New York Songlines: Astor Place

South:

Corner (740 Broadway): Astor Place Plaza, a 12-story structure built in 1912 by the heirs of Orlando Potter, the lawyer who had owned and developed much of Astor Place; the architect was Francis H. Kimball.

In 1942, the newly formed Manhattan Savings Bank was headquartered here. Later it housed the offices of Rabinowitz, Boudin et al, a law firm that has defended Alger Hiss, Paul Robeson, Benjamin Spock, Daniel Ellsberg, Jimmy Hoffa, Castro, Khomeini, Khadafy, Noriega, the Church of Scientology, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Norman Mailer and Isaac Asimov.

Vitamin Shoppe, a chain with an eye for good architecture, is now on the ground-floor corner. Also here is Beard Papa Sweets, an Asian cream-puff franchise.

This area, stretching east to what is now Cooper Square, was from 1806-55 the Vauxhall Garden, a popular amusement center featuring "mead booths, flying horses, fireworks, concerts, etc." (Historical Tour of... Broadway).

Harvey Milk High School

2: A New York City public school that serves as a safe space for students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning. It's a project of the Hedrick-Martin Institute, which provides social services for these youth.

Also at this address (which is the same building as 740 Broadway is Astor Place Hairstylist, a New York institution founded in 1940 that is the place to go for mohawks and buzzcuts.

4-8: This building was designed in 1891 by Francis H. Kimball for lawyer Orlando Potter, who owned and developed much of the street. The entrance to Barnes & Noble was here before the bookstore chain was driven out of the neighborhood by rising rents.

10-20 (corner): Astor Place Building, a 1876 structure designed in the Queen Anne style by Griffith Thomas for Orlando Potter. Publishers Isaac Funk and Adam Wagnalls used to have their offices here. Used to house Astor Wines--which moved down Lafayette Street--and the bulk of the Barnes & Noble. Now a Barton's Gym franchise.

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Astor Place Building

1 (corner): One reason to dislike the "Sculpture for Living"--the glass tower across from Cooper Union--is that it ripped off the address of this building--1 Astor Place--which had been happily using it for more than a century. This red-brick Victorian beauty went up in 1881 with the same builder -- lawyer Orlando Potter -- and architectural team -- Starkweather & Gibbs -- who later produced the Potter Building on Park Row. It was a very early example of the use of terra cotta for ornamentation--colored to resemble the then-ubiquitous brownstone. (Potter's buildings so popularized terra cotta that he went on to start the New York Terra Cotta Company.)

On the ground floor of the building is Karen's on Astor,

Astor Place Hotel

13-25 (corner): Was the Mercantile Library Building, designed in 1890 by George Harney; it housed the Chinese consulate in the 1920s. Later the District 65 Building, housing for more than 50 years a union, eventually affiliated with the UAW, that organized everyone from University of California teaching assistants to Village Voice writers. It went bankrupt in 1993.

Earlier on this site was the Astor Place Opera House, which was stormed by a mob on May 10, 1849, in what came to be known as the Astor Place Riots. The rioters objected to a performance of Macbeth by Charles Macready, an English Shakespearean actor who was viewed as an elitist rival to the crowd's homegrown favorite, Edwin Forrest, who was playing Macbeth elsewhere at the same time. More than 30 people were killed in the riots, which were put down by the 7th Regiment National Guard.

There was a good bookstore at No. 21 called Astor Books that closed when Barnes & Noble moved in across the street, despairing of being able to compete. The corporate coffee franchise at the east end of the building (once one of three within two blocks of each other) was the Astor Riviera Cafe from c. 1979 until 1994.

The newsstand on the east end of the block is the first one to get the Voice every week-- a more important fact before the apartment ads were on the Web.

SUBWAY
6 Train to Bleecker Street

The Astor Place subway station is notable for the terra cotta beavers decorating its walls--evoking the fur trade that was the original source of John Jacob Astor's fortune.

South:

Gwathmey Astor Place

Corner (445 Lafayette Place): Astor Place: Sculpture for Living, a mirror-finished, awkwardly shaped 21-story luxury loft building designed by Charles Gwathmey, who usually designs mansions for zillionaires (e.g. Steven Spielberg, David Geffen, the guy who owns Starbucks). The land here is owned by Cooper Union.

At this corner in 1679 was the tavern and brewery of Adrian and Rebecca Corneliszen, described by a visitor as a "low pot house" "resorted to on Sundays by all sorts of revelers." In the 1690s it was taken over by John Clapp, who started New York's first cab service. He also founded the John Club, which invited all men named John to the tavern on June 24, St. John's Eve.

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The Alamo

Tilted black cube is a 1966 sculpture by Tony Rosenthal; he's reportedly amused that spinning the cube on its pivot has become an East Village tradition, so give it a whirl.

The statue of Rep. Samuel Cox now in Tompkins Square Park was originally here. Before Lafayette Place was extended to meet Fourth Avenue, it was the site of Little St Ann's Church.

This area was once a crossroads of Indian trails, and it's become a gathering place for annual anti-Columbus protests.

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Cooper Union

Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (1859); Houses the free college founded by Peter Cooper, who ran first the U.S. railroad (the Tom Thumb), helped lay trans-Atlantic telegraph cable and invented Jello. Oldest steel-framed building in United States, using Cooper's railroad rails.

Cooper Union's Great Hall, dedi- cated to the free dis- cussion of public issues, was the site of Abraham Lincoln's "Right Makes Might" speech (1860); other speakers over the years have included Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony and presidents Grant, Cleveland, Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson and Bill Clinton--not to mention Barack Obama. The NAACP had its founding conference here in 1909.

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Cooper Union Engineering

This site used to be the American Bible Society, which distributed bibles by the tens of millions. Cooper Union is scheduled to replace the present less-than-inspiring structure with a high-rise, despite some community opposition.

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