Travels in the 2nd half

Mural of Oshun on P.S. 7   The New York City neighborhood of East Harlem, now known as El Barrio, has been the first stop for many immigrants over the decades. I recently took an early morning walk through part of El Barrio to enjoy some of its original architecture. East Harlem developed as the first train lines were built during the second half of the 19th century. Between WWI and WWII, the area was the landing place for mostly Jewish and Italian immigrants. They built businesses, churches and synagogues. After WWII, the children of these families used their GI benefits to go to college, and to buy homes in the outer boroughs and suburbs of New York. So by the 1950’s there were plenty of apartments ready for the “great migration” of Puerto Ricans. They moved into the area, which was close to jobs in lower Manhattan, and which came with the Catholic infrastructure already in place. So East Harlem became known as “Spanish Harlem”, or to the people who lived there, El Barrio - The N...

    For full disclosure, I have a deep and strong nostalgia for the New York of the 1970’s. Yes, I know all of the issues with crime and drugs. I lived through them. But the city had a “realness” then that 21st century gentrification has done away with. One neighborhood where this is fully evident is in Alphabet City. Alphabet City is the area east of Greenwich Village. Its name comes from the fact that the avenues there are named A through D, being east of 1st Avenue. It stretches from Houston Street north to 14th Street. When I was in college it was a poor, working class neighborhood. Drugs were rampant. Many buildings were abandoned, and squatters had moved in. The play/movie “Rent” is set in this area. There are clues to the age of store. One of them is not having an area code Homemade chairs set up for hanging out Alphabet City was one of the first neighborhoods in New York to be gentrified. While it has made the area safer, it has also struck at the heart of it. In the o...