NYC dopers-re:East Village

Factual Questions
1

When did the media start calling this section of real estate East Village?I always thought of everything below 14th st.east of B’Way down to Canal as the Lower east side vs.I guess the Upper east.

I lived at 7th and A around the early 80s when this term was taking hold,tho I still couldn’t reconcile it with the real Village.Not talking the gay thing,just the feel of the 2 neighborhoods.Esp.when living hard by Alphabet City.

Guessing some landlords came up with the handle to justify some of those rents in the railroad flats.

What’s the straight dope on this?

2

In his book Ringolevio Emmett Grogan mentions the fact that it was “recently” renamed, in order to make people think it was the east side equivalent of Greenwich Village (and thus considerably less of a hole than it actually was).

The book was first published in 1972. I’m not sure if this was in the original or a later edition, but Grogan died in 1978.

3

It had acquired the name by at least the mid-1960s. The underground newspaper The East Village Other began publication in 1965.