East Side

“ The wonder of the steerage people pouring down their proper gangway is contrasted with the conventional at-home-ness of the first-class passengers above. Then we behold the seething human cauldron of the East Side, then the jolly little wedding-dance, then the life of the East Side, from the policeman to the peanut-man, and including the bar tender, for the crowd is treated on two separate occasions. ”

“ This is the cry, uttered in a clear and cheerful voice, which is frequently heard in the alleys and back yards as well as the streets and avenues of that vast and densely populated section of the American metropolis known as the great East Side. The man who utters it is an unusually agreeable, as well as active and energetic, representative of the classic trade of scissors-grinding. He is a pleasant-faced, good-humored young fellow, with light-brown hair and rounded, open countenance, from which a pair of bright blue eyes gaze at you with a frank and sympathetic expression. ”

“ Half the East Side swarmed over it with shrieks of delight, and carried the mayor and the city government, who had come to see the show, fairly off their feet. And now "we are seven," or will be when the one in Brooklyn has been built,—great, handsome structures, seven hundred feet long, some of them, with music every night for mother and the babies, and for papa, who can smoke his pipe there in peace. The moon shines upon the quiet river, and the steamers go by with their lights. The street is far away with its noise. The young people go sparking in all honor, as it is their right to do. ”

“ Tenth Avenue and the streets west of it are lacking in the crowds and bustle and brilliant lights of the East Side. Eleventh Avenue by night is almost dark, and throughout the district are long stretches of poorly lit cross streets in which only the dingy store windows shine feebly. ”

“ The houses, as in all parts of London, were exceedingly low, two and three stories, with occasional four- and five-story buildings for variation, but all built out of that drab, yellowish-gray brick which when properly smoked has such a sad and yet effective air. The streets were not narrow, as in New York’s East Side,—quite the contrary; but the difference in crowds, color, noise, life, was astounding. In New York the East Side streets, as I have said, are almost invariably crowded. ”

“ Ten minutes’ walk from the subway brought him before a dingy and dilapidated three-story tenement on the East Side. The Nest, they called it in the underworld; and worthily so, for its roof sheltered more of the cheaper and petty class of criminals probably than any other single dwelling in New York—the steerers, the hangers-on, the stalls, those of the lesser breed of vultures, and the more vicious therefore, who at best made but a precarious livelihood from their iniquitous pursuits. ”

“ Bronzed faces from sea and mountains thronged the streets, health and light-heartedness showed in every eye, for autumn in New York wields a potent magic not to be denied, and even the East Side slums, where the unfortunates crowd in their squalid thousands, bad the appearance of having been swept and cleansed. ”

“ The radical East Side lived in a delirium, spending almost all of its time at monster meetings and discussing these matters in cafés, forgetting political differences and brought into close comradeship by the glorious events happening in the fatherland. ”

“ A sick woman in a squalid rear tenement, so wretched and so pitiful that, in all the years since, I have not seen anything more appealing, determined me, within half an hour, to live on the East Side. ”

“ He preferred the more plebeian trails, the department-store infested thoroughfare to the west, with the clattering "El" road overhead; or Fourth Avenue to the east, beginning at the statue of "George the Veracious," running between the silent and terrible mountains, finally, with a shriek and a crash, to dive headlong into the tunnel at Thirty-fourth Street, and never to be seen again; or even some purlieu of the great East Side, where he could sit listening at ease in the humble shop of Fitbad the Tailor. ”

“ In summer the streets of the East Side are merry with the voices of the numerous children splashing about in life-preservers, while their mothers sit sewing in their skiffs, or bargain with the peddlers who steer their well-laden push-rafts from place to place, avoiding the vigilant eyes of the police tugs. ”

“ People with an ephemeral interest in the social order and some who are only seeking new thrills are prone to look upon the East Side as presenting a picturesque and alluring field for experimentation, and they are, at times, responsible for the confused conception of the neighborhood in the public mind. ”

“ I like to take my friends to the East Side of New York City. I glory in its self-respect, its brave struggle against poverty and disease, its bright children filling all the available space and asserting their childhood by playing in the busy street, defying its noisy traffic. They make of each hurdy-gurdy the center of a great festival, dancing as the elves are said to dance, because it is their nature to. ”

“ What bridge whist is to Fifth Avenue so is stuss to the East Side. No one save the dealer wins at stuss, and yet the device possesses an alluring feature. When the victim gets up from the table, the bank under the descriptive of viggresh returns him one-tenth of his losings. No one ever leaves a stuss game broke, and that final ray of sure sunshine forms indubitably the strong attraction. Stuss licks up as with a tongue of fire a round full fifth of all the East Side earns, and to viggresh should be given the black glory thereof.
The Bottler owned talents to make money. ”

“ They all assemble in the cafés, those universities of the East Side, and in these places of judgment all things are determined. Is there a great world problem that puzzles and vexes all mankind? The debaters at one of these tea-houses take it up at their earliest discussion and soon the problem is solved and the way of human progress is clear again. Is there a question that has troubled the ages? Come and spend fifteen minutes on the East Side, and the salvation of humanity will be assured to you. ”

“ Their district was the great field of activity for the American University Settlement worker and fashionable slummer. The East Side was a place upon which one descended in quest of esoteric types and "local color," as well as for purposes of philanthropy and "uplift" work. ”

“ Every open window of the big tenements, that stand like a continuous brick wall on both sides of the way, gives you a glimpse of one of these shops as the train speeds by. Men and women bending over their machines, or ironing clothes at the window, half-naked. Proprieties do not count on the East Side; nothing counts that cannot be converted into hard cash. ”

“ And beneath the raging fury that the taunts and threats roused in him, beneath wonder that on the lips of such a man he should find the smart sayings of the radicals of New York’s East Side, slowly mounted a growing horror at the prospect. ”

“ It may be that the second and third generations of immigrants, born on the East Side, are true New Yorkers, just as a vanishing generation of elderly men and women on Murray Hill and the Avenue are true New Yorkers. But the great majority of New York's five millions cherish in their hearts either the memory or the hope of some spot far away to which they give the allegiance of home love. ”

“ East Side problems were much more picturesque and inviting. So our district has grown up under a heritage of desolation and neglect, uninteresting to look at, unpleasant to live in, overlooked, unsympathized with, and neglected into aloofness, till today its static population is almost isolated from and little affected by the life of the rest of the city. The casual little horse car which jingles up Tenth Avenue four times an hour is typical of the West Sider’s home, just as the Draft Riots of 1863 were typical of his temper. ”

“ That part of New York City known as the East Side, the region south of Fourteenth Street and east of Broadway, is the most densely populated square mile on earth. Its people are of all races; Chinatown, Little Hungary and Little Italy elbow each other; streets where the signs are in Hebrew characters, theatres where plays are given in Yiddish, notices in the parks in four or five languages, make one rub his eyes and wonder if he is not in some foreign land. Into this region Myra Kelly went as a teacher in the public school. ”

“ The most wonderful thing that comes into the lives of city girls who have grown up on the crowded East Side is their first trip to the country. They don't know the most ordinary things. One of my friends, who had tried every word she could think of, finally told some children to run up on the fire-escape, and they all scrambled for the piazza, as she thought they would. The country seems very lonely at first, and the dark rather terrifying. They have never known what dark is, for lamps are burning all night in most of the tenements. ”

“ They were returning from a visit to a Yiddish theater, in the heart of the East Side, when the whim seized Dangerfield, who was an inveterate night-owl, to turn aside for a last pleasant hour in one of the least popular restaurants of lower Second Avenue, the showplace of the exploited East Side. ”

“ There is no voiceless degradation that I have ever seen in America. The East Side of New York is unquestionably one of the noisiest spots in the world, if not the worst. It is so full of children—so full of hope too.
I was surprised to find how distinctly different are the two realms of poverty in New York and London.
On my first visit I took the subway or tube to St. Mary’s Station, Whitechapel, and getting out, investigated all that region which lies between there and the Great Eastern Railway Station and Bethnal Green and Shoreditch. I also reconnoitered Bethnal Green. ”

“ Why would a sophisticated Timesman choose the West Side over the East? "There are many more wonderful buildings on the West Side," says Goldberger. Unfortunately not many of the buildings on the West Side have been kept up as well as the East Side. ... In terms of apartment house architecture, Central Park West is probably the best street in New York. It has all the grandeur and beauty and monumentality of Fifth Avenue and it also has the relaxed atmosphere."
There's not one West Side," he continues. "There's at least 10. Around here is one neighborhood. ”

“ Hester Street follows leaders and causes rather than party emblems. Nowhere is the art of splitting a ticket better understood. The only time you can predict the East Side vote is when there is a sharp alignment of the better citizens against the boss-ridden. Then you will find the naturalized citizens in the same camp with men like Jacob Riis and women like Lillian Wald. And the experience of New York is duplicated in Chicago and in Philadelphia and in every center of immigration. ”

“ As for you, the folk who promenade the broad sidewalks are more worth your while. There are more of them upon the west walk than upon the east—for some strange reason that has long since brought about a similar phenomenon upon Broadway and sent west side rents high above those upon the east. Fifth avenue thrusts its cosmopolitanism upon you, not alone in her shops, with their wonderfully varied offerings, but in the very humans who tread her pavements. The New York girl may not always be beautiful but she is rarely anything but impeccable. ”

“ I'm sorry you lost them, and I should like to know how it happened."
"Bravely spoken," said the beggar.
"I have been told," said Barbara, "that you are a great power in the East Side, a sort of overlord."
"Even a beggar has flatterers. They overrate me." The accompanying shrug of his great shoulders had an affectation of humility. "Now, if I had a pair of legs--but I haven't. And if I had I shouldn't be an East-Sider. For the maimed, the crippled, the diseased, it is pleasantest to be in residence on the East Side. You have company. ”

“ If Jimmie the Monk is mixed up in it that is the connecting link between these fellows and the East Side. And it's back to the East Side that the trail nearly always leads, for over in the East Side of New York is the feudal fastness of the politician who tells the public to be damned, and is rewarded with a fortune for his pains. The politician protects the gangster; the gangster protects the procurer, and both of them vote early and often for the politician. ”

“ She suggested that they walk, and a few minutes later, David reciting the outline of his story, they entered Second Avenue, the East Side's boulevard, always thronged with business folk, shoppers, promenaders, students. ”

“ He will then feel a love for New York equal to the Chicagoan’s love for his city, and when he sees across the New Jersey flats the smoke and the tall buildings and the twin spires of the cathedral, he will wish to shout, as the cowboys do when they “come into town,” at being back again in the only place where one can both hear the Tough Girl of the East Side ask for her shoes, and the horn of the Country Club’s coach tooting above the roar of the Avenue.
The West is a very wonderful, large, unfinished, and out-of-doors portion of our country, and a most delightful place [243] to visit. ”

“ It is necessary to spend a summer in our neighborhood to realize fully the conditions under which many thousands of children are reared. One night during my first month on the East Side, sleepless because of the heat, I leaned out of the window and looked down on Rivington Street. Life was in full course there. Some of the push-cart venders still sold their wares. Sitting on the curb directly under my [70] window, with her feet in the gutter, was a woman, drooping from exhaustion, a baby at her breast. ”

“ One family to a house. In these houses lived the smart guys who lived directly off the poor boobs of the East Side: that is to say: doctors, lawyers, politicians, rabbis and prosperous storekeepers. Many of these guys were able to buy up the up-town blokes several times over, it was said, but they made out they lived simple and bragged about being East-Siders; it was good for business. They were smart guys all right, but Joe had no intention of stopping at East Broadway. ”