Initially the location of the present-day East Village was occupied by the Lenape Native people, and was then divided into plantations by Dutch settlers.

[6] Rowhouses up to three stories were built on the side streets by such developers as Elisha Peck and Anson Green Phelps; Ephraim H. Wentworth; and Christopher S. Hubbard and Henry H.

One notable address was the twelve-house development called "Albion Place", located on Fourth Street between the Bowery and Second Avenue, built for Peck and Phelps in 1832–1833.

[35] To address concerns about unsafe and unsanitary conditions, a second set of laws was passed in 1879, requiring each room to have windows, resulting in the creation of air shafts between each building.

[44] This included groups of Italians and Eastern European Jews, as well as Greeks, Hungarians, Poles, Romanians, Russians, Slovaks and Ukrainians, each of whom settled in relatively homogeneous enclaves.

[45] The Roman Catholic Poles as well as the Protestant Hungarians would also have a significant impact in the East Side, erecting houses of worship next to each other along 7th Street at the turn of the 20th century.

In the mid-20th-century, landfill – including World War II debris and rubble shipped from London – was used to extend the shoreline to provide foundation for the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive.

[67] Latin American immigrants started to move to the East Side, settling in the eastern part of the neighborhood and creating an enclave that later came to be known as Loisaida.

[78] Another redevelopment project that was completed was the Village View Houses on First Avenue between East 2nd and 6th Streets, which opened in 1964[78] partially on the site of the old St. Nicholas Kirche.

[72] Until the mid-20th century the area was simply the northern part of the Lower East Side, with a similar culture of immigrant, working-class life.

[86] These included the Fillmore East Music Hall (later a gay private nightclub called The Saint), which was located in a movie theater at 105 Second Avenue.

[86][79]: 264  The Phyllis Anderson Theatre was converted into Second Avenue Theater, an annex of the CBGB music club, and hosted musicians and bands such as Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, and Talking Heads.

The Pyramid Club, which opened in 1979 at 101 Avenue A, hosted musical acts such as Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers, as well as drag performers such as RuPaul and Ann Magnuson.

[90] One club that tried to resurrect the neighborhood's past artistic prominence was Mo Pitkins' House of Satisfaction, part-owned by comedian Jimmy Fallon before it closed in 2007.

[95] However, as early as 1983, the Times reported that because of the influx of artists, many longtime establishments and immigrants were being forced to leave the East Village due to rising rents.

About half of the East Village's stores had opened within the decade since the riot, while vacancy rates in that period had dropped from 20% to 3%, indicating that many of the longtime merchants had been pushed out.

[104] Local community groups such as the GVSHP are actively working to gain individual and district landmark designations for the East Village to preserve and protect the architectural and cultural identity of the neighborhood.

For instance, although the GVSHP and allied groups asked in 2012 that the Mary Help of Christians school, church and rectory be designated as landmarks, the site was demolished starting in 2013.

[122] In 2011, an early 19th-century Federal house at 35 Cooper Square – one of the oldest on the Bowery and in the East Village – was approved for demolition to make way for a college dorm.

[130] Landlord Maria Hrynenko and an unlicensed plumber and another employee were sentenced to prison time for their part in causing the explosion in New York State Supreme Court.

Its turn-around was cause for The New York Times to observe in 2005 that Alphabet City went "from a drug-infested no man's land to the epicenter of downtown cool".

Redevelopment of the avenue from flophouses to luxury condominiums has met resistance from long-term residents, who agree the neighborhood has improved but its unique, gritty character is disappearing.

It is the location of the Bowery Poetry Club, where artists Amiri Baraka and Taylor Mead have held regular readings and performances,[144] and until 2006 was home to the punk–rock nightclub CBGB.

[145] Little Ukraine is an ethnic enclave in the East Village, which has served as a spiritual, political and cultural epicenter for several waves of Ukrainian Americans in New York City as far back as the late 19th century.

[146] At the beginning of the 20th century, Ukrainian immigrants began moving into areas previously dominated by fellow Eastern European and Galician Jews, as well as the Lower East Side's German enclave.

Starting in 1976 the church has sponsored an annual Ukrainian Heritage Festival, regularly described as one of the few remaining authentic New York City street fairs.

[244] St. Ann's Church, a rusticated-stone structure with a Romanesque Revival tower on East 12th Street that dated to 1847, was sold to NYU to make way for a 26-story, 700-bed dormitory.

[244] According to many residents, NYU's alteration and demolition of historic buildings, such as the Peter Cooper Post Office, is spoiling the physical and socio-economic landscape that makes this neighborhood so interesting and attractive.

[245] NYU has often been at odds with residents of both the East and West Villages due to its expansive development plans; urban preservationist Jane Jacobs battled the school in the 1960s.

[246] "She spoke of how universities and hospitals often had a special kind of hubris reflected in the fact that they often thought it was OK to destroy a neighborhood to suit their needs," said Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.