Historically a center for
Ashkenazi Jewishimmigrant culture, more recently it has been absorbed by
Chinatown, although some
kosher and Jewish-owned stores remain.
History
Hester Street was named after
Hester Leisler, the daughter of Elsje Tymens and the insurrectionist
Jacob Leisler, who was burned at the stake. Through her mother she was related to prominent Dutch families of the Hudson Valley, including the Bayards and the Van Cortlandts. She married
Barent Rynders, Jr, a New York merchant, in 1696.[2][3] She was the great-great-grandmother of
Gouverneur Morris, a
Founding Father of the United States.[4]
In November 1851, the assistant board of aldermen of New York City voted in favor of removing a
liberty pole at the junction of Hester Street and
Division Street.[5] The Franklin Building Association held its second regular monthly meeting at Washington Hall, on December 3, 1851. The building was located at the corner of
Bowery.[6] On April 15, 1912, an investigator reported that a parlor house on Hester Street had three inmates (prostitutes) who were waiting to entertain customers.[7]
70 Hester Street was home to the
First Roumanian-American Synagogue from 1881 to 1902, after which it moved a short distance to Rivington Street, where it remained until a 2006 fire.[8]
As part of an experiment, in 1948, Hester Street was converted to a one-way eastbound street during the afternoon rush hour; it carried one-way westbound traffic at other times.[9]
At the east end of Hester Street, an open-air market called the Hester Street Fair currently runs on weekends from April through October.[10] The market is on a parcel of land owned by Seward Park Co-op and is run by
MTV News Correspondent
SuChin Pak, her brother Suhyun Pak, Adam Zeller, and Ron Castellano.
The street is mentioned in the first stanza of
Lola Ridge's 1918 poem, "The Ghetto":
Cool, inaccessible air Is floating in velvety blackness shot with steel-blue lights, But no breath stirs the heat Leaning its ponderous bulk upon the Ghetto And most on Hester street...
The first chapter of the 1925 novel Bread Givers by Jewish-American author
Anzia Yezierska is called “Hester Street”. The novel tells the story of a young girl growing up in an immigrant Jewish household in the Lower East Side of New York City in the 1920s.
Al Stewart references Hester Street as part of the immigrant experience in his song "Murmansk Run/Ellis Island" on his 1980 album 24 Carrots, in part as follows:[14]
Well you wake up in the morning on Hester Street and run to the factory, You can't afford to be late Working every morning, every evening, every day for your money, Yet there's nothing to save
Notable people
The sculptor
Jacob Epstein was raised at 102 Hester Street.
^Purple, Edwin R. Contributions to the history of ancient families of New Amsterdam and New York New York : Privately printed, 1881.Electronic reproduction. New York, N.Y. : Columbia University Libraries, 2008. JPEG use copy available via the World Wide Web. Master copy stored locally on [3] DVD#: ldpd_6499396_000 01, 02, 03. Columbia University Libraries Electronic Books. 2006.
^Wright, Robert K, and Morris J. MacGregor. Soldier-statesmen of the Constitution. Washington, D.C: Center of Military History, United States Army, 2007. Pp. 112-114. Print.