East Houston St, Lower East Side

Houston is one of the biggest streets in Manhattan but it's really busy, traffic is always atrocious and I wouldn't ever recommend living on it. And, if you had to, I definitely wouldn't recommend East Houston. It's ugly and loud and offers nothing in the way of neighborhood or entertainment.
The block of East Houston at Essex looks very Lower East Side in the non-hipster way. There's a deli, a playground and an apartment building with Soviet Union accoutrements on it. It's a very kitschy block. The entire south side of the street as you go down to Clinton is filled with little bars and restaurants though none of them are particularly noteworthy. At least it's nice to have a few neighborhood spots to pop into to . . .a lot of streets don't have that. Though it's hard to consider anything on a street as busy as Houston "neighborhoody." There's just too much traffic, noise, people and trash for any part of this street to be quaint. And, it seems to get worse the further east you go on Houston.
The street is pretty filled with apartment buildings until you get up to around Pitt. But, I really wouldn't recommend living in any of these. As I said, it's really loud on this street and there is much to be desired in the realm of privacy. Once you get to Pitt, there's the Hamilton Fish Park and Hamilton Library. But, both of these are completely surrounded by housing projects so they're not exactly the safest public areas in the city. There's a public school at FDR but public schools are pretty scary in New York so I don't know that that's helpful information. And, at the end of the street is the East River Park. The section of it that abuts with Houston is the ball park and one of the pedestrian entrances for the Williamsburg bridge. The nicest thing I have to say about this area is that at least you can get out quickly via the bridge.