Lower East Side
Orchard Street on the Lower East Side
I find the greatest of New York City attractions to be our neighborhoods. New York is a collection of neighborhoods – each with its own character, personality, and uniqueness. Some neighborhoods have a distinct ethnic flavor, such as Chinatown, Little Italy and El Barrio (Spanish Harlem). Other neighborhoods are most influenced by pop culture (East Village), fashion (Meat Packing District), retail therapy (SOHO), etc.
One of the great beauties of living in, and visiting, New York is that you can almost always find a neighborhood to match your mood. You can go there, explore, enjoy a good meal (we have 18,000 places to eat in the City), spend time relaxing in a café; visit the stores, galleries, clubs, or whatever the neighborhood offers to suit your mood.
One of my favorite neighborhoods is the Lower East Side. It used to be known as the Jewish Lower East Side, because that’s who lived and settled in the neighborhood in the mid-1800s and early 1900s – Jews from Eastern Europe. Back then, the Lower East Side was the most densely populated place on the face of the earth, with more people per square mile than anywhere else.
The five story tenement buildings (we call them “five story walk-ups” because they have no elevator) each housed an average of 16 (big) families. They had no indoor plumbing in the early years. There was an outhouse (for 16 big families) in the back ally and public bath houses scattered around the neighborhood, some of which can still be seen today.
A good piece of the neighborhood still looks a lot like it did back in the 1800’s. Why? Poor subway transportation. In New York, if you are going to knock down old buildings and build new high-rises, then you had better have a subway close by. The Lower East Side is poorly served by the subway system, so to a large extent the neighborhood has been preserved.
Some great New York City attractions to visit on the Lower East Side include Katz’s Deli (serving the best pastrami in the world since 1888), Gus’s Pickles (buy them right out of the barrel on the street – except on Saturday, that’s because both the pickles and the owner are kosher), the Essex Street Market (built to get pushcarts off the street, by moving them inside), Kosar’s Knish Bakery (if you want to know what a knish is, you’ll have to buy one), Russ and Daughters (hand-dipped chocolates, dried fruits and lox), etc., etc., etc..
So when you come to New York and take one of our New York City tours, make sure you ask us to take you to the Lower East Side and let’s have lunch at Katz’s deli!
