Gentrification in East Harlem pt. 4

East 100th Street – Block Party

Veterans of East 100th Street still host a giant street party every summer between First and Second Avenue. In August 2025 I attended and got to speak with many of the participants and photograph the festivities.

A man wearing a white t-shirt with the text 'SPANISH East 100th Street El BARRIO NEW YORK CITY HARLEM' stands in front of a fence, pointing at his shirt. In the background, another person is sitting near a grill.
Joel was setting up a hamburger stand and chatted to me a little about the old days on East 100th Street before he moved.
A man wearing a white t-shirt with text related to Spanish Harlem stands outdoors, smiling and making a peace sign with his fingers.
Rafael lived here until he was 18 when the city moved people out to renovate with an option to return. Few did as prices were high and they had grown accustomed to their new neighborhoods.
A smiling man wearing a hat and glasses sits in a park next to a black and white dog wearing a red harness, with a fence and green trees in the background.
David moved here in 1968 and showed me where he’d met Marc Anthony, the celebrated Puerto Rican singer, actor, and songwriter, outside the building where he grew up on E 101st St.
Four men posing with electric bicycles in an urban setting, wearing casual clothing. One man is seated on a bike while the others stand beside their bikes, showing playful gestures. Background features apartment buildings and a community area.
Two men with long hair stand together outdoors, smiling. One man has dreadlocks and is wearing a t-shirt with a graphic print, while the other has long, braided hair and is wearing a white t-shirt with bold text. In the background, there is a green field and a chain-link fence.
Sean, on the right, left East 100th Street for New England and then moved to the South. His son, left, expressed incredulity at some of his father’s stories from back in the day.

None of the people I spoke with has lived on East 100th Street for years but the bonds of community keep them coming back for the party year after year. They told me fondly, stories of the good old days, that mostly left out the drug-dealing, crime and dilapidated housing. So while the street now is clean and safer, with decent housing, few of it’s former residents remain and current residents seemed somewhat puzzled by the loud music and party.

Other Stories

A man sitting on a bench wearing a black Superman t-shirt and a New York Yankees cap, with a serious expression, in an urban setting.

Herman McGarrah, a lifetime resident of the area who I met on Second Avenue between 100th and 101st Street, told me “it’s a normal neighbourhood like any other.” Drugs were what made it bad in the ‘60s but people have aged out of them.

He told me he’d been in the paper as a “Times Square hero,” and I was pleased to be able to find the article.

Article headline about a hero saving a baby girl from subway tracks in Times Square.

Redeemers

Part of New York’s recycling program includes charging a 5-cent deposit on drinks that come in bottles or cans. When empty, that container can later be redeemed at shops to receive the 5 cents back. New Yorkers with sufficient income, treat this like a tax, seldom redeeming their bottles and cans and simply recycling them. “Redeemers” collect them from curb-side bins and get their income from redeeming large numbers of containers – every 20 is $1. There are also middlemen who will give redeemers less than 5¢ per bottle but remove the bother of finding a store willing to deal with them.
Below, we see a shop that has machines outside for redeeming the containers, by type. They read a barcode on the side of the containers and print a paper chit for the total amount deposited which can be redeemed for cash inside the store.

Three individuals recycling bottles and cans at collection machines.
East 101st Street between First and Second Avenue
A man in a white headscarf using a recycling machine for plastic and cans, focusing on the collection slot.
This gentleman explained to me that he wasn’t living as a redeemer but he did buy bottles of water by the case, so it was easy for him to return with the case-load of empty bottles and redeem them all. I helped him with some wrinkled labels on bottles whose barcodes were not being read by the machine as we talked.

Although 96th Street has long been the Upper East Side’s northern frontier, 2010 census data show that it might be subject to review. Southeastern Harlem saw a 40 percent increase in white residents over the preceding ten-year period, while minority numbers increased below that border line. The difference between these neighborhoods is a matter of connotation and culture, rather than one of geography. In the past few years, several realtors, seeking a price bump from the tonier name, have tried to push the boundary toward the triple digits, particularly along Central Park; those efforts haven’t stuck. Although the lines might be blurring, they appear to be etched in stone. One factor helping preserve East Harlem, to some extent, is the fact that over 40% of housing in the area is dedicated low-income housing.

1:
Intro
2:
Housing
3: Shopping
4: Street party