The East Village Then and Now

Capturing the Changing Streets
An exciting and essential record of downtown Manhattaniconic street scenes captured from the same vantage point in 1980s and today.

An exciting and essential record of downtown Manhattaniconic street scenes captured from the same vantage point in 1980s and today.

When photographer Daniel Root moved to the East Village in the early 1980s, this constantly changing neighbourhood was in one of its periods of greatest ferment. Multiple immigrant groups maintained enclaves thereincluding Ukrainians, Puerto Ricans, Italians, Dominicans, and Poleseven as drug dealers plied their trade in abandoned buildings and young artists flooded in looking for cheap rents, followed close behind by real estate speculators. Through his lens, Root captured a young Madonna filming Desperately Seeking Susan on St. Marks Place; the storefront galleries of the East Village art scene; Life Cafe, where