Famous Ankles

The single most dominant feature of Alphabet City has to be Tompkins Square Park.  It is most definitely a park with a past.  Back in the 80’s, it was filled with the homeless and was a major drug market.  In 1988, a riot erupted and served as a rallying point for a lot of the politics of the day and echos of it still seem to be present.

It’s located between Avenue A and Avenue C.  Here’s where I ran into it, coming from St. Mark’s Place.

In a word, the park is…unremarkable.  It’s moderate sized and it has some wonderful elm trees scattered throughout it.

Another thing it has a lot of are fences.  Lots and lots of fences.  Maybe it’s something arising from Tompkins’ history as a rallying point of protests and the like (fencing makes it harder for very large groups to act in concert) or maybe it’s protection for the trees and grasses (the population density in the area is very high).  Whatever.  For the most part, if you’re in Tompkins Square Park, you’re not gonna be walking on the grass very much.

A little after entering the park, I saw a sculpture that I had to check out.  It’s the Temperance Fountain.

That’s “temperance” as in no alcohol.  The fountain was a gift from a man by the name of Henry D. Cogswell and was given to provide an alternative beverage (cold water) to the Lower East Side during the late 1800s.  Cogswell had made his fortune in the California Gold Rush of 1849 and spent a lot of his money in support of the Temperance Movement.

The figure on the top is Hebe – the water carrier, at least according to a nearby sign.  But that’s rather odd.  The Greek mythological character of Hebe was a cupbearer who served nectar and ambrosia to the Greek gods; and we know what a bunch of rowdy debauchers those guys were.  Another way of saying it:  they weren’t temperant in the least.

-H

I’ve heard about Alphabet City for a long time.  It’s just one of those neighborhoods that come up in conversation.  It’s named for four avenues with the shortest names in NYC:  Avenue A, Avenue B, Avenue C, and Avenue D.  (Usually, you see them named as Ave A, Ave B, Ave C, and Ave D.)  I took a tour of the East Village/Lower East Side that the tour guide said something along these lines:

“Back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s; Alphabet City streets were said to stand for the following:  if you went to Avenue A, you were adventurous.  If you went to Avenue B, you were bold.  If you went to Avenue C, you were crazy.  And if you went to Avenue D, you were dead.”

Wild overstatement, but those were tough times for the Lower East Side and the poverty and crime in the area were legendary.

And now?  Well, I’ve been through all four avenues and even a bit beyond.  I found some parts still poverty-looking, but other areas looking very, very cool.

Over the next few days, I’ll be posting on the area and some of the things that I saw.  I didn’t see any crime.  I didn’t see anything other than a fascinating, but at times still poor, area of Manhattan that I think is an area that I’m going to see a lot more of; but not when the temperatures have been as cold as they are right now.

Alphabet City itself is located in the east side of Manhattan from roughly Houston Street in the south (think of it as just below 1st Street) up to 14th Street.  It covers maybe a quarter of a mile from Ave A all the way over to the East River.  The most widely known part of Alphabet City is Tompkins Square Park, which is interesting in all sorts of strange ways.

-H