Pleasant Avenue is a north-south street in the East Harlem neighborhood of the

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

borough A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle Ag ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

. It begins at E. 114th Street and ends at E. 120th Street. The street was the northernmost section of Avenue A, which stretched from Alphabet City northward, and was added to the grid wherever space allowed between First Avenue and the

East River The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary in New York City. The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Quee ...

. This stretch was renamed "Pleasant Avenue" in 1879. Unlike York Avenue, however, the addresses on Pleasant Avenue are not continuous with that on Avenue A (which would be in the 2000-series if they were continuous). Pleasant Avenue is one of the last remaining streets in Italian Harlem, which existed in the eastern part of Harlem from the late 1890s to the 1970s. The neighborhood shrunk over the years, and the small remaining Italian population resides on Pleasant Avenue. The street is the site of one of the few remaining Italian restaurants in the area, Rao's, at 114th Street. The street had largely lost its Italian character by 2010. Both in real life and in the movies, Pleasant Avenue has long been associated with the Mafia. The street was the headquarters of Anthony Salerno, head of the

Genovese crime family The Genovese crime family, () also sometimes referred to as the Westside, is an Italian-American Mafia crime family and one of the " Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City and New Jersey as part of the Ame ...

, prior to his incarceration for racketeering in 1986. It was also the founding location and turf of the Italian-American drug trafficking and murder-for-hire gang known as East Harlem Purple Gang during the 1970s and early 1980s. The Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, formerly Benjamin Franklin High School, is located on Pleasant Avenue. In July 2010, Pleasant Avenue became the site of a

Target Target may refer to: Physical items * Shooting target, used in marksmanship training and various shooting sports ** Bullseye (target), the goal one for which one aims in many of these sports ** Aiming point, in field artillery, fi ...

store, at the East River Plaza at 517 East 117th Street. Every year on the second Sunday of August the Giglio Society of East Harlem performs the dancing Giglio on Pleasant Avenue. The dancing of the Giglio is an Italian tradition which began over 100 years ago.

References

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External links

East Harlem Giglio Society
{{Attached KML, display=title Italian-American culture in New York City Little Italys in the United States Streets in Manhattan East Harlem