Yuko Nose (pronounced no-ZAY) has run the store at 97 Third Avenue for the past five years. Before that, she had a clothing store, Air Market, in the same space for 15 years. Originally from Tokyo, Nose has lived in New York City for three decades, now calling Greenpoint home. As to why she switched from selling clothing to objets d’art, she said: “I got bored.”

The Madina Mosque was founded in 1976 primarily by Bengali immigrants. Dubbed the "Muslim cab drivers’ spiritual pit stop," in an article by the Villager, it is the third oldest active mosque in New York City, daily bringing in hundreds of followers for prayer and worship from all over the five boroughs. It's a truly diverse community of people who come together in this convenient location to pray together. The nondescript brick exterior resembles a typical East Village building, except for the lighted signs in English and Arabic that wrap around it, reading, “There is none worthy of worship but Allah. Mohammed is the messenger of Allah.” Above the building’s back corner, away from the street, a demure minaret peeks up. Unlike traditional minarets, which are large enough for a person to stand inside and call the faithful to prayer, this one is only about 8 feet tall. The call to prayer is sung out from the front door, without a microphone, its only amplification provided by the wind.

What’s a Hollywood Walk of Fame–style memorial to Yiddish theater stars of the 19th and early 20th centuries doing on the corner of Second Avenue and 10th Street...outside of a bank? It was put here in 1984 by the Second Avenue Deli to commemorate the Lower East Side's glorious past as the "Jewish Rialto." In the early decades of the 20th century, a vibrant Yiddish theatre scene blossomed on the Lower East Side. Centered at Second Avenue and the Bowery, New York’s “Yiddish Broadway” offered dramas, comedies, and musicals that entertained and inspired thousands. In 1984, Second Avenue Deli owner Abe Lebewohl installed, in the sidewalk outside his beloved restaurant, a memorial to honor the stars of this once-thriving Jewish theater scene. In the style of Hollywood Boulevard, Lebewohl embedded two rows of granite stars bearing the names of the best and brightest Jewish performers. Over 30 Jewish artists were memorialized in this way. There is one plaque of Abraham Goldfaden. According to his 1908 obituary in the New York Times, Goldfaden was the founder of Yiddish theater. Luckily, the Walk of Fame remained despite the Deli's closure in 2006. But now this civic tribute is deteriorating. Friends of the Abe Lebewohl Yiddish Walk of Fame is working to promote the history and culture of Yiddish Theatre and the neighborhood inspired by the granite stars first embedded in the sidewalk of Second Avenue by restauranteur Abe Lebewohl.

Fresco occupies the ground floor of 138 Second Avenue. The building is one of just a handful of fine Federal row houses left in the neighborhood. The store is owned and run by Anna, Ilias, and Vanessa Iliopoulos– three siblings who grew up in South Africa and Greece. They considered opening their business in Cyprus or Dubai, but eventually found their way to the East Village of Manhattan. Both they and their customers consider that a very good (and yummy!) thing.

Open 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week, Gem Spa has long been a cultural destination in the East Village. It is said to have invented the quintessential New York drink–– egg cream! The candy stored was founded by Ruby Silverstein and Harold Shepard in 1957, and is now managed by Ray Patel, an immigrant from Gujarat state in India, who bought the business in 1986. Despite change in ownership, Gem Spa continues to make the original egg cream recipe. According the New York Times, Patel learned the recipe, "including the secret stirring motions that create a frothy head resembling beaten egg whites, from the previous owner (who was Italian), who learned it from the first owner (who was Jewish)."

Ray's Candy Store is an anchor in an ever-changing environment. It has been in the East Village for years, providing the little things that make a neighborhood livable – a coffee on the way to work, an ice cream on the way to the park, fries late on a weekend night. The store is owned by an Iranian immigrant named Asghar Ghahraman who bought the place over forty years ago. Now in his eighties, he continues to run the store to this day. He has been running the store for half his life!

St. Brigid's parish was organized in 1847 by Rev. Richard Kein, pastor of the Church of the Nativity. Construction began in 1848 by Irish shipwrights for those fleeing the Great Irish Famine. The architect of the church was Patrick Keely, who handcarved the gothic altarpieces himself. The church was dedicated by Bishop John Hughes on December 2, 1849. "In its early years, St. Brigid’s served as a haven for Irish immigrants fleeing the famine, and later as a stalwart presence for the ever-changing immigrant populations to the neighborhood, from the Polish and Germans, to Ukrainians and Puerto Ricans," wrote Adam Farley, when the church was re-opened in 2013 after almost ten years of renovations and efforts to save the building, which the Archdiocese of New York had tried to close. Instead, the pews were replaced and the exterior restored to resemble the original brownstone. Stained glass windows were brought from St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Harlem, which closed in 2003. The parish also merged with St. Emeric’s nearby, and the parish and the church are now known as St. Brigid and St. Emeric.

This is a 1970s photo of East 6th Street all dolled up to look much older – for the filming of the Godfather II! The Oscar-winning sequel used East 6th Street to depict Vito Corleone’s Italian neighborhood of 1917, where he first started his family and his life of crime. Thankfully we’ve managed to hold on to this entire strip of tenements, and many of their architectural details. The arched windows at 524 and the protruding glass storefront and centered wooden doorway of 520 (now a bar, rather than The Washington) all remain. At 522, the ground-level configuration is the same although in The Godfather image they appear to be two separate storefronts (one with an awning, one with Instituto Italiano at the frieze). This building’s upper floors seem to have lost their arched windows and lintels, too.

Schmulka Bernstein’s, also known as Bernstein-on-Essex, was a kosher deli and Chinese restaurant that flourished in this spot for over three decades. Armed with the slogan, “where kashrut is king and quality reigns,” the eatery was originally a family-run Kosher delicatessen that introduced Cantonese-style dishes to its menu in 1959. It claimed to be the "originators of Kosher Chinese foods."

In the early 1900s, the Lower East Side was one the most populated neighborhoods in the world! It was flooded with millions of immigrants who made their living pushcart peddling, which eventually came to be the neighborhood’s second-most popular profession (after the garment industry). In an effort to ease congestion in the city, Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia made it his aim consolidate street vending in the Lower East Side. He established the Essex Street Market in 1940, providing the area's many immigrant merchants with a new place to do business.