I have mentioned Jones Alley on NoHo a number of times over the years. I have a fascination with it because it’s fenced off on both ends and I can’t enter it; all I can do is get images of it from its intersections. It bends not once but twice, intersecting four streets along its route. According to Gil Tauber of oldstreets, in 1806 a laneway called at first Cross Lane was laid out beginning at Bleecker opposite Mott. It ran north to the middle of the block, then west to a point about 150 feet east of Broadway, then north again, crossing Bond and Great Jones Street to a dead end about 45 feet south of East 4th Street. Lafayette Street (laid out in the first decade of the 20th Century) later cut the alley into two L-shaped sections.
No one is sure exactly when but Cross Lane was renamed in honor of Samuel Jones, a prominent lawyer popularly known as the “Father Of The New York Bar” in the late 1700s. Jones also served as New York City’s first comptroller.
Jones originally owned the land on which Great Jones Street runs. When he deeded the land to the city he demanded the city named any street opened through the grant for him, as part of the agreement. Because the city already had a Jones Street to the west in Greenwich Village, it was decided to call it Great Jones Street because it was wider (In the 1800s, “great” also meant “large”, a meaning that the word no longer has, though “greater” can mean “larger.”) Jones Alley, also in Samuel Jones’ old property, was also named for him. I’m not sure if it was ever called “Great Jones Alley.”
At some time in the past, the part of Jones Alley east of Lafayette Street came to be called Shinbone Alley. The part west of Lafayette Street is Jones Alley. When I began photography for Forgotten New York, there was a street sign mounted on a pole for Shinbone alley, but apparently it was stolen so often the Department of Transportation gave up.
Well into the 1990s the lamppost that illuminated the corner of Lafayette and Jones Alley carried a Westinghouse AK-10 “cuplight.” Note the unusual positioning of the post next to the building. The Department of Transportation occasionally does this in areas where deliveries take place to lessen the possibilities of truck-lamppost accidents. A spotlight is affixed to the post, shining on this section of Jones Alley. Pictured above is the view from Lafayette, showing a bit of original Belgian block pavement.
Jones Alley is now afforded no street signage, but till recently one was located on this lamppost.
In 2007, photographer Pat Cullinan managed to get behind the gates, and shot several Jones Alley images you can see on this FNY page.
Lastly, the slang term “jones,” meaning an addiction to drugs, is said to have originated among addicts who lived in Jones Alley.
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12/10/24