Little Germany (Kleindeutschland)

The East Village was once called "Little Germany," or "Kleindeutschland." Its future was largely destroyed by the deaths in the ship tragedy of the General Slocum in 1904. (See http://www.general-slocum.com and www.tenement.org)

Tompkins Square Park in "Little Germany" was dubbed "Little Berlin" in the New York (NY) Sun on May 27, 1894.

Yorkville on the Upper East Side was/is also a "Little Germany."


24 May 1854, New York (NY) Times, pg. 8:
Greenwich street was Little Germany yesterday.

20 September 1873, Appletons' Journal of Literature, Science and Art, pg. 366:
EVENING IN TOMPKINS SQUARE.
(...)
The square is near the heart of the great German quarter, or of "Little Germany." The tide of immigration has left an eddy in this locality, and every person that one meets is a drop of this eddy. All are Germans.

11 January 1902, Harper's Weekly, pg. 50:
"Because," I says, "me mudder gets goo wages doing fancy ironing at home for de Dago what runs de French laundry for de Austrians in Little Germany on Second Avenoo," I says.

19 June 1904, New York (NY) Times, pg. 3:
MOURNFUL POMP OF
DEATH ON EAST SIDE
(...)
The funeral knell greeted the rising sun in "Little Germany" yesterday, and long after night had fallen the doleful sound echoed and re-echoed among its bereaved tenements and dwellings as prayers for the dead were being said over victims of the General Slocum disaster.

24 October 1926, New York (NY) Times, pg. SM6:
ALIEN YORKVILLE RE-ENTERS THE UNION
Foreign Charm of New York's Upper East Side Fades as Old Racial Groups Migrate
(...)
On the western periphery of "Little Germany," between Third and Second Avenues, the front of the genuine upper east side is being broken through by builders and realtors.

13 March 1932, New York (NY) Times, pg. SM22:
IN "Little Germany," on the northern border of the district - St. Mark's Place and East Eighth and Ninth Streets - weinstubes clustered as thickly as fiftenn on a single block. Although more conservative as to closing hours than the cafes further downtown, they were filled each evening with portly patrons, who beamed in a convivial atmosphere flavored by the light libation, the heavy pancake and the deutsche lied.

The section began losing its identity as a Teutonic stronghold after the Slocum disaster in 1904.