Lower East Side

Understand

The Lower East Side is bounded by Houston Street, the Bowery, the Manhattan Bridge, and the East River, with the neighborhood's center being Orchard Street. For over 200 years, the Lower East Side has been a working-class immigrant neighborhood: it had large Irish and German populations in the early 19th century, and was a wholesale Jewish enclave by 1900. This street is now a true multicultural blend, with trendy boutiques, French cafés, and velvet-roped nightspots sprinkled among dry-goods discounters, Spanish bodegas, and mom-and-pop shops selling everything from T-shirts to designer fashions to menorahs. The East Village was also traditionally considered part of the Lower East Side, but that neighborhood has developed its own identity.

It was here that the New York garment industry began. The area used to be known as one of New York's favorite bargain beats, where serious shoppers found fantastic bargains (especially along Orchard Street on a Sunday afternoon), but this is a thing of the past as rents skyrocket and cutting-edge new designers and boutiques formerly seen in SoHo flock to the area.

Much of what used to be considered the Lower East Side, east of Bowery and the Manhattan Bridge overpass, is now functionally part of Chinatown, as another wave of immigration continues to move further north and east.

Get in

Several bus lines go to the Lower East Side, or you can take the J, M, or Z subway lines to Essex Street; the F to Delancey Street (which is connected to the J/M/Z Essex St. station), East Broadway, or 2nd Avenue; or you can take the B or D to Grand Street.

Go next

The obvious places to go next are

• the East Village, which is to a large extent a northern extension of the Lower East Side;
• Chinatown;
• NoLiTa, a neighborhood of upscale boutiques, quiet residential streets and loud clubs that was once the northern part of Little Italy and is not part of Chinatown but is covered in the Chinatown guide; and
• SoHo, a little ways further to the west than NoLiTa, much more crowded with tourists and shoppers, but with a lot of beautiful, classic buildings and cobblestoned side streets. All of these neighborhoods are easily walkable from the Lower East Side, for a person of normal fitness.

You can also access Williamsburg by taking the M, J or Z trains or walking across the Williamsburg Bridge, and DUMBO and Downtown Brooklyn are on the other side of the Manhattan Bridge or the first and second stops on the F train in Brooklyn, respectively.