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8th Street and St. Mark's Place

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Template:Short description Template:Use American English Template:Use mdy dates Template:Attached KML Template:Infobox street

8th Street is a street in the New York City borough of Manhattan that runs from Sixth Avenue to Third Avenue and also from Avenue B to Avenue D; its addresses switch from West to East as it crosses Fifth Avenue. Between Third Avenue and Avenue A it is named St. Mark's Place, after the nearby St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery on 10th Street at Second Avenue.

St. Mark's Place is considered a main cultural street for the East Village. Vehicular traffic runs east along both one-way streets. St. Mark's Place features a wide variety of retailers. Venerable institutions lining St. Mark's Place have included Gem Spa and the St. Mark's Hotel. There are several open-front markets that sell sunglasses, clothing, and jewelry. In her 400-year history of St. Mark's Place (St. Marks Is Dead), Ada Calhoun called the street "like superglue for fragmented identities" and wrote that "the street is not for people who have chosen their lives ... [it] is for the wanderer, the undecided, the lonely, and the promiscuous."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

HistoryEdit

Early yearsEdit

Wouter van Twiller, colonial governor of New Amsterdam, once owned a tobacco farm near 8th and MacDougal Streets. Such farms were located around the area until the 1830s.<ref name="villagealliance1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Nearby, a Native American trail crossed the island via the rights-of-way of Greenwich Avenue, Astor Place, and Stuyvesant Street.<ref name="villagealliance1"/>

The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 defined the street grid for much of Manhattan. According to the plan, 8th Street was to run from Greenwich Lane (now Greenwich Avenue) in the west to First Avenue on the east.<ref>Template:Cite letter</ref><ref>Template:Cite map</ref> The area west of Greenwich Lane was already developed as Greenwich Village, while the area east of First Avenue was reserved for a wholesale food market.

The plan was amended many times as the grid took shape and public spaces were added or eliminated. The marketplace proposal was scrapped in 1824, allowing 8th Street to continue eastward to the river.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> On the west side, Sixth Avenue was extended and Greenwich Lane shortened, shifting the boundary of 8th Street, ever so slightly, to Sixth Avenue and allowing Mercer, Greene, Wooster and MacDougal Streets to continue northward to 8th.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

19th centuryEdit

After the Commissioners' Plan was laid out, property along the street's right of way quickly developed. By 1835, the New York University opened its first building, the Silver Center, along Eighth Street near the Washington Square Park. Row houses were also built on Eighth Street. The street ran between the Jefferson Market, built in 1832 at the west end, and the Tompkins Market, built in 1836, at the east end. These were factors in the street's commercialization in later years.<ref name="villagealliance1"/>

Eighth Street was supposed to extend to a market place at Avenue C, but that idea never came to fruition. Capitalizing on the high-class status of Bond, Bleecker, Great Jones, and Lafayette Streets in NoHo, developer Thomas E. Davis developed the east end of the street and renamed it "St. Mark's Place" in 1835.<ref name=curbed201409>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Davis built up St. Mark's Place between Third and Second Avenues between 1831 and 1832. Although the original plan was for Federal homes, only three such houses remained in 2014.<ref name=curbed201409/>

Meanwhile, Eighth Street became home to a literary scene. At Astor Place and Eighth Street, the Astor Opera House was built by wealthy men and opened in 1847.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Publisher Evert Augustus Duyckinck founded a private library at his 50 East Eighth Street home. Anne Lynch started a famous literary salon at 116 Waverly Place and relocated to 37 West Eighth Street in 1848.<ref name="villagealliance1"/> Around this time and up until the 1890s, Eighth Street was co-named Clinton Place in memory of politician DeWitt Clinton, whose widow lived along nearby University Place.<ref name="villagealliance1"/>

In the 1850s, Eighth Street housed an educational scene as well. The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a then-free institution for art, architecture and engineering education, was opened in 1858. The Century Club, an arts and letters association, relocated to 46 East Eighth Street around that time; the Bible House of the American Bible Society, was nearby. In addition, the Brevoort Hotel, as well as a marble mansion built by John Taylor Johnston, were erected at Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street.<ref name="villagealliance1"/>

At the same time, German immigrants moved into the area around Tompkins Square Park. The area around St. Mark's Place was nicknamed {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, or "Little Germany", because of a huge influx of German immigrants in the 1840s and 1850s. Many of the homes turned into boarding houses, as the area had 50,000 residents but not a lot of real estate. Tenement housing was also built on St. Mark's Place.<ref name=curbed201409/>

By the 1870s, apartments replaced stables and houses along the stretch of Eighth Street west of MacDougal Street. The elevated Third and Sixth Avenue Lines were also built during that time, with stops along the former at Ninth Street and along the latter at Eighth Street.<ref name="villagealliance1"/><ref name=curbed201409/>

File:Wanamaker Annex.jpg
Wanamaker Annex

At the southwest corner of Broadway and Eighth Street, the street's first commercial building was built. By the 1890s, buildings on the stretch from Bowery to Fifth Avenue were used for trade.<ref name="villagealliance1"/> In 1904, the Wanamaker's Department Store opened at the former A.T. Stewart store along Broadway between 9th and 10th Streets, with an annex built at Eighth Street.<ref name="villagealliance1"/>

20th centuryEdit

In the early 1900s, Little Germany was shrinking. At the same time, Jews, Hungarians, Poles, Ukrainians, and Russians from Eastern Europe started moving in. In 1916, members of the Slovenian community and Franciscans established the Slovenian Church of St. Cyril, which still operates.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> At this point, St. Mark's Place was considered a part of the Lower East Side.<ref name=curbed201409/>

On the western stretch of Eighth Street, an art scene was growing. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Daniel Chester French, and other artists moved in the stables at MacDougal Alley at this time. By 1916, a studio complex for artists replaced most of these stables, making the areas around Eighth Street popular for bohemians. Whitney, a patron for other American painters, combined four houses on West Eighth Street houses into the Whitney Museum in 1931.<ref name="villagealliance1"/>

The 1927 construction of the skyscraper at One Fifth Avenue, as well as the Eighth Street Playhouse movie theater, helped influence development on the Sixth Avenue end of the street, where construction of the IND Eighth Avenue Line had required destruction of many buildings there.<ref name="villagealliance1"/> On an adjoining block, the Women's House of Detention was built in Jefferson Market complex in 1929–1932 and existed through the 1970s.<ref name="villagealliance1"/>

In the 1930s, after Prohibition ended, West Eighth Street became an entertainment area. Around that time, the New York School movement for abstract expressionist painters was centered around Eighth Street, with many such painters moving to Eighth Street.<ref name="villagealliance1"/>

After World War II, property along 8th Street was converted to apartment houses. The Rhinelander Estate, one of the major landowners on Eighth Street, erected a building between Washington Square North, Fifth Avenue, West Eighth Street, and the Whitney Museum site. Sailor's Snug Harbor, the other major land owner, demolished the blocks from Fifth Avenue to Broadway on the north side of Eighth and Ninth Streets, including the popular Brevoort Hotel. It replaced these blocks mainly with low-rise apartment buildings and stores, as well as two high-rises.<ref name="villagealliance1"/> Around this time, West Eighth Street was also becoming the location of neighborhood commerce.<ref name="villagealliance1"/>

After the elevated train lines were demolished in the 1940s and 1950s, the real estate industry tried to entice residents to the St. Mark's Place area, describing the neighborhood as "East Village". This area became home to an underground scene, and as it was far from public transportation, it became rundown. A 1965 Newsweek article described the East Village by telling readers to "head east from Greenwich Village, and when it starts to look squalid, around the Bowery and Third Avenue, you know you're there."<ref name=curbed201409/>

In the 1960s, Macdougal and West Eighth Streets, as well as St. Mark's Place, became a popular area for hippies.<ref name=curbed201409 /> A women's clothing store, a pharmacy, and bookstores were replaced by fast food restaurants and other shops, directed toward the area's tourism base.<ref name="villagealliance1" /> By 1968, St, Mark's Place became a stopping point for tour buses, which formerly skipped the area.<ref name=curbed201409 />

In 1977, St. Marks Place became the epicenter of punk rock, when Manic Panic opened its doors on July 7, 1977 (7/7/77).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The shop quickly attracted musicians from Cyndi Lauper to the Ramones.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 1980, hot dog company Nathan's Famous moved into the location of a former bookstore on Eighth Street, to the anger of some Greenwich Village residents. However, other establishments, such as the B. Dalton bookstore, clothing stores, and shoe stores, started to attract tourists to the area.<ref name="villagealliance1" /> By the 1990s, the areas around both Eighth Street and St. Mark's Place were becoming rapidly gentrified, with new buildings and establishments being developed along both streets.<ref name=curbed201409 /> The Village Alliance Business Improvement District was formed in 1993 to care for the area around Eighth Street.<ref name="villagealliance1" />

Notable buildings and sitesEdit

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File:Whitney Museum 8-12 West 8th Street.jpg
The original location of the Whitney Museum, three converted townhouses at 8–12 West 8th Street

8th StreetEdit

East

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> The main store was destroyed by fire in 1955, but the Annex building remains, and features retail space as well as offices.

  • Across the street, also between Lafayette Street and Broadway, 8th Street runs behind Clinton Hall at 13 Astor Place, also known as 21 Astor Place. This was once the site of the Astor Opera House outside of which the Astor Place Riot occurred. The Opera House opened in 1847 and closed in 1890 to be replaced by the current building, designed by George E. Harney, which became the site of the New York Mercantile Library. The library left the 11-story building in 1932, and it has since been a union headquarters (District 65 of the Distributive Workers of America), the Astor Place Hotel, and, as of 1995, condominiums.<ref>Template:Cite aia5</ref><ref>"Clinton Hall" on Forgotten New York</ref>

West

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File:Little Germany House.jpg
The German-American Shooting Society clubhouse at#12
File:Arlington Hall NYC.gif
Arlington Hall at #19–23, c.1892

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St. Mark's PlaceEdit

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> From 1843 to 1863 it was owned by Isaac C. Van Wyck, the candle and oil merchant. The building was owned from 1863 to 1903 by butter merchant John W. Miller, who added a two-story addition and a meeting hall on the first floor. From 1901 until 1952 the building was owned by the C. Meisel company, a manufacturer of musical instruments. Between 1955 and 1967 it housed the Tempo Playhouse, New Bowery Theatre, and Bridge Theatre, noted for experimental theater, music, dance, and independent film.<ref name="Hamilton Holly House"/> In 1964 it housed the New Bowery Theatre, a showcase for the American Theatre of Poets. In 1965, the theater drew official attention for screening Flaming Creatures, a controversial film by Jack Smith, which depicted provocative scenes and was seized by the police. The organizer, Jonas Mekas, was arrested, and the film was labeled “obscene” by the court. Jonas Mekas went on to found the Anthology Film Archives, a center dedicated to preserving and showcasing independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema. In 1979, it found a permanent home in a former courthouse at 32 Second Avenue.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> From 1967 it housed the Limbo boutique, which in 1975 was sold to Ray Goodman who opened Trash and Vaudeville, a punk clothing store<ref name=lot /><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> that operated in that location until 2016. The building was designated a New York City landmark in 2004.<ref name=nycland />

  • #6 – The Modern School, founded in 1901 in Barcelona by Francesco Ferrer, opened a New York branch here in January 1911. It was led by anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, who founded the Francisco Ferrer Association in 1910, "to perpetuate the work and memory of Francisco Ferrer", who had been executed in October 1909 for plotting to kill Alfonso XIII, the King of Spain, and masterminding the events of Tragic Week, a mass riot in and around Barcelona.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> Beginning in 1913 the building housed the Saint Mark's Russian and Turkish Baths. In 1979 the building was renovated and renamed the New St. Marks Baths, a gay bath house.<ref name=song>"8th Street" on New York Songlines. Accessed:2011-02-21</ref> The New Saint Marks Baths was closed by the New York City Department of Health in 1985, due to concerns of HIV transmission. The building subsequently housed Mondo Kim's from 1995 until early 2009. Since 2014, the building has been home to one a Barcade location.

  • #8 – The New York Cooking School, founded by Juliet Corson in 1876, was the country's first cooking school. It figured prominently in the city's first known Mafia hit in Manhattan, the 1888 killing of Antonio Flaccomio, when it was La Triniria Italian Restaurant. The killer dined there with his victim, then stabbed him a few blocks away.<ref name=lot />
  • #11 – Home to Shulamith Firestone, feminist, activist, author of The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution and Airless Spaces, in the seventies and eighties. The storefront at the top of the stairs was the original location of St. Mark's Comics, which opened in May 1983. In 1993, the store moved directly downstairs to the storefront beneath the original location. The downstairs storefront operated through February 2019 when the location closed<ref>Grieve. "St. Mark's is deader: St. Mark's Comics is closing after 36 years" EV Grieve (January 29, 2019).</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> before relocating to Brooklyn in 2021.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> From 1995 to 1999, the building was home to Coney Island High, a live punk rock music venue co-founded by D Generation singer, Jesse Malin, and notable for being the location of No Doubt's first New York City performance in November 1995.

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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File:Loz rent car.JPG
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  • #80 – Home of Leon Trotsky.<ref name=leshp77 /> Theatre 80<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> saw the premiere of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown in 1967. Formerly the Jazz Gallery, site of the last performance by Lord Buckley. Now also the home of The Exhibition of the American Gangster, a museum of the American Gangster.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • #85 – The 1871 birthplace of painter and caricaturist Lyonel Feininger.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
  • #94 – Home of "UNDER St. Mark's Theater", an alternative performance venue and black box theater from the 1970s.<ref name="Info">"Info" Template:Webarchive on the UNDER St. Marks website. Accessed:2011-02-21</ref>
  • #96 & #98 – The Led Zeppelin album Physical Graffiti features a front and back cover design that depicts these two buildings, which feature carved faces. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Peter Tosh are seated in front of #96 in the music video for the Rolling Stones song "Waiting on a Friend".<ref name=lot />
  • #97 – Home of Yaffa Café from 1982 to 2014.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
  • #101 – From the mid-1970s to 1983, the poets Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley, who were married to each other, lived here. In Berrigan's "The Last Poem", he wrote: "101 St. Mark's Place, apt. 12A, NYC 10009/ New York. Friends appeared & disappeared, or wigged out/ Or stayed; inspiring strangers sadly died; everyone/ I ever knew aged tremendously, except me."<ref name=littour>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> and is now the site of George Jackson Academy.<ref>"About GJA" Template:Webarchive on the George Jackson Academy website</ref>

  • #105 – Early 1860s home of Uriah P. Levy, the first Jewish commodore of the U.S. Navy and who was also known for purchasing Monticello to work toward its restoration and preservation.
  • #122 – Former location of Sin-é, a neighborhood café where Jeff Buckley performed a regular spot on Monday nights. Other musicians such as David Gray and Katell Keineg also performed there. Sin-é closed in the mid-1990s.<ref>A Short History of Sin-e Template:Webarchive, accessed December 21, 2006</ref>
  • #132 – Known at the time as St. Mark's Bar and Grill, this is the second location on the street to be used in the "Waiting on a Friend" video by the Rolling Stones. After several business changes at the address, a Rolling Stones-themed bar named Waiting on a Friend opened at the location in September 2018. However, by October 2019, the bar had permanently closed.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Public transportationEdit

In popular cultureEdit

File:Gem Spa.jpg
Gem Spa was the "corner store" for locals for nearly a century before closing due to financial hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic.
File:StMarks2.jpg
Cherries, an adult store on St. Mark's Place whose signage was part of Saturday Night Live's opening montage. The store closed in late 2011.

St. Mark's Place appears in a variety of works in popular culture. Notable examples include:

MusicEdit

  • In the video for The Rolling Stones's "Waiting on a Friend", Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Peter Tosh are seen sitting on the stoop of 96–98 St. Mark's Place before Jagger and Richards walk to St. Mark's Bar and Grill at 132 St. Mark's Place to meet and perform with the rest of the band. In the song, Jagger mentions 8th Street.
  • On the back cover of the first New York Dolls LP, the band is pictured standing in front of Gem Spa, a newspaper, magazine and tobacco store, which was known for its fountain egg creams, located on the southwest corner of St. Mark's Place and Second Avenue, at 131 Second Avenue.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • The narrator of Tom Paxton's "Talking Vietnam Potluck Blues", upon smelling marijuana on someone's breath during the Vietnam War remarks, "He smelled like midnight on St. Mark's Place."
  • The Holy Modal Rounders mentioned the street in their song "Bad Boy" in the lyric "he'll sell your heart on St. Mark's Place in glassine envelopes/he'll cut it with a pig's heart, and burn the chumps and dopes".
  • Earl Slick's 2003 solo album Zig-Zag features a song called "Saint Mark's Place".
  • In Lou Reed's song "Sally Can't Dance", Sally walks down and lives on St. Mark's Place (in a rent controlled apartment).
  • In the King Missile song "Detachable Penis" vocalist John S. Hall states, "Then, as I walked down Second Avenue towards St. Mark's Place / Where all those people sell used books and other junk on the street / I saw my penis lying on a blanket next to a broken toaster oven."
  • The album We Are Only Riders by The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project features a song called "Saint Mark's Place", a duet with Lydia Lunch.
  • The music video for Billy Joel's 1986 song "A Matter of Trust" was shot in the Electric Circus building and features extensive footage of the block.
  • The Replacements' 1987 song "Alex Chilton" contains the line, "Checkin' his stash by the trash at St. Mark's Place."
  • Moe's song "New York City" contains the line, "Hits his brakes and points out the freaks on St. Mark's Place."
  • Kirsty McGee's Frost album (2004) contains a song called "Saint Mark's Place".
  • The Tom Waits song "Potter's Field" from his Foreign Affairs album contains the line "You'll learn why liquor makes a stool pigeon rat on every face that ever left his shadow down on St. Mark's Place."
  • The Rank and File song "I Went Walking", on their 1982 album Sundown, presents a cynical look at the St. Mark's Place of that time, containing the lines: "Have you ever seen a sheep in a porkpie hat? Ever see a lemming dressed all in black? Well, you might have been there, but I'll tell you just in case: Just take a walk down St. Mark's Place."
  • The Sharp Things album, Foxes and Hounds, features a song called "95 Saint Mark's Place".
  • The They Might Be Giants song "On The Drag" includes the line "The allure of St. Mark's Place".
  • Joe Purdy's song "The City" has a verse, "When we left Brooklyn it was raining so hard. / Come up on 8th and the rain it cleared off. / We're just people watching on 3rd and St. Mark's."
  • The Marcy Playground song Vampires of New York on their debut album Marcy Playground (album) instructs the listener to "Come take in 8th street after dark".
  • The New York anti-folk artist Jeffrey Lewis references St. Mark's Place in the song "Scowling Crackhead Ian" as the location in which Lewis and the eponymous Ian grew up and remain.

TelevisionEdit

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • In the season 9 episode of Friends titled "The One with the Mugging", it is revealed that Ross was mugged outside St. Mark's Comics as a child.
  • The second-season finale of the Comedy Central series Broad City is set around the main characters on a night out along St. Mark's Place, and the episode is titled "St. Mark's".
  • AEW wrestler Hook is billed from St. Mark's Place.

FilmEdit

  • In Andy Warhol's Trash, most of the street scenes of Joe Dallesandro were filmed on St Mark's Place.
  • In the films Ghostbusters II (1989) and Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021), Ray's Occult Books, a bookstore run by Ray Stantz, is said to be located at 201 St. Mark's Place. The exterior of one of the two storefronts at 33 St. Mark's Place, was used to portray the store in Ghostbusters II.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

See alsoEdit

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ReferencesEdit

Notes Template:Reflist

Bibliography

External linksEdit

Template:Sister project

Template:Streets of Manhattan Template:Greenwich Village Template:East Village, Manhattan

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