Portrait of the Lower East Side – 1955
By Gary Beck
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– From Rude Awakenings
The Lower East Side is a place of energetic life. It has none of the rigidity of a sterile rich
neighborhood, or the envy of the middle income areas. Poverty and want make all slum
dwellers kin, despite their outward unawareness; for since they are poor in possessions,
they must be rich in dreams. The slums of a great American city are the mixing pots of
humanity. The Lower East Side, Breugal like, is the great canvas of man, showing the
range of human types. There is no fusion here; the Negro, Puerto Rican, Italian, Jew,
Russian, Irishman and Pole are separate and distinct from each other, but alike in
undernourishment and deprivation.
A city is a hive of dreams and in the greatest city in the land, dreams are still being
struggled for.…
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