Exploring the Fourth Arts Block in the East Village

By Phyllis Eckhaus

FRAGRANCE SHOP NEW YORK, AT 65 E. 4TH STREET (above) is where devoted customers have been concocting their own perfumes since 1992. Photo courtesy of Fragrance Shop New York’s Facebook page.

The acronym, FAB, is felicitous; the Fourth Arts Block, the short stretch of East Fourth Street between Bowery and Second Avenue, is indeed fabulous. The landmarked block, designated a “cultural district,” boasts more active cultural space per square foot than any other New York City block.

It has an array of quirky small businesses that have remained on the block for decades. It also offers truly affordable housing. In the tenement apartments above the storefronts, resident households earn about a third of the “Area Median Income.”

And it is the headquarters of the Cooper Square Committee, launched in 1959 to fight New York City development czar Robert Moses’ plan to urban renew the hell out of the Lower East Side. Declaring Lower East Siders “here to stay!” CSC is the oldest anti-displacement organization in the country—and its vision helped make FAB a reality.

On a blustery December Saturday, about 20 hardy and enthusiastic attendees relished a CSC-sponsored walk of the block and a detailed account of the history that birthed it.

CSC Fellow Miranda Alperstein was our guide, describing the block as an “amazing” example of “what we can do to preserve the things that are most important to us.” Given the city’s “incredibly expensive real estate” she observed, “there are a lot of people who are trying to squeeze out profits from that real estate” with no regard to the harm caused. FAB, she noted, shows that resistance is possible.

The tour began with cookies, coffee and history in CSC’s gallery space on the third floor of 61 E. 4th Street, a community space especially for the many residents in the 328 renovated units within the 21 buildings now comprising the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association.

Longtime CSC organizer and staffer Val Orselli emphasized the unique virtues of the Lower East Side, where “more than half the U.S. population” can trace their roots. “This is the first place to come to” because it was special—offering both affordable housing and “a community of many cultures.”

The LES, he declared, also has a long legacy of “struggle against the forces that be.” So, when residents received notices that their homes and neighborhoods were slotted for urban renewal—meaning demolition and displacement—they fought back.

Brutal city policies included “planned shrinkage”—the deliberate reduction of police and fire protection to force residents out. Orselli noted many neighborhood community gardens were once building sites torched by landlords or tenants.

Determined not just to protest but to “be for something,” CSC developed an “alternate plan” to prevent displacement by first building new housing on vacant lots, thus allowing residents to move into that new housing while their original housing was being renovated.

The plan made residents “beneficiaries and not the victims of urban renewal,” Orselli observed. After decades of struggle for financing, a revised plan was implemented in 1990.

Other CSC innovations were the creation of a mutual housing association (MHA)—enabling all 21 buildings to pool resources and be subsidized by commercial rents—and the establishment of an independent “community land trust” (CLT) owning the land and the buildings. The CLT helps ensure the MHA remains low-income housing in perpetuity.

We crossed the street to 62 E. 4th, where we were introduced to the Rod Rodgers Dance Company by Rachel Urbell, general manager. She described Rodgers, the late founder, as a man with a mission. Believing dance has the unique ability to touch people on a primal level, Rodgers wanted dance to speak to “the Black American experience.” We peeked into studios downstairs, where youth of multiple colors, athletic and graceful, were intensely engaged.

When the company first rented the building, Urbell said the space was raw, “just beams.”

Together with other grassroots arts organizations on the block—La MaMa and New York Theater Workshop among them—and with support from CSC, the company rallied against displacement.

In 2005, these arts groups succeeded in buying six city buildings and two vacant lots on the block. Each paid a dollar for their property and received a deed restricting it to non-profit cultural use.

Urbell summed up the process of purchase—and financing and renovation—as “painful” but lauded the perks of ownership, particularly the ability to support other struggling arts groups.

Next up was the commercial space at 65 E. 4th St., Fragrance Shop New York, where devoted customers have been concocting their own perfumes since 1992. Claire Lewis told us how her ardent love of perfumes persuaded the original owner to sell her the store. Her passion is to educate—she guides customers through their selection of “top notes, mid-notes and base notes” then blind tests them to make sure the scent they’ve invented is what they actually want.

Following the fragrance lesson, we popped into Piccola Strada, the cozy BYOB Italian restaurant at 77 E. 4th St. Owner/chef Esperanza Cipriani arrived from her apartment above the restaurant to tell us how the neighborhood is like a family. Herself Dominican, she learned to cook Italian from her husband Mario’s Venetian friend, and founded the restaurant in 2010. Declining to recommend specific dishes, “everything is good,” she declared.

Last up was a trek to a police parking lot on 326-332 E. 5th Street, where we returned to the CSC cause d’etre—affordable housing.

East Villagers Ellie and Monica praised the power of organizing with CSC’s help. Rent stabilized tenants at 48 Stuyvesant Street have been terrorized by raw sewage leaking into their apartments via electrical and other outlets, an issue across multiple buildings owned by landlord Mark Scharfman. A CSC-sponsored protest/dance party with a live band lifted their spirits and their cause, and they are now seeing “much more quick” responses from management: “They actually [fix] things.”

As for the police parking lot, it’s a plot with a future. The city has agreed to build 100 percent affordable housing there, and CSC envisions senior housing.

You can follow the Cooper Square Committee on Facebook to learn more about its work or sign up for future tours.