Wed, 02 Jun 2004 03:06:45 GMT

The Upper East Side is bordered by 59th and 96th Streets on the north and south--by Fifth Avenue and the East River on the east and west. Within in Upper East Side, you have smaller neighborhoods such as Lenox Hill, Yorkville, Carnegie Hill. I live with my employers in Yorkville with is considered the 80s East of Lexington. A map for your convenience:

In general, I find the Upper East Side quite boring. Before moving here for work, I only passed through on my way to Museum Row. But every once in awhile when walking through Yorkville, I find singular places that stand out for me--strange islands in a sea of manicures and Prada bags. I have come across a couple of German churches which date back to the 19th Century--St. Stephen's, a Hungarian church--a Ukrainian cultural institute. But where are these Germans, Hungarians and Ukranians? Here is what I have found so far...

Yorkville, in the east 80's, was once a thriving German community. Yorkville was known for its immigrant enclaves. Churches in this area still hold services in German, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak and other languages. --http://pa.essortment.com/newyorkcitybo_rvdk.htm

Also (excerpted):

The General Slocum was an excursion ferry built in 1891 with a rated capacity of three thousand passengers. On June 15, 1904, the ferry was chartered by St. Mark's Lutheran Church in the East Village. Some 1,358 members of Kleindeutschland (Little Germany), the tightly knit German immigrant community then surrounding Tompkins Square on the Lower East Side, boarded the ferry around nine that morning at a pier on Third Street and the East River...

Just as the General Slocum was passing Sunken Meadow, adjacent to Randalls Island in the Hell Gate, almost under where the Triborough Bridge spans the river today, cries of "Fire!" broke out below. "It was only a matter of seconds until the entire forward part of the boat was a mass of flames," the Times reporters continued, and passengers began rushing madly over the three decks to avoid the flames, "All this time full speed ahead was maintained, and the flames, fanned fiercely by the wind, ate their way swiftly toward the hapless women and babies that were crowded on all the decks astern."

All told, 1,021 perished out of the original 1,358 who boarded the ship that morning. But there were miracles.

The Times reported that on the night of June 14, 1904, "grief-crazed crowds" lined the shore where the bodies were being brought in by the boatload: "Scores were prevented from throwing themselves into the river." Terrible weeks of recrimination, accusation, investigation, and trials followed the disaster. There were reports of rotten life jackets and fire hoses that burst under pressure. Some jackets were found to have been stuffed with metal to give them the regulation weight. The captain and crew were pilloried in the press, as were the ship's owners. Captain Van Schaick was sentenced to ten years in prison for his part in the disaster but was pardoned four years later by President Taft. Kleindeutchland never recovered. The German settlement moved uptown to what was known as Yorkville, on the East Side overlooking the site of the disaster, and to Astoria in Queens. The burning of the General Slocum remains one of the worst disasters in New York City history. --http://www.newyorkhistory.info/Hell-Gate/General-Slocum.html

And that is a little tidbit about my neighborhood.

Yaddyra Peralta: Yorkville