall with 1,857 apartments housing an estimated 4,536 residents. It was completed on October 14, 1949.


A hand painted Lilian Wald Houses sign.


Rather than climbing all those tenement stairs on their rounds, the nurses simply hopped from rooftop to rooftop, like this nurse is doing here (1890s.) This photo reminds me of Mary Poppins.


The Lillian Wald Houses in 1974 and in 2011.


On Avenue D, singer Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots was busted for heroin possession on June 1, 1998 outside of the Lillian Wald houses.

From a 2005 New York Times article about Avenue D and the Wald Housing Projects:

"Some people say change can only help Avenue D, but people like Mario Aponte, a 56-year-old native, remember an era when things weren't so bad. Mr. Aponte, a garrulous building mechanic, grew up in the Wald houses in the 1950's, a time when every side street off Avenue D boasted its own innocuous little gang. The Eastmen were on Third Street, the Sportsmen on Fourth, the Untouchables on 11th. Mr. Aponte got involved with the Bopping Bailerino Dragons, and quickly learned that being in a gang in those days was mostly about hanging out in hallways, waging frivolous battles over girls and, above all, looking sharp, by way of aggressively pressed chinos. gleaming cordovan dress shoes and snappy fedoras.

"The biggest thing was dressing," Mr. Aponte said. "We had to have creases in our pants. People would see us and say, gee, I like your crease. Even when I thought I was a hippie in the 60's, I still had to have my crease."

Except for the crease, little on Avenue D stayed the same in the 60's and surely the 70's. Drugs saturated the neighborhood, helping mire Mr. Aponte's buddies in far more trouble than turf battles over girls. A friend named Agar got 25 to life for robbery and attempted murder. One of the Maurice boys overdosed on heroin, the other was snuffed out by amphetamines. The Jackson boy, the Tolliver boy - both ended up dead. Mugsy was supposed to sell $5,000 worth of cocaine for a guy up in Harlem called Goldfinger. He screwed it up, and was found bound to a chair and shot in the eye on Fifth Street, just off Avenue D..."


Corner building at Avenue D and 4 St. 66 years apart.  Most of the buildings to the left from the original photo in 1945 are no longer there today.

Lower East side resident's growing up on the streets of Alphabet City, Ave D East 2nd street to East 10 Street. Baruch & Lillian Wald houses. All Photo's donated by KAZ - CBS:





Disclaimer:  Smart Crew may be "writers" but they don't claim to be actual "writers."  Now hiring editors that work for free.

Sources:
http://www.thevillager.com/villger_293/concernsonconed.html
http://myantiquefamily.com/
http://gvshp.org/blog/2011/04/25/the-strangers-hospital-143-145-avenue-d-part-4/
http://gvshp.org/blog/2011/03/29/the-decline-of-the-dry-dock-district-143-145-avenue-d-part-3/
http://gvshp.org/blog/2011/03/16/from-banking-to-biscuits-part-2/
http://gvshp.org/blog/2011/03/15/from-banking-to-biscuits-part-1-2/
http://www.dnainfo.com/20110415/lower-east-side-east-village/domino-tables-included-alphabet-city-park-renovation#ixzz1LtE9Fds6
http://academic2.marist.edu/foy/clan/essays/saint_brigid_and_dry_dock.htm
http://www.nysonglines.com/avd.htm