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The area that is today known as Alphabet City was originally occupied by the Lenape Native Americans. The Lenape moved between different seasons, moving toward the shore to fish during the summers, and moving inland to hunt and grow crops during the fall and winter. Manhattan was purchased in 1626 by Peter Minuit of the Dutch West India Company, who served as director-general of New Netherland. The population of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam was located primarily below the current Fulton Street, while north of it were a number of small plantations and large farms that were then called bouwerij (anglicized to “boweries”; modern Dutch: boerderij). Around these farms were a number of enclaves of free or “half-free” Africans, which served as a buffer between the Dutch and the Native Americans. There were several “boweries” within what is now Alphabet City. The largest was Bowery no. 2, which passed through several inhabitants, before the eastern half of the land was subdivided and given to Harmen Smeeman in 1647.

Many of these farms had become wealthy country estates by the middle of the 18th century. The Stuyvesant, DeLancey, and Rutgers families would come to own most of the land in the Lower East Side, including the portions that would later become Alphabet City. By the late 18th century, Lower Manhattan estate owners started having their lands surveyed in order to facilitate the future growth of Lower Manhattan into a street grid system. Because each landowner had done their own survey, there were multiple different street grids that did not align with each other. Various state laws, passed in the 1790s, gave the city of New York the ability to plan out, open, and close streets. The final plan, published in 1811, resulted in the current street grid north of Houston Street. The north-south avenues within the Lower East Side were finished in the 1810s, followed by the west-east streets in the 1820s.

The Commissioners’ Plan and resulting street grid was the catalyst for the northward expansion of the city, and for a short period, the portion of the Lower East Side that is now Alphabet City was one of the wealthiest residential neighborhoods in the city. Following the grading of the streets, development of rowhouses came to the East Side and NoHo by the early 1830s. In 1833, Thomas E. Davis and Arthur Bronson bought the entire block of 10th Street from Avenue A to Avenue B. The block was located adjacent to Tompkins Square Park, located between 7th and 10th Streets from Avenue A to Avenue B, designated the same year. Though the park was not in the original Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, part of the land from 7th to 10th Streets east of First Avenue had been set aside for a marketplace that was ultimately never built. Rowhouses of 2.5 to 3 stories were built on the side streets by such developers as Elisha Peck and Anson Green Phelps; Ephraim H. Wentworth; and Christopher S. Hubbard and Henry H. Casey. Following the rapid growth of the neighborhood, Manhattan’s 17th ward was split from the 11th ward in 1837. The former covered the area from Avenue B to the Bowery, while the latter covered the area from Avenue B to the East River.