Which brings us to this photo that EVG reader Paul Dougherty recently came across. He shared it with us. It's a view looking south toward Ludlow Street and beyond from his East Houston Street apartment in 1986...
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHiQsNVbKi_bvQ_dP5spEHjgFEMg16OuYvCGHbWxQol-p4TWoDff8SAXkF97pPfVh8pAI_vQfC93X_dBv4E4Y0l0OfmFrinasPeEgLDzIpt4uVX6xbrOy6_gq0DsdMxSkoITcfgQ6tLlAu/s400/-1.jpg)
"I had lived in that building for six years and had just moved to a bigger apartment in the front with this great view ... Can't really put in words the sense of neighborhood context one gets from this. Maybe 'sleepy backwater'? Pretty sure this would have been before the first youth bar/restaurant the Ludlow Street Cafe — nice place. From this acorn a mighty oak — blah, blah, blah."
We don't have a compatible today photo ... one that would show the ongoing building boom, featuring The Ludlow, Thompson LES, et al. And not much else... Except for Katz's.