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Lower East Side NYC

NYC’s Lower East Side is a legendary immigrant neighborhood that is becoming a hip art and night club district.

Puerto Ricans call the neighorhood “Loisaida” after Bittman “Bimbo” Rivas’ 1974 Nuyorican poem.

Lower East Side boundaries are:

Houston St
Bowery | Lower East Side | FDR Drive
Manhattan Bridge

Latin Culture in the Lower East Side

Lower East Side Archive

Lower East Side Art

New Museum of Contemporary Art is NYC’s only museum focused entirely on contemporary art.

Lower East Side Dance

Paul Taylor Dance Company

Lower East Side Festivals

Loisaida Festival is a Lower East Side cultural street fair.

Lower East Side Museums

New Museum of Contemporary Art is NYC’s only museum focused entirely on contemporary art.

Tenement Museum

Lower East Side Performing Arts

Abrons Arts Center

The Clemente is a Latin cultural center that hosts Teatro SEA, Teatro LATEA, Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors (HOLA), and the Fantastic Experimental Latino Theater (FELT).

Lower East Side Restaurants

Mi Salsa Kitchen is a Cuban diner with live entertainment on weekends. 🇨🇺

Lower East Side Theatre

Teatro LATEA is a community theater.

Teatro SEA is NYC’s Latino children theater. It does a lot of puppetry.

The neighborhood’s tenements were the first homes for generations of immigrant families. It was once New York City’s “Little Germany.” It became a legendary Jewish community. It’s become a Puerto Rican and Dominican neighborhood and is now gentrifying.

Of all of Manhattan, the Lower East Side retains some of the feel of anything-goes 1970s New York City. It’s mostly visual now in terms of art and graffiti. The New Museum of Contemporary Art changed the neighborhood completely.

Loisaida

Lower East Side NYC (Deberarr/Adobe)
Lower East Side NYC (Deberarr/Adobe)

“Loisaida” is the Puerto Rican name for the neighborhood. It comes from a poem by Nuyorican poet pioneer Bimbo Rivas.

He may have been paying tribute to Yuíza, the legendary cacique (Indigenous Taíno chief) of what is now Loíza, Puerto Rico. By the way, Yuíza was a woman. We have strong traditions of female leadership in both Indigenous Africa and the Indigenous Americas. The similarities between the two cultures are striking.

East Village

The Lower East Side used to run up to 14th St. Above Houston St, it was rebranded as the “East Village” in the 1960s. This was partly due to the development of New York City’s contemporary art community which began in SoHo and moved up to Greenwich Village, then moved east into the Lower East Side.

East Village
Little Italy | Lower East Side | Brooklyn
Chinatown | Two Bridges

Downtown Manhattan

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