In the 1930s, today’s East Village and Lower East Side, long the country’s most crowded and notorious slum, was being dramatically transformed. The nation’s first federally-subsidized public housing was being built. Immigration from Europe, once the neighborhood’s lifeblood, had been cut off by restrictive laws, though new laws granting citizenship to residents of Puerto Rico precipitated the beginnings of what would, in the post-WWII years, become a massive migration of residents from the island to this neighborhood. Tenements were being demolished to make way for widened streets and new subway lines running throughout the neighborhood. And a new, innovative park was being planned for this poor, immigrant neighborhood.

East River Park, shortly after its opening in 1939. Photo: nycurbanism

One of the most dramatic and lasting transformations of the neighborhood took place on July 27, 1939, when the first sections of the East River Park opened with great fanfare at an event presided over by Robert Moses and Mayor La Guardia.

The roughly 50-acre, 1.5 mile-long park, which stretches from 12th to Montgomery Streets, has served generations of locals. But after 80 years, it’s future is uncertain, as the City has decided to protect Lower Manhattan from rising sea levels and flooding by demolishing the current park and rebuilding it ten feet higher.

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