The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City.

[16]As was true of all of Manhattan Island, the area now known as the Lower East Side was occupied by members of the Lenape tribe, who were organized in bands that moved from place to place according to the seasons, fishing on the rivers in the summer, and moving inland in the fall and winter to gather crops and hunt for food.

One of the largest of these was located along the modern Bowery between Prince Street and Astor Place, as well as the "only separate enclave" of this type within Manhattan.

[21] In response to the pressures of a growing city, Delancey began to survey streets in the southern part of the "West Farm"[22] in the 1760s.

The city Commissioners of Forfeiture eliminated the aristocratic planned square for a grid, effacing Delancey's vision of a New York laid out like the West End of London.

On February 25, 1643, as part of Kieft's War, volunteers from the New Amsterdam colony killed forty Wiechquaesgecks at their encampment in the Massacre at Corlears Hook,[25] in retaliation for ongoing conflicts between the colonists and the natives of the area, including the natives' unwillingness to pay tribute and their refusal to turn over the accused killer of a colonist.

The rough unplanned settlement that developed at Corlaer's Hook under the British occupation of New York during the Revolution was separated from the densely populated city by rugged hills of glacial till: "this region lay beyond the city proper, from which it was separated by high, uncultivated, and rough hills", observers recalled in 1843.

[27] As early as 1816, Corlears Hook was notorious for streetwalkers, "a resort for the lewd and abandoned of both sexes", and in 1821 its "streets abounding every night with preconcerted groups of thieves and prostitutes" were noted by The Christian Herald.

[19] Corlears Hook is mentioned on the first page of Chapter 1 of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, first published in 1851: "Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon.

The name is preserved in Corlears Hook Park at the intersection of Jackson and Cherry Streets along the East River Drive.

[32] The bulk of immigrants who came to New York City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries came to the Lower East Side, moving into crowded tenements there.

[19][34] This was followed by 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.

It was also known as a place where many popular performers had grown up, such as Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson, George and Ira Gershwin, Jimmy Durante, and Irving Berlin.

Later, more radical artists such as the Beat poets and writers were drawn to the neighborhood – especially the parts which later became the East Village – by the inexpensive housing and cheap food.

[19] The German population decreased in the early twentieth century as a result of the General Slocum disaster and due to anti-German sentiment prompted by World War I.

After World War II, the Lower East Side became New York City's first racially integrated neighborhood with the influx of African Americans and Puerto Ricans.

The Lower East Side then experienced a period of "persistent poverty, crime, drugs, and abandoned housing".

[38][39] By the 1980s, the Lower East Side had begun to stabilize after its period of decline, and once again began to attract students, artists, and adventurous members of the middle-class, as well as immigrants from countries such as Taiwan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, China, the Dominican Republic, India, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Poland.

As well as Irish, Italians, Poles, Ukrainians, Romanians and other ethnic groups, it once had a sizeable German population and was known as Little Germany (Kleindeutschland).

Today it is a predominantly Puerto Rican and Dominican community, and in the process of gentrification (as documented by the portraits of its residents in the Clinton+Rivington chapter of The Corners Project.

In what is now the East Village, earlier populations of Poles and Ukrainians have moved on and been largely supplanted by newer immigrants.

There is also a notable population of Bangladeshis and other immigrants from Muslim countries, many of whom are congregants of the small Madina Masjid, a mosque on First Avenue and 11th Street.

Chinese residents have also been moving into Lower East Side, and since the late 20th century, they have comprised a large immigrant group in the area.

[56][57][58] Notable sites include: Synagogues include: Little Fuzhou (Chinese: 小福州; pinyin: Xiǎo Fúzhōu; Foochow Romanized: Siēu-hók-ciŭ), or Fuzhou Town (Chinese: 福州埠; pinyin: Fúzhōu Bù; Foochow Romanized: Hók-ciŭ-pú) is a neighborhood within the eastern sliver of Chinatown, in the Two Bridges and Lower East Side areas of Manhattan.

There is a rapidly increasing influx of high-income, often non-Chinese, professionals moving into this area, including high-end hipster-owned businesses.

[68] Begun by a group of Colab no wave artists (some living on Ludlow Street), ABC No Rio opened an outsider gallery space that invited community participation and encouraged the widespread production of art.

The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, which opened in 2012, exhibits photography featuring the neighborhood in addition to chronicling its history of activism.

The Lower East Side is the location of the Slipper Room, a burlesque, variety and vaudeville theatre on Orchard and Stanton.

Variety shows are regularly hosted by comedians James Habacker, Bradford Scobie, Matthew Holtzclaw, and Matt Roper, under the guise of various characters.

It was originally built as a Carnegie library in 1909, but was torn down when Houston Street was expanded; the current one-story structure was completed in 1960.