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8th Street and St. Mark's Place

Coordinates: 40°43′41.23″N 73°59′11.34″W / 40.7281194°N 73.9864833°W / 40.7281194; -73.9864833
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40°43′41.23″N 73°59′11.34″W / 40.7281194°N 73.9864833°W / 40.7281194; -73.9864833

Saint Marks Place is a street in the East Village neighborhood of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is named after St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery on 10th Street at Second Avenue. St. Marks Place, which is a section of 8th Street, runs from Third Avenue to Avenue A. The block between 2nd and 3rd avenues is a popular shopping destination.

Hamilton-Holly House (#4) was part of the same 1830's development as...
...the Daniel LeRoy House (#20); the developer was Thomas E. Davis.[1]
The German-American Shooting Society clubhouse at #12
Arlington Hall at #19-23, c.1892
Club 57 at #57
The "Physical Grafitti" buildings at #96 & #98

Saint Marks Places has long hosted retailers, appealing particularly to teenagers. Venerable institutions lining St. Mark’s Place include Gem Spa, Yaffa Café, the St. Mark's Hotel, St. Marks Comics, and Trash & Vaudeville. There are several open front markets that sell sunglasses, clothing and jewelry. There are also a number of restaurants and bars, as well as several record stores.

Vehicular traffic runs east along this one-way street. The city narrowed the sidewalks to improve vehicular travel[citation needed], but this resulted in most of the pedestrians walking on the street at night when the area is most active. For years retailers and residents have petitioned the city government to re-widen the sidewalk.

Notable buildings and sites

The three block street has numerous historic and notable addresses:

  • #2 - The present St. Marks Ale House in the St. Mark's Hotel (formerly the Valencia Hotel, 2 St. Marks Place at the corner of Third Avenue) was for many years The Five-Spot, one of the city's leading jazz venues, known as a base for innovators such as Thelonious Monk, who started appearing there in 1957; GG Allin also lived in the building. It later became "The Late Show", a vintage clothing store that was popularized by The New York Dolls and owned by their valet.
  • #4 - The Hamilton-Holly House was built in 1831 and was owned by Col. Alexander Hamilton, the son of Alexander Hamilton, who purchased it in 1833.[1] AFter the Civil War, when St. Marks Place was the center of Little Germany (Kleindeutschland), the building was used for apartments and a meeting hall.[1] From 1901-1952, it housed the musical instrument importer and wholesaler C. Meisel. In 1964 it housed the New Bowery Theatre, a showcase for the American Theatre of Poets. It later housed several avant-garde theatre companies, including the Bridge Theater, associated with Yoko Ono and other Fluxus artists. It has been location of the Trash and Vaudeville clothing store since the early 1970s. The building was designated a New York City landmark in 2004.[1]
  • #6 - The anarchist Modern School; Emma Goldman once served on its board. In the late-sixties it became the Saint Marks Baths. It was later renovated and re-opened as the New St. Mark's Baths in the mid-seventies. It subsequently served local cinephiles and music connoisseurs as Kim's Video and Music until early 2009.
  • #8 - The New York Cooking School, founded by Juliet Corson in 1876, was the country's first cooking school. It was the site of one of mid-19th-century New York's leading abortionists; at La Triniria Italian Restaurant, it also figured prominently in the city's first known Mafia hit in Manhattan: the 1888 killing of Antonio Flaccomio (the killer dined there with his victim, then stabbed him a few blocks away).
  • #11 - Home to Shulamith Firestone, feminist, activist, author of "The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution", in the seventies and eighties. Home to Jonathan Lasker, American abstract painter.
  • #12 - Built in 1885, designed by William C. Frohne, as the clubhouse for the Deutsch-Amerikanische Schuetzen Gesellschaft ("German-American Shooting Society") a German-American marksmen's club - although they did their shooting elsewhere. The crest at the top of the building says Einigkeit macht stark ("Unity is strength"). The building is one of the remnants of Kleindeutschland ("Little Germany"), the home of many German immigrants from the middle of the 19th Century until the General Slocum disaster.[2] A New York City Landmark (2001)[1] This as the original location of the St Mark's Bookshop, before it moved across the street.
  • #13 - Home to Lenny Bruce in the mid-1960s. Sylvain Sylvain, guitarist for the New York Dolls, lived in the basement apartment in the early-mid 70s. The main floor and basement of the building were for many years St. Mark's Bookshop, now around the corner on Third Avenue at Stuyvesant Street.
  • #17 - Site of the first Hebrew-Christian Church in America, in 1885.
  • #28 - From 1967–1971, 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."
  • #33 - Home to poet Anne Waldman in the late 1960s/mid-1970s; in 1977, the storefront had Manic Panic, the first U.S. boutique to sell punk rock attire, which developed its own line of make-up and vibrant hair dyes; Manic Panic was visited by numerous performers, including David Bowie, Cindy Lauper, Debbie Harry, and Joey Ramone.
  • #34 - Location of the East Side Bookstore, 1960s-1980s. Home to the band Dee-Lite, in the 1980s.
  • #80 - Theatre 80[3] 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[4]
  • #94 - Home of UNDER St. Marks Theater, alternative performance venue
  • #96 - Once the home of the Anarchist Switchboard, a 1980s punk activist group.
  • #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 - This building used to be 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.[5]
Gem Spa has been the local resident's "corner store" for approximately 80 years
Cherries, an adult store on St. Marks Place whose signage was part of SNL's opening montage
Music
  • On the southwest corner of St. Marks Place and Second Avenue, at 131 Second Avenue, is Gem Spa, a newspaper, magazine and tobacco store, which is known for its fountain egg creams.[6][7] On the back cover of the first, eponymous New York Dolls LP, the band is pictured standing in front of Gem Spa.
  • 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. Marks Place."
  • In Andy Warhol's Trash, most of the street scenes of Joe Dallesandro were filmed on St Marks Place.
  • In Lou Reed's song "Sally Can't Dance," Sally walks down and lives on St. Marks 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. Marks 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 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. Marks Place."
  • The Tom Waits song "Potter's Field" from the 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. Marks Place."
Television
  • In the Sex and the City season 3 episode "Hot Child In The City", Sarah Jessica Parker's character Carrie goes to get her shoe fixed on St. Marks 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.[8]
  • In the opening credits to Saturday Night Live (c.2010), a shot of Cherries adult entertainment store's neon signage is featured in the opening credits.

References

Notes
  1. ^ a b c d e f New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission; Dolkart, Andrew S.; Postal, Matthew A. (2009). Postal, Matthew A. (ed.). Guide to New York City Landmarks (4th ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-28963-1., p.65-66 Cite error: The named reference "nycland" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  2. ^ a b White, Norval & Willensky, Elliot (2000). AIA Guide to New York City (4th ed.). New York: Three Rivers Press. ISBN 978-0-8129-3107-5.
  3. ^ http://www.Theatre80.net
  4. ^ http://www.Museumoftheamericangangster.org
  5. ^ A Short History of Sin-e, accessed December 21, 2006
  6. ^ Berger, Joseph. "The Pizza Is Still Old World, Only Now the Old World Is Tibet" New York Times (July 31, 2005). Quote: "For New Yorkers, this was the nectar of a Jewish neighborhood, and Gem Spa was the drink's sacred temple, certified as such by magazines and travel writers."
  7. ^ Berkon, Ben. "Gem Spa: Classic egg creams in New York" on NewYork.com
  8. ^ "Tour the Top 25 'Sex and the City' Locations" on Fodors.com
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