Stuyvesant Street (Manhattan)

Stuyvesant Street is one of the oldest streets in the New York City borough of Manhattan.

Originally it ran east through The Bowery, i.e. Peter Stuyvesant's bowery (or 'bouwerij,' which is the old Dutch word for farm), from Bowery Road, which today is Fourth Avenue, to the Stuyvesant manor house. The manor house burned down in October 1778 and the family sold the remaining cemetery and chapel, which today is the site of St Mark's Church in-the-Bowery.

The Commissioner's Plan of 1811 called for strict use of a grid in Manhattan, but Stuyvesant Street was an exception in the plan. Into the 20th century, Stuyvesant Street ran in the east to Second Avenue, fronting St Mark's Church in-the-Bowery , for which St. Mark's Place is named. That portion of the street has now been converted to a pocket park. Further, it ran in the west to Fourth Avenue (the old Bowery Road), but the small section between Fourth Avenue and Third Avenue was converted to a block-wide (i.e. the block formed by E 9th St, 3rd Ave, E 8th St, and 4th Ave) apartment building.

For much of the 18th and 19th Centuries, Stuyvesant Street remained an important thoroughfare and market street, but today it is a quaint street with single family apartment buildings and is often used for movie shoots of 'Old New York'. It is currently one of the few true east-west streets (since most of the Manhattan grid runs southeast-northwest at a 28.9 degree offset) in Manhattan, and runs east from Third Avenue to 10th Street.