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."[3]
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.[5][6] 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.[7] 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.[8][9]
19th century
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.[4]
Eighth Street was supposed to extend to a market place at
Avenue C, but since 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.[10] 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.[10]
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.[11] Publisher
Evert Augustus Duyckinck founded a private library at his 50 East Eighth Street home.
Ann Lynch started a famous literary salon at 116
Waverly Place and relocated to 37 West Eighth Street in 1848.[4] 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.[4]
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.[4]
At the same time, German immigrants moved into the area around
Tompkins Square Park. The area around St. Mark's Place was nicknamed Kleindeutschland, 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.[10]
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.[4][10]
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.[4] 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.[4]
20th century
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,
Slovenian community and
Franciscans established the
Slovenian Church of St. Cyril, which still operates.[12] At this point, St. Mark's Place was considered a part of the
Lower East Side.[10]
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.[4]
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.[4] On an adjoining block, the
Women's House of Detention was built in Jefferson Market complex in 1929–1932 and existed through the 1970s.[4]
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.[4]
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.[4] Around this time, West Eighth Street was also becoming the location of neighborhood commerce.[4]
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."[10]
In the 1960s, Macdougal and West Eighth Streets, as well as St. Mark's Place, became a popular area for
hippies.[10] 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.[4] By 1968, St, Mark's Place became a stopping point for
tour buses, which formerly skipped the area.[10]
In 1977, St. Marks Place became the epicenter of
punk rock, when
Manic Panic opened its doors on July 7, 1977 (7/7/77).[13] The shop quickly attracted musicians from Cyndi Lauper to the Ramones.[14]
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.[4] 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.[10] The Village Alliance Business Improvement District was formed in 1993 to care for the area around Eighth Street.[4]
Notable buildings and sites
The entrance to 295 East 8th Street, with "Talmud Torah Darchei Noam" above the door
The
stucco-faced apartment building at 4–26 East 8th Street between Fifth Avenue and
University Place was built in 1834–36 and remodeled in 1916. It was designed by
Harvey Wiley Corbett, and has been described as a "stage set, symbolic of the 'village' of a bohemian artist.'[16]
The residential apartment building at
One Fifth Avenue, on the southeast corner of East 8th Street, was built in 1929 and was designed by Helme, Corbett & Harrison and Sugarman & Berger. The brown brick building features numerous
step-backs,
battlements,
buttresses and other suggestions of medieval architecture.[16]
The full-block building on 8th Street bordered by
Lafayette Street,
9th Street and
Broadway, which carries the addresses 499 Lafayette Avenue and 770 Broadway, was built in 1902 to be the Annex for the giant
John Wanamaker's Department Store located one block north between 9th and
10th Streets. The two buildings were connected by a skybridge over 9th Street which was dubbed the "Bridge of Progress".[17][18] 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.[19][20]
The three former 1838 row houses at 8–12 West 8th Street between Fifth Avenue and
Macdougal Street in Greenwich Village were converted in 1931 by Auguste L. Noel of Noel & Miller into the first home of the
Whitney Museum of American Art, which sculptor and heiress
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney had established in 1929, after the
Metropolitan Museum of Art rejected the donation of her extensive collection of contemporary and
avant-garde artworks. In 1914, Whitney had started the Whitney Studio at 8 West 8th Street, just behind her own studio on MacDougal Alley. The museum was located here until 1954, when it moved uptown. The building is currently, along with 14 West 8th Street (built in 1900), the
New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture.[21]
Hamilton-Holly House (#4) was part of the same 1830s development as...
#2 – Beginning in 1962 it housed
The Five-Spot, one of the city's leading
jazz clubs. Innovators such as
Thelonious Monk,
Charlie Parker and
Charles Mingus all appeared there. It later became "The Late Show", a vintage clothing store that was popularized by the
New York Dolls and owned by their valet, Frenchie.[23] Punk rocker
GG Allin also lived in the building at some point.[24]
#4 – The Hamilton-Holly House was built in 1831 by
Thomas E. Davis and sold to Colonel
Alexander Hamilton, the son of
Alexander Hamilton, first
Secretary of the Treasury, in 1833.[25] 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.[25] In 1964 it housed the New Bowery Theatre, a showcase for the American Theatre of Poets. From 1967 it housed the
Limbo boutique, which in 1975 was sold to Ray Goodman who opened
Trash and Vaudeville, a punk clothing store[23][26] that operated in that location until 2016. The building was designated a
New York City landmark in 2004.[22]
#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.[27] 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.[28] 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 of nine
Barcade locations.
#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
Mafiahit 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.[23]
#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[29][30] before relocating to Brooklyn in 2021.[31]
#12 – Designed by William C. Frohne and built in 1885, as the clubhouse for the Deutsch-Amerikanische Schützen Gesellschaft (German-American Shooting Society). The facade says Einigkeit macht stark (Unity is strength). The building is a remnant of Kleindeutschland (
Little Germany), the home of many German immigrants from the mid-19th Century until the
General Slocum disaster of June 15, 1904.[32] The building was designated as a
landmark in 2001.[22] In the late seventies it housed The New Cinema, featuring film and video by independent filmmakers, including
Eric Mitchell, Anders Grafstrom,
Scott and Beth B,
Jim Jarmusch, Charles Ahearn and
Amos Poe.
#15 – Former location of "Paul McGregor's Haircutter." McGregor was known for inventing the
shag, which he gave to
Jane Fonda. Other customers were
Warren Beatty,
Goldie Hawn and
Faye Dunaway. Supposedly, Beatty's film Shampoo was based on McGregor.[33][34] 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.
#19–25 – As Arlington Hall, this was the site of a 1914 shootout between "Dopey"
Benny Fein's Jewish gang and
Jack Sirocco's Italian mob, an event that marked the beginning of the predominance of the
Italian Americangangsters over the
Jewish American gangsters. Arlington Hall also had some notable speakers including Police Commissioner
Theodore Roosevelt (1895) and
William Randolph Hearst (1905). The building later housed the Dom Restaurant, with its well-known Stanley's Bar – where
The Fugs played in the mid-1960s –
Andy Warhol and
Paul Morrissey turned The Dom into a nightclub in 1966, which served as a showcase for the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, Warhol's multimedia stage show for the
Velvet Underground. In early 1967, the Dom morphed yet again into The Balloon Farm. Later that year, the lease was transferred to Brandt Freeman International, LTD, and renamed the
Electric Circus.[35] The building also served as the second location for the
CBGB Fashions retail store from November 2006 through June 2008.[36]
#28 – From 1967 to 1971, this storefront housed Underground Uplift Unlimited (UUU), which created and sold some of the most noteworthy protest buttons and posters of era, including "Make Love Not War."[23]
#33 – Home to poet
Anne Waldman in the late 1960s/mid-1970s. In 1977, the storefront was occupied by
Manic Panic, the first U.S. boutique to sell punk rock attire, which developed its own line of make-up and vibrant hair dyes;[23] notable patrons have included performers
David Bowie,
Cyndi Lauper,
Debbie Harry, and
Joey Ramone. One of the building's two storefronts was used to portray Ray's Occult Books for an exterior shot seen in the 1989 film Ghostbusters II.
#34 – Location of the East Side Bookstore, 1960s–1980s.
#60 – Building constructed in 1920; later location of the spacious studio apartment of
abstract expressionist painter
Joan Mitchell, where she lived and painted from 1951 to 1957.[23]
#62 – The Roman Catholic
Slovenian church of St. Cyril, New York is a Franciscan mission serving the Slovenian community of the New York City area. The parish was founded in 1916 with the purchase of this brownstone. For the 80th anniversary of the parish, the narrow church was repaired and the interior redesigned by architect Eduardo Lacroze with sculptures by Bogdan Grom. The parish hosts
Slovenian language classes and monthly Slovenian cultural events after Sunday Mass.[23]
#66 – Location of St. Mark's Hospital of New York City in operation from 1890 to 1931.[39]
#77 – Home to
W. H. Auden for almost 20 years.[40] The basement of this building was the location where the newspaper Novy Mir ("New World" or "New Peace"), a Russian-language Communist paper, was founded in 1916. It was edited by
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, and
Leon Trotsky worked there; the paper stopped publishing after the
Russian Revolution of October 1917.[41]
#80 – Home of
Leon Trotsky.[41] Theatre 80[43] 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.[44]
#96 – Once the home of the Anarchist Switchboard, a 1980s
punk activist group.
#97 – Home of Yaffa Café — a favorite of artists, writers, and NYU students — from 1982 to 2014.[47]
#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."[40]
#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.[51]
#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.[52][53]
The
Ninth StreetPATH train station on Ninth Street just north of Greenwich Avenue at Sixth Avenue
In popular culture
St. Mark's Place appears in a variety of works in popular culture. Notable examples include:
Music
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.[54][55]
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" the search for the missing member ends when the singer 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 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.
Television
In the double-episode season six opening episode of Mad Men, "
The Doorway",
Betty Francis goes to St. Mark's Place to find a girl who has run away after losing her parents, and in season 6, episode 4 ("
To Have and To Hold", set in early 1968),
Joan Harris and her hometown friend Kate visit the
Electric Circus nightclub, located at 19–25 St. Marks Place, during a night out on the town.[56][57]
In the opening credits to Saturday Night Live (c. 2010), a shot of Cherries adult entertainment store's neon signage is featured.
In the season 3 Sex and the City episode "Hot Child In The City",
Sarah Jessica Parker's character Carrie goes to get her shoe fixed on St. Mark's Place and ends up dating a man who works at a comic book store on the block. Part of the episode is filmed at the actual
St. Mark's Comics.[58]
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".
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. [59]
^Morris, Gouverneur;
DeWitt, Simeon;
Rutherfurd, John (March 22, 1811).
"Remarks of the Commissioners". Letter to. Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Streets extend westwardly to Greenwich Lane... The Market Place already mentioned is bounded northwardly by Tenth Street, southwardly by Seventh Street, eastwardly by the East River, and westwardly by the First Avenue.
^Stokes, I.N. Phelps (1918).
The Iconography of Manhattan Island 1498–1909. Vol. 3. New York: Robert H. Dodd. p.
959.
OCLC831811649. Market Place ... reduced in size 1815; ceases to be a market place 1824; no longer reserved for public uses, except streets and avenues to be cut through same.
^Stokes, I.N. Phelps (1926).
The Iconography of Manhattan Island 1498–1909. Vol. 5. New York: Robert H. Dodd. p.
1676.
OCLC831811649. [March 18, 1828:] The legislature provides for the extension of Mercer, Greene, Wooster, McDougal, and Lewis Sts. northward to 8th St.
^Stokes 1926, p.
1646: "[Feb. 14, 1825:] The common council passes a resolution ... to close that part of Art St. and Greenwich Lane lying between Broadway and Sixth Ave."
^What to See in New York. John Wanamaker, New York. 1912. pp.
22, 31. Retrieved April 27, 2013. The Wanamaker business occupies two buildings—the fine old structure erected by A. T. Stewart, with its eight floors, and the new Wanamaker Building, occupying the entire block south of the Stewart Building, with sixteen floors. Combined area of the two buildings, about 32 acres. Two large tunnels under and a double-deck bridge over Ninth Street connect the two buildings.
^Durniak, Drew (December 7, 2011).
"East 9th Street Then and now". The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. Retrieved April 27, 2013. By 1955, Wanamaker's sold its northern store property between East 9th and 10th Streets. Before the planned demolition of the building, a fire broke out in 1956 and gutted the structure. In its place was built a huge white-brick-clad residential building called Stewart House in 1960.