The West Village Part of the East Village-- Stuyvesant Street

To put it bluntly, compared to the West Village, the East Village lacks charm.

The exception is the area around Stuyvesant Street North of Astor Place, where gut renovations started in the late 1960's..then came the end of rent control...and finally some not very great but acceptable NYU dorms.

Of course, the former residents of the area were extremely unhappy at being displaced...this once hipster area is of course now Yuppie land..but also attracts young people from all over, especially nearby St.Mark's Place, which somehow maintains a lot of its special "raffish charm" from the Olden Days... 

An important landmark down here is St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery Church, which had rich parishioners from the 1930's  onwards who became more and more liberal in the 1960s'..but many came in on Sunday in their big new cars, really sticking out like sore thumbs. The Church and its programs blend in with the neighborhood more now...times change everything.

The Church is at the Second Avenue end of Stuyvesant Street... Here is their website

http://stmarksbowery.org/