NEW York City’s alleys aren’t often photographed; the largest troves of old photos of New York City are in the tax photos from the 1940s and 1980s in the Municipal Archives, as well as the work of early 20th Century photographers such as Eugene Armbruster and Percy Loomis Sperr, which can be found in the New York Public Library and N-Y Historical Society collections. Unfortunately even these photographers rarely made NYC’s relatively few alleys the subject of their work. That’s where the work of NYC Lamppost King Bob Mulero comes in, as he got a nearly 20 year start on me in taking photos of NYC’s unusual buildings, leftover castiron lamps, and alleys such as Extra Place, which is shown above. I hope my work and his will be collected someday for future generations to enjoy.
I have covered Extra Place, on East 1st just east of the Bowery, many times but have never made this image the title image. It’s emblematic of the decrepitude parts of NYC had been allowed to fall into in the late 1970s and the abyss wan’t plumbed until the 1990s, when the comeback, at least infrastructurally, began. In 1978 Extra Place was open to auto traffic, but as you see here it was blocked by an air conditioner someone had placed there. Extra Place, in good times, was the service alley for businesses along the Bowery, and a back door at the famed rock club CBGB, at Bowery opposite Bleecker, opened onto the alley.
Extra Place received its name when East 1st was laid out in the 1820s and plots were divided up. There was a leftover patch which became Extra Place, one of Manhattan’s few dead-end alleyways.
In this view you can see a house on East 2nd that has been long demolished. The tall building in the background is the Bowery YMCA on East 3rd Street, now home to the Renewal on the Bowery homeless assistance agency. The building went up in 1915 . The YMCA has a lengthy history assisting the unfortunate on the Bowery, having been a neighborhood presence since 1872. The YMCA moved out in 1947, but the building has been home to homeless assistance agencies since then. Directly to the rear of the building you can find the New York Marble Cemetery.
To pass Extra Place today you would never know it had sunk so low. A new building on the right is part of the Avalon apartment complex, while the garage at left has been repurposed. Today Extra Place is pedestrian-only. In the ebb and flow of NYC, it may someday be decrepit again and may be revitalized again.
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7/4/23
13 comments
Located on Extra Place is the ultra exclusive and ultra expensive restaurant Momofuku Ko.
That entrance toward the rear right is for Momofuku. I only know that because, as a kitchen PM, I was involved in a renovation there 6 or 7 years ago.
Ooh. Love the little house in the background — too bad, though not surprising, that it was demolished. And I thought that was a piano sitting in the middle of the street, which would actually have been kinda cool. (LOL)
Is it just me or does anyone else miss the days of 1978 when parts of the city looked like this ?
Hell no. Let’s not romanticize how awful it was.
Yes. A lot of the city did look like that in the 70s and 80s. Much of Manhattan seemed deserted.
I like the “before” photo better than the “after” one
The late great Rush Limbaugh used to say that “The best way to illustrate absurdity was by being absurd” Is that the purpose of your comment or are you serious? If so: “Two wrongs don’t make a right”.
At least they kept what was on the left hand side in the present photo.
It’s interesting, are you positive on that date? I live on 2nd street and you should be able to see the back of #21 in 1978. The NYU dorm was built in the late 90’s, that’s the white building in the later pic. In the middle of the block is the rear of CBGB’s.
Who is Walter (S?) Soto and what was he doing at 1PM?
Extra Place? That’s as lame as Exterior Street. Sometimes ya just can’t think of a name, right? Birmingham England has a street called Needless Alley. I love it.
I went to school around the corner from extra place in the early 70s and
sure it was a bit shabby and rough around the edges but what NY street
wasnt?Better that than the sterile and Brutalist Extra Place of today.
Have Mercy.