East Village

East Village is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan. Its boundary to the north is Gramercy Park and Stuyvesant Town, to the south by the Lower East Side, and to the east by the East River. Generally, although definitions vary on the neighborhood's exact street boundaries, the East Village is considered to be the area east of Broadway to the East River, between 14th Street and Houston Street.The area was once generally considered to be part of the Lower East Side with a large Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish population but gradually changed and by the late 1960s, many artists, musicians, students and hippies began to move into the area, attracted by cheap rents and the base of Beatniks who had lived there since the 1950s. The neighborhood has become a center of the counterculture in New York, and is known as the birthplace and historical home of many artistic movements, including punk rock and the Nuyorican literary movement. It has also been the site of protests and riots.East Village is still known for its diverse community, vibrant nightlife and artistic sensibility, although in recent decades it has been argued that gentrification has changed the character of the neighborhood.