Delancey Street, street in Manhattan
Delancey Street is a wide through street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, running from the Williamsburg Bridge on the east end to the Bowery on the west. It is lined with multi-story buildings that mix shops, restaurants, and residential units side by side.
The street takes its name from the De Lancey family, one of the most powerful families in colonial New York, who owned the land in the early 1700s. When waves of Eastern European immigrants arrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it grew into one of the city's main commercial corridors.
For many New Yorkers with Jewish roots, this street still feels like a familiar place tied to the time when the neighborhood was shaped by Eastern European immigrants. A few shops and restaurants along the way still sell traditional foods and goods that are hard to find elsewhere in the city.
The street is easy to explore on foot, since most shops and buildings open directly onto the sidewalk and you can move through different sections at your own pace. Daytime is the best time to visit, when foot traffic and open storefronts give the street its full character.
For much of the 20th century, an elevated train line ran directly above the street, casting it in near-permanent shadow until the structure was torn down in 1955. When the elevated tracks came down, the roadway underneath was widened, which is why the street looks so open compared to others nearby.
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