It's true that East Harlem has the highest density of housing projects in the city but what seldom gets press is that there are pockets of residential, brownstone side streets and pre-war micro-neighborhoods. The new East River Plaza just happens to have been planned in one of the most historic, low-rise areas of East Harlem. Pleasant Avenue was ground zero for Italian Harlem, and it is pretty much intact. Side streets are filled with residential townhouses while the main street of Pleasant Avenue has the usual tenement buildings from the early century with a few mom and pop businesses occupying the store fronts. Another residential factor in the area is the Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics (last photo), which takes up two city blocks. The high school has over 1,500 students that flood the narrow streets in the morning and afternoons. Will this area become a high traffic zone once the East River Plaza opens? What extra precautions have been planned to insure that this once quiet neighborhood will be safe from a potentially risky concentration of cars? Read our previous post on Italian East Harlem: LINK. Photos by Ulysses
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