Lower East Side Yearbook: A Living Archive, curated by Ali Rosa-Salas, is on view at Abrons Arts Center through January 6, 2026.
On the corner of Grand Street and Pitt Street, just a few blocks from the FDR, the Dimes Square–ification of the Lower East Side can be felt, if only intermittently seen. Against the not-so-distant backdrop of natural wine bars and bakeries so Insta-famous they regularly sell out by 2:00 p.m., Abrons Arts Center cuts a tough but benevolent figure. The multipurpose gallery is part of the Henry Street Settlement, a larger complex of buildings that dates back to the late nineteenth century, when the social reformer and nurse Lillian Wald began attending to the neighborhood’s poor residents, most of them Russian Jews. Shocked by their lack of access to medical services, Ward developed a vision for high-quality, affordable health care integrated into the spaces where its recipients already lived. The Settlement opened in 1893 and, in the century that followed, catalyzed a chain of historic programming. To name only a fe…
