EAST 6TH STREET, EAST VILLAGE

AFTER a recent series on 6th Avenue, I’m not quite finished with the number six, as a recent walk took me into the East Village down East 6th and 7th Streets. Just a little stuck for time this weekend, so I’ll post my East 6th Street pics and leave 7th, as well as other branches of this walk, for another time. For most of New York’s numbered Streets, the “East” is redundant, as there is no “West.” South of 14th Street, Greenwich Village’s grid dominates and originally, the numbered streets, divided into east and west by Broadway south of Washington Square, did not enter that undefended border.

There were exceptions. In the 19th Century, 3rd Street took over Amity and Art Street’s old route and was extended west to 6th Avenue. 4th, meanwhile, got a West section when it took over Asylum Street’s old route and was thus forced to intersect West 10th through 13th, which originally had names such as Amos, Hammond, and Troy. Thus, there is no West 1st, 2nd, 5th, 6th or 7th Streets, just as the narrowing of Manhattan Island uptown causes 5th Avenue to end at the East River and forces the absence of all East numbered streets in Manhattan north of 138th. In the Bronx, there are only East streets south of 161st, as Jerome Avenue is the divider.

Cooper Square, the junction of the Bowery, 3rd and 4th Avenues and Astor Place, sits at the west end of East 6th Street and is one of NYC’s key locations for rapid, break-neck change over that time — as has been The Bowery itself. The Bowery has worn many guises — from NYC’s entertainment capital to skid row shrouded by a vanished el to the capital of lamp and kitchenware discounters to the epicenter of luxe living with gleaming towers now rising along its length.

After resisting davits (curved-shafted lampposts with no attached mast) for decades, the NYC Department of Transportation got into them in a big way in the 2000s, lining streets like Houston in Manhattan and Columbia in Brooklyn with them. The davits in the Cooper Union area are painted black and have a set of Mini-Me versions that illuminate the sidewalks. These “dwarf davits” were sparsely employed, but have turned up again as the main lighting in the new section of the East River Greenway between East 54th and 61st Streets, whichwill be covered in FNY soon.

For decades New Yorkers visited newsstands on Wednesdays to get the latest Village Voice, founded in 1955, to read the best in journalism with a mostly leftwing bent, which didn’t prevent it from being NYC’s premier weekly newspaper (with competition from SoHo News and New York Press). The Voice cost a dollar until it was distributed for free for its last few years, and the print version published until late 2017. There is currently a lively online version. The Voice was not loved just for its articles: it had very large entertainment and job listings that millions relied on.

The Voice‘s editorial offices bounced around the Village, with the final office located in Cooper Square.

The new Cooper Union academic building on Cooper Square between East 6th and 7th Streets is perhaps the most radical design in the square, by Thom Mayne, founder of the LA design group Morphosis. NY Times architecural critic Nicolai Ourousoff gave Mayne’s hall a passing grade:

He is not a finicky designer; you don’t look to his work for refined details. He tends instead to extract beauty from the crudest industrial materials: raw concrete, steel I-beams, metal screens. The connections between materials are always clearly expressed, never smoothed over, so that you can feel the memory of the workers’ hands. It is what makes his buildings — like the Diamond Ranch High School in Pomona, Calif. — so approachable.

I don’t automatically dismiss modern architectural designs, but this one…nah

Though St. George’s Ukrainian Catholic Church, a block over at East 7th Street and Taras Shevchenko Place,  is practically new — having been built in 1977 — it faithfully evokes the Byzantine styles that originated six centuries prior. The school building on East 6th, also home to LaSalle Academy, looks a lot younger…but is actually 20 years older and was built in 1957, the same year I was manufactured.

Taras Shevchenko Place is a mouthful, especially when you realize that it was Hall Place before 1978. That year, the street was renamed for a revered 19th century Ukrainian writer, artist and political activist. The East Village near Cooper square has long been a Russian/Ukrainian enclave. Were the street renamed today, Hall Place would be retained and an extra street sign would have been added. A few years ago, during a street sign replacement kick, the Department of Transportation actually reinstalled a Hall Place sign, but it’s since been removed.

NYC streets north of Houston Street and outside of Greenwich Village are notably bereft of midblock short streets and alleys (Unlike, say, Philly and San Francisco) so short blocks like Shevchenko Place are rare. When you have such an alley, there’s usually a story behind it, and Hall Place (named for a previous landowner) was the east end of the 19th-Century Tompkins Market:

The Tompkins Market stood on the small city block bounded by Sixth Street, Seventh Street, Hall Place and Third Avenue, where the newest Cooper Union building 41 Cooper Square, now stands. The first Tompkins Market opened here in 1830, but the most famous was the 1860 cast iron building designed by James Bogardus. This building contained the public market on the first floor, and the armory and drill rooms of the Seventh Regiment of the New York State National Guard on the second and third floors – an unusual combination in the 19th century or today. The public markets were the place where the best meat and fish, butter, milk, and cheese, the freshest vegetables, fruits in season and “exotic fruits” – bananas and grapefruit – could be found. The inventory of the 1860’s market would astound the shopper of today. [Cooper Union]

According to the article, the market and then the 69th Regiment Armory occupied the building, which was torn down in the mid-1910s.

East 6th and 7th Streets between 2nd and 3rd Avenue can be considered Little Ukraine, as a concentration of immigrants from the Eastern European country can be found here. The Ukrainian Museum contains a trove of folk art, fine art, and an extensive compendium of archival materials. Established in 1976, the Museum moved to this relatively new facility at #222 East 6th in 2005.

226 East 6th Street is just west of the East Village/Lower East Side historic landmarked district, and renovators have been hard at work. The “improvement” to #226 was done sometime in the 1970s; compare to its original appearance in the 1940 photo.

Unfortunately the former Fillmore East theater, now an Apple Bank For Savings, a door in from the corner at 2nd Avenue and East 6th, was shrouded in construction netting, and when that stuff goes up it doesn’t come down in a hurry. However, Jim Power’s commemorative mosaic is still there on a corner pedestrian control post.

The Fillmore East had a capacity of approx. 2650 seats. The venue was so popular that bands were often double-booked to play two Saturday and Sunday shows apiece, as well as matinees. Sixties and Seventies attractions The Doors, The Who, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Allman Brothers Band, Derek and the Dominos, Jimi Hendrix, Country Joe and the Fish, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Lonnie Mack, Humble Pie, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Pink Floyd, Procol Harum, John Mayall, The Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, Frank Zappa, Miles Davis, and toward the end of the Fillmore’s run, an up and comer named Elton John are just a handful of the big names that played here, as well as lesser-known bands such as Sweetwater, Bloodrock and Zephyr. Numerous classic live albums were recorded at the Fillmore such as the Allman Brothers Band’s At Fillmore East, Ladies and Gentlemen: The Grateful Dead: Fillmore East: April 1971, and Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s Fillmore East – June 1971.

Impresario Bill Graham took over an old cinema/Yiddish theatre in early 1968 and for two full years and part of two others presented a roster of superstars that to this day reads like a classic rock radio playlist. Just about every big name in rock and roll except the Beatles and Stones played the Fillmore East (Graham’s east coast counterpart was the Fillmore West in San Francisco.). Today, the venue is marked by a Jim Power mosaic on a utility pole.

I can’t pass this way without a shot of the mighty Block Drugs neon sign, which was actually lit up red in broad daylight. Block Drugs has been in business since 1885, as the corner of the sign indicates. In the windows, there are smaller red neons, one of which says “Cut-rate Cosmetics.” If that date is correct that puts it among NYC’s oldest extant businesses, but surprisingly, it didn’t make my Bible on these matters, Ellen Williams & Steve Redlauer’s Historic Shops & Restaurants of New York (Little Bookroom, 2002).

This store was actually just one in a number of Block Drugs franchises. The firm was founded by Russian immigrant Alexander Block in 1907; the company not only operated drugstores but also became a pharmaceuticals manufacturer, developing products like Polident and Poli-Grip denture fixer. After a number of acquisitions over the years Block is now a part of the GlaxoSmithKline drug empire. The East Village store abides.

Speaking of interesting signs, here’s a several decades-old one for the Self-Reliance Association of American Ukrainians (the Cyrillic characters on the right simply mean “self-reliance”) at #98 2nd Avenue. This is “a social welfare organization founded in New York in 1947 by recently arrived Ukrainian immigrants. The association organized Ukrainian nurseries, schools, and homes for the elderly. It supported financially Ukrainian schools in Germany, Austria, and Poland and Ukrainian student organizations in Western countries.” [Encyclopedia of Ukraine]

A look north on 2nd Avenue from East 6th Street. The spire belongs to the Middle Collegiate Church, dedicated in 1891. On December 5, 2020, the church was gutted by a fire that left only its stone exterior and its bell intact, and the rest of the remaining parts of the church are undergoing demolition. The congregation has had to find temporary quarters until a replacement structure can be built.

I have never been in the Mermaid Inn (too expensive) but I was surprised to find it shuttered. However, the seafood franchise remains intact with several other locations going strong. It was founded here at #96 2nd Avenue south of East 6th in 2003, and lasted until the pandemic in 2020.

This is the latest convention of naming NYC streets: instead of a straight renaming, add a sign. Miriam Friedlander (1914-2009) represented sections of the East Village, Lower East Side and Chinatown from 1974-1991. Prior to 1980 (?) it’s likely the East 6th Street sign would have been removed.

This peaked roofed, red brick one story building at #325 East 6th was constructed in 1847 as the St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, serving a mainly German East Village population. The plaque marks New York City’s greatest one-day tragedy until 9/11/01: the June 15, 1904 General Slocum steamboat disaster in which 1,000 people perished due to gross negligence on the part of the boat operators. A small monument was built in nearby Tompkins Square Park, and a larger one in Lutheran-All-Faiths Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens. The manslaughter (the excursion boat operators weren’t charged, but they were to blame) wiped out many of the Germans and East Europeans from the East Village, including many women and children who were going to enjoy a boat ride to an amusement area.

In 1940, the church sold the building to the Community Synagogue, which remains there today. 

#415 East 6th Street, east of 1st Avenue, was constructed all the way back in 1841! It bears no resemblance to how it looked when built, as it was converted into the Congregation of Edes Israel Anshei Mesrich (the spelling in English letters varies) in 1910. The name comes from a town in Poland famed for talmudic learning. See the beautiful stained glass on the 3rd floor.

This tallish, seemingly out of place building at #421 East 6th Street was constructed as an electrical transformer building for New York Edison in 1921. It was converted into a multiuse commercial building in 1963. For several years it was the home of artist Walter De Maria (1935-2013).

Here’s another former synagogue, now serving as rental housing, at #431 East 6th, Center of the Proskurover Zion Congregation. In its heyday as a synagogue it was decorated with menorahs and Stars of David. The building was constructed in 1851 and became a synagogue in 1927, hence the cornerstone date.

A-1 Record Shop at #439, named for the two avenues it is between, was noted 50th best record store in the world by the website Vinyl Factory. The store specializes in hop hop and dance music.

Opened in 1996 by notorious record dealer Isaac Kosman and now under the management of “senior guy” Jay Delon, A-1 Records has seen the East Village (FKA Lower East Side) change around it over the last twenty years. Inside, mercifully, not much else has.

The formula at A-1 is remarkably simple (for those who know how): stock a well-curated range of second-hand records from across the dance music spectrum – jazz, funk, soul, hip hop, disco, and latterly a greater emphasis on house and techno – offer knowledgable tips and keep the prices reasonable.

A sensitivity to the changing landscape in New York City’s perpetual music scene has also helped. In the early days DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Havoc of Mobb Deep, Lord Finesse of D.I.T.C., and legendary New York DJ Tony Touch were regulars (many appear on the shops fading Polaroids) and would scour the crates for the breaks, riffs and samples that became the foundation of modern hip hop.

Now, the shop also caters to a growing crowd of house and disco DJs and collectors, aided in no small part by having had the likes of Ron Morelli of L.I.E.S., Eric Duncan, Thomas Bullock, Daniel Wang and even David Mancuso work behind the counter.

But as central as A-1 has become to the city’s more soulful record buying community, A-1 is no clique. Instead, the shop ensures that a broad selection of genres are given the same love and attention, to create a shop with both one of the broadest and deepest selections in the city, if not the world. [Vinyl Factory]

I like the Cherry Tavern’s eclectic signage; its Yelp reviews are mixed.

Don’t know a lot about the corner building at East 6th and Avenue A, but I noticed the bottles stacked up in the second-floor windows.

East Village streets are feast if you like quirky signage, whether advertising or directional.

Nowon, at #507 East 6th, features Korean-style hamburgers and diner food.

A pair of community gardens on East 6th, one midblock and one on the corner of Avenue B. Creative Little Garden, between two buildings at #530 East 6th Street, was established in 1978 by Françoise Cachelin. Amazingly most of these gardens have their own websites.

Avenues for Justice is a nonprofit organization that helps youth out of prison in a supervised program that provides court advocacy, tutoring and mentorship, and gets participants the drug, alcohol and mental health treatment and job training, according to its LinkedIn page. The Department of Transportation honored it with this street sign.

At this point, I turned to head back west on East 7th. However, there is still some interesting finds on East 6th between Avenues B and D, which are described on this FNY page; I had covered East 6th a couple of years ago but forgot all about it! It’s hard to run out of crosstown streets to cover in Manhattan, so I’ll try not to duplicate that often.

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12/24/23