St. Mark's Place (Manhattan)

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The street has long hosted alternative retailers, appealing in recent years particularly to suburban teenagers. Venerable institutions lining St. Mark’s Place include the Yaffa Café, Sock Man, St. Mark's Hotel, St. Mark's Comics, Trash & Vaudeville, and a handful of open front markets that sell sunglasses, and silver jewelry. There are also a number of authentic Japanese restaurants and bars, as well as many record stores with rare and competitively priced merchandise.

History: cultural and countercultural

St. Mark's Place first figured prominently in the history of New York in the 19th century. Number 4 was home to James Fenimore Cooper from 1834 to 1836. The New York Cooking School at number 8, founded by Juliet Corson in 1876, was the country's first cooking school. In this period, St. Mark's Place was strongly associated with charitable institutions. Number 27 was the Children's Aid Society's Girls' Lodging House and number 52 was part of the Hebrew National Orphan Home, whose main entrance was on 7th Street. Number 60 was St. Mark's Hospital of New York City.

From the early 20th century, St. Mark's Place figured prominently in New York's political left and counterculture. Number 6 once held the anarchist Modern School; Emma Goldman once served on its board. Leon Trotsky and W. H. Auden each lived at number 77. The present St. Marks Ale House in the St. Mark's Hotel (formerly the Valencia Hotel, 2 St. Mark's 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 Thelonius Monk. GG Allin also lived in the building. Number 4 was the Bridge Theater, associated with Yoko Ono and other Fluxus artists; it is now the Trash and Vaudeville clothing store. Number 6, the former home of the Modern School was, for a time, a gay bathhouse. Across the street, number 13 was one of the last homes of Lenny Bruce; the main floor of the building was for many years the redoubtable St. Mark's Books. Abbie and Anita Hoffman lived in the basement of number 30 in 1967–68; the Yippies were founded there. East of Second Avenue, abstract expressionist painter Joan Mitchell lived and painted at number 60 from 1951 to 1957. Number 51 was home to 51X, the gallery that broke graffiti art into the mainstream, representing artists such as Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. In a less countercultural turn, the Pearl Theater (number 80) was the site of the premiere of "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown". Ted Berrigan lived at number 101, independent filmmaker Scott Crary at number 102 and singer Klaus Nomi at number 103. Club 57 was an important performance spot in the late 1970s. Number 122 used to be Sin-é, a neighborhood café where Jeff Buckley performed a regular spot on Monday nights. Other musicians like David Gray and Katell Keineg also performed there. Sin-é closed in the mid-1990s. [ [http://www.sin-e.com/html/history.html A Short History of Sin-e] , accessed December 21, 2006]

The Led Zeppelin album "Physical Graffiti" features a front and back cover design that depicts the carved face buildings 98 & 96. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger are in front of same building in the Rolling Stones music video "Waiting on a Friend". The front cover of "Physical Graffiti" displays a daytime view of the buildings and the back-cover displays the same two buildings at night. The view on the front cover is not based on a natural perspective. If you stood on the opposing north side of the street, you would be much too close and low to obtain the view captured on the cover. Furthermore, the actual building has five visible stories (discounting the basement level) whereas on the album cover, it only has four, the result of photo touching up. The original album jacket for the LP included die-cut windows on the building shown on the cover; as the inner sleeves for the discs were inserted in different orientations, various objects and people would appear in the windows. Number 98 currently houses the Physical Graffiti boutique and number 96 has Starfish & Jelli, clothing, accessories and gifts. Prior to this, number 96 was the home of the Anarchist Switchboard, a 1980s punk activist group.

The narrator of Tom Paxton's "Talking Vietnam" blues, upon smelling marijuana on someone's breath during the Vietnam War remarks "He smelled like midnight on St. 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 Replacements' 1987 song "Alex Chilton" contains the line, "Checkin' his stash by the trash at St. Mark's Place."

In August 1988, 200 protesters marched down St. Mark's Place and into Tompkins Square Park in the East Village of Manhattan to protest a newly-passed curfew for the park. A riot erupted when police (who eventually numbered 450) charged the crowd. Bystanders, artists, residents, homeless people and political activists were caught up in the police action that took place on the night of August 6 and the early morning of August 7, 1988. The event has become known as the Tompkins Square Park Police Riot. [ [http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0711FC3A540C778DDDA10894D0484D81&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fSubjects%2fP%2fParks%20and%20Other%20Recreation%20Areas "Melee in Tompkins Sq. Park: Violence and Its Provocation,"] by Todd Purdham, "The New York Times", August 14, 1988, Section 1; Part 1, Page 1, Column 4; Metropolitan Desk]

Today, few notable artists remain on St. Marks, although indie film director Jonathan Blitstein has an office on the block near 3rd Avenue and reclusive scenester Sean Murphy is frequently seen strolling around in the area.

St. Mark's Place has some far seedier history than merely being home to countercultural figures and institutions: Number 8 was the site of one of mid-19th-century New York's leading abortionists, and 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). Numbers 19–25, as Arlington Hall, were 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 American gangsters over the Jewish American gangsters; the same building was later the Electric Circus, home to Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable.

Traffic

Vehicular traffic runs east along this one-way street. The city narrowed the sidewalks to improve vehicular travelFact|date=October 2007, 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.

In 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. 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.

Notes

ources

* [http://home.nyc.rr.com/jkn/nysonglines/8st.htm 8th Street/St Marks Place: New York Songlines] – A history of buildings and establishments along 8th Street.
* http://www.fodors.com/news/story_3018.html