New York Songlines: 9th Street

South:

66 (corner): Lenny's, local sandwich chain, was Greenwich Brewing Co., pizza; Hasta La Pasta, Italian. This used to be Trude Heller's, a prominent rock club/disco where First Daughter Lynda Bird Johnson was photographed dancing with tanned actor George Hamilton in 1965; the Manhattan Transfer got their start here. Earlier this was Paul and Joe's Bar, a main gay rendezvous in the early 1920s.

64: A deli called Farmer's Market. Humorist S.J. Perelman lived here (1929-30).

62: Village, new French-American noted for its Espressotinis, was The Lion, a gay bar where Barbra Streisand, Joan Rivers had early gigs. Earlier it was the Golden Eagle, a French-Italian restaurant described by the WPA Guide as an "old Greenwich Village place."

58: A five-story building from 1853.

46-50: Hampshire, a six-story apartment building from 1883. Novelist Dawn Powell lived here 1924-28. While living here her first novel, Whither, was published, and she wrote She Walks in Beauty and The Bride's House.

38-44: Portsmouth, a six-story double apartment building dating to 1882. (Portsmouth is a city in the English county of Hampshire.) Joseph Papp, founder of the Public Theater and the New York Shakespeare Festival, lived here from 1973-91.

36: Poet Elinor Wylie lived here from 1926 until her death in 1928, along with her husband William Rose Benet.

26: The Prasada, a nine-story 1920s apartment building in neo-Georgian style, takes its name from the Sanskrit word for ''temple.''

12: Home of Henry Jarvis Raymond (1860-67), first editor of both the New York Times and Harper's Magazine.

10: "Ashcan School" painter William Glackens lived in this building from the 1910s until his death in 1938. Note large north-facing studio windows.

Corner (20 5th Ave): This 17-story red-brick building went up in 1941, but the rounded indentations in the facade to create bay windows make it look considerably younger. Designed by Boak & Paris, architects noted for their innovative work.

W
E
S
T

9
T
H

S
T
R
E
E
T

North:

Citarella

69 (corner): Formerly Balducci's gourmet market; started in 1916 as a Brooklyn pushcart, it moved in 1972 to this location. In 1999 family squabbles forced the sale of the business to a D.C.-based chain, which went under when its "Balducci.com" scheme fell victim to the dot.com bust. Now in the space is another local gourmet grocery chain owned by Joe Guerra, who got his start wrapping flounder at the Fulton Fish Market; he has a reputation as a union-buster.

Barbra Streisand had an apartment here when she was playing The Lion. The 13-story building is from 1956--perhaps one of the first of the hideous white-brick apartment buildings that went up in that era.

9th Street PATH Station

Underneath No. 69 is the entrance to New York City's other subway system--the Port Authority Trans-Hudson, which connects the southwest portion of Manhattan to Hoboken, Jersey City and Newark. Opened in 1907 as the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, it was taken over by the Port Authority in 1962.

61: Windsor Arms, a nine-story ''vaguely Georgian'' building built in 1926. An interesting diamond pattern in the brickwork.

35: A nine-story apartment building from 1926. Anais Nin lived here in the early 1950s. Later poet Marianne Moore lived here, in Apartment 7B, from 1966 until her death in 1972.

29: Author/artist Maurice Sendak created Where the Wild Things Are here.

19-23: These four-story buildings, built 1870, were from 1877 until 1905 the Hotel Giffrou, operated by Madame Marie Giffrou, a French widow. A bohemian refuge, the hotel was frequented by French and Spanish artists, as well as literary figures like Mark Twain, William Dean Howells and Thomas A. Janvier.

Ocean's 21, Rat Pack-themed restaurant at No. 19, was Marylou's, Nat Simon's Penguin.

15: Four stories dated 1855.

Corner (24 5th Ave): This 15-story building was the Fifth Avenue Hotel, a 1922 effort by Emery Roth. Built on site of the Brevoort House, home of Henry Brevoort Jr., the finest house on 5th Avenue when it was built in 1834 (perhaps designed by Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis).

Now houses Cru, featuring a 222-page wine list with 3,820 vintages, based on the 65,000-bottle collection of Roy Welland, who owned Washington Park, the restaurant that used to be here. Before that (not so long ago) it was Rose Cafe & Bar, featured in As Good as It Gets; earlier known as 24 Fifth.

South:

Brevoort Apartments

Corner: Before the apartments were built in 1955, a house that Mark Twain lived in from 1904 to 1908, designed by James Renwick Jr., was on this corner. Next to Twain's house was the Brevoort Hotel, for which the apartment complex was named.

The Brevoort was the first hotel on Fifth Avenue, built in 1854. John Dos Passos, in 42nd Parallel, wrote that "all the artists and radicals and really interesting people used to stay there and it was very French." Among its habituees were Eugene O'Neill, Isadora Duncan, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Lincoln Steffens. Nathanael West lived there in 1935-36. Banquets were held here for Margaret Sanger, indicted for distributing birth control information, and for Emma Goldman on the eve of her 1919 deportation to the Soviet Union. The American Labor Party was founded here in 1936. The hotel's barber is credited with inventing the "bob" (for dancer Irene Castle). The hotel's owner, Raymond Orteig, put up $25,000 for the first person to fly across the Atlantic, and Charles Lindbergh collected at a breakfast here on June 17,1927. The hotel was torn down in 1948 because it couldn't be brought up to code.

Musician Buddy Holly lived in the apartments in 1958-59, from his marriage until his death. He recorded what are known as The Apartment Tapes here. Carmine DeSapio, last boss of Tammany Hall, also lived here.

20 (corner): The 26-story Brevoort East apartments went up in 1965.

E
A
S
T

9
T
H

S
T
R
E
E
T

North:

Corner (23-27 5th Ave): This 1919 13-story apartment building, designed by Rouse & Goldstone, has been home to director Brian dePalma. Designer Helen Dryden, best known for her work in Vogue and on the 1937 Studebaker, lived here in 1936.

No. 23 5th Avenue was the site of Mabel Dodge's salon; socialite (and lover of John Reed) noted for her literary/political gatherings, with the likes of Sherwood Anderson, Theodore Dreiser, Carl Sandburg, Eugene O’Neill, Robert Frost, Walter Lippman, Max Eastman, Big Bill Haywood, Emma Goldman and Lincoln Steffens.

Mabel Dodge moved here in 1912, when the building's owner, Daniel Sickles, rented her the second floor. Sickles was a former U.S. representative who in 1859 killed Francis Scott Key's son Philip, a U.S. attorney, for having an affair with Sickles' wife Teresa. The killer entered the novel plea of temporary insanity and was acquitted. He later became a general in the Union Army and lost a leg at Gettysburg. He died here in 1914 at the age of 91.

The top floor was occupied by William Sulzer, a governor of New York who was impeached in 1913.

3: A quite lovely three-story townhouse with a neo-classical stoop.

7: Five stories dated 1838.

21: Arte restaurant

23: Washington Square Animal Hospital

25 (corner): The Beauclaire is a block-long Spanish-flavored apartment building built 1927. The name comes from a 1925 film, based on a Booth Tarkington story, about a French duke posing as a barber. Actors Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins have lived at this address; Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford used to live in the building as well.

South:

Lafayette Apartments

30 (corner): Built on the site of the Hotel Lafayette, a hangout for better-off bohemians; it appears as the "Cafe Julien" in Dawn Powell's The Wicked Pavilion. The owner of the Lafayette, Raymond Orteig (who also owned the Brevoort), put up the prize money for flying across the Atlantic that Charles Lindbergh won.

At the corner of the Lafayette now is the Knickerbocker Bar & Grill, est. 1977. Claims celebrity customers like Rachael Ray and Jane Curtin, but charmingly enough doesn't know how to spell their names. Its hundred-year-old marble bar is the one from the Lafayette where Lindbergh signed the contract for his prize-winning flight.

52: Site of building once owned by Lillian Russell that served as painter Franz Kline's studio from 1944 until 1953, when it was demolished.

60: Hamilton Apartments, built in 1954, are presumably named for Alexander Hamilton, who wrote Captain Randall's unbreakable will. (See No. 65, across the street.) In 1951, there was a vacant barbershop here that was the site of the "Ninth Street Show," an art show in 1951 that introduced abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollack, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline.

E
A
S
T

9
T
H

S
T
R
E
E
T

North:

29 (corner): A pretty nice 12-story apartment building

35: A 10-story apartment building from 1925. Novelist Dawn Powell lived at this address from 1942-58, where she wrote My Home Is Far Away, The Locusts Have No King, The Wicked Pavillion (based on the Hotel Lafayette, across the street) and A Cage for Lovers. Here she lived with her husband on the second floor and her lover, Coburn Gilman, on the first; each had his own entrance. Her parties here were noted for the aquarium full of gin.

45: Another 10-story building from 1925

49: O. Henry once lived at this now-defunct address.

55: Jefferson Apartments, 14 floors from 1965.

Randall House

65: Apartments named for Capt. Robert Richard Randall, an old sea captain whose house was about where the Silver Spurs burger joint is now. Randall owned most of the land from 10th Street to Waverly Place between 5th and 4th avenues; in his will, written by Alexander Hamilton and said to be unbreakable, he left it to establish Sailor's Snug Harbor, an old folks' home for sailors; the trust still owns 21 acres of prime Manhattan real estate. (From 1833 until 1875, Snug Harbor used to be in Staten Island, where for a time Herman Melville's brother was its governor; now it's in North Carolina.) The trust has aggressively maximized the profit from its land, which is one reason the central Village is so much uglier than the neighborhood to its west.

South:

Wanamaker's

Former depart- ment store (1907- 1954) designed by Daniel Burnham, Flatiron's architect; the center of New York shopping in the early 20th Century. (It's one of the things a sailor wants to see in On the Town.) It was famous enough to get the name of this block of 9th Street changed.

David Sarnoff, future president of RCA, manned the American Marconi radio station atop this building, where he relayed news of the 1912 Titanic disaster to the Hearst papers. (Sarnoff later falsely claimed to have been the first person in the U.S. to receive word of the shipwreck.)

More recently, the north side of the building used to house the offices of VNU, Dutch-based publisher of media trade magazines; now the marquee tenant is the Nielsen ratings service.

W
A
N
A
M
A
K
E
R

P
L
A
C
E

North:

Stewart House

91 (block): Twenty-story white-brick apartments built in 1960 on the site of (and named for) A.T. Stewart's Cast-Iron Palace (1862), the first large store on the Ladies' Mile shopping strip, of which it was the southern endpoint. Stewart, called "one of the meanest men that ever lived," died 1876, and his body was kidnapped from St. Marks' graveyard in 1878 and held for ransom; they were returned by parties unknown in 1881 in exchange for $20,000. His store was purchased by John Wanamaker in 1896, closed in 1954, burned down in 1956 in an inferno that injured 208 firefighters.

These apartments were home to Leon Klinghoffer, the man in a wheelchair on the Achille Lauro cruise ship who was shot and pushed overboard by Palestine Liberation Front terrorists, October 8, 1985.

South:

Cooper Union Engineering

Part of the tuition-free university founded by inventor/philanthropist Peter Cooper. Cooper Union is scheduled to replace the present less-than-inspiring structure with with a futuristic 13-story building designed by Fumihiko Maki. This site used to be the American Bible Society, which distributed bibles by the tens of millions.

E
A
S
T

9
T
H

S
T

North:

105: Sura, Korean that calls itself "The King's Meal," was Eightball Records, music for deejays

107: Central Bar used to be Pageant Books, one of the last remnants of Bookseller's Row; the store featured in the plot of Hannah and Her Sisters. Briefly the Pageant Bar & Grill, then No. 9.

115: The 19-story white-brick Saint Mark apartments, built 1964, were the home of punk rocker Joey Ramone. It's presumably named for St. Marks Place, and only indirectly for the Gospel writer and Pope of Alexandria.

South:

George Hecht Viewing Gardens

1999 gardens are supposed to allude to the vegetation of Peter Stuyvesant's farm, which this was the front entrance to. Compass refers to the true east/west orientation of Stuyvesant Street. The fence needs to be painted a different color.

Hecht was a electronics manufacturer and a supporter of Cooper Union. The garden is named after him because he paid for it--a terrible precedent.

E

9
T
H

S
T

North:

Alumni Hall

Block (33 3rd Ave): NYU dorms built 1986, housing mostly sophomores. Note "aerodrome" on roof.

South:

206-208 (corner): Lovely red brick building

210: Hasaki sushi bar

212: Tsampa, outstanding Tibetan

214: La Paella, tapas

218: Japanese Steakhouse

230: Cha An was Coal, dj bar

232: Solas, snazzy Irish bar; its name is Gaelic for ''light.''

236: Otafuko, Japanese hole-in-the-wall features octopus-based snacks

238: Cloisters Cafe has a beautiful garden, terrible service

240: Decibel, cool underground sake bar

Corner: There's a branch of HSBC here, the China-based financial conglomerate that tries to convince us that it's our local bank with an unidiomatic sign that says "Welcome to East Village."

E
A
S
T

9
T
H

S
T
R
E
E
T

North:

Corner: NYU's Barney Building was the Hebrew Technical Institute, a Jewish vocational school from 1884-1939; it's named for Edgar S. Barney, the Institute's principal for more than 50 years. Now houses NYU's Department of Art and Art Professions.

227: "In Memory of Lucas A. Steinam," who was associated with the Hebrew Technical Institute. Used to house the Institute's metalworking shops.

229: Soba-Ya, Japanese; upstairs is Keisy Oriental Nature Center.

235: Whiskers Holistic Petcare

Corner (145 2nd Ave): This was the Orchidia, beloved Italian/Ukrainian restaurant that was a community hub until it closed in 1984. It was replaced by a Steve's Ice Cream franchise, which was boycotted as a symbol of gentrification. Later was In Padella (not to be confused with La Paella)-- pricey Spanish.

South:

Veselka

Corner (144 2nd Ave): Popular, long-running Ukrainian. The title characters reunite here in Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist. In 1937 it was the Boulevard Restaurant, aka The Dutchman's, a cafe and gambling joint where a bungled hold-up resulted in the death of a plainclothes detective and the execution of four "East Side Boys" (as the press dubbed them).

306: Dinosaur Hill is my favorite toy store.

312: Meg, women's suit boutique; The Gown Company, bridal couture.

314: Eileen Fisher, women's styles

316: Cobblestones, vintage hats, gloves, scarves etc.

324: Elliott Mann, women's clothing designer. In the basement here was the Anarchist Switchboard, a "free space" from 1986-89 that produced the zine Black Out.

326: Local Clothing

328: Mascot Studio, custom frames; Selia Yang, poofy wedding gowns. C'est Magnifique jewelry moved here from Macdougal Street.

332: Clayworks Pottery, hand-crafted stoneware

334: Archangel Antiques, specializing in buttons, cufflinks and eyewear

348: St. Marks Veterinary Hospital saved my cat's life once.

350: 9th Street Bakery has been around since the 1920s. Also at this address is Poppet.

Corner (145 1st Ave): East Village Pizza & Kebabs has good slices. Nicholas Stuyvesant, a descendant of Peter, had a dwelling approximately here called Mansion House.

E
A
S
T

9
T
H

S
T
R
E
E
T

North:

Corner: Village Farm, deli with many British items, good Indian music

305: Was Lord of the Fleas

MudSpot

307: Friendly cafe with the same raved-about coffee as Astor Place's Mud Truck; a hub of the East Village social scene. The space used to be No More Eggs.

309: Was Vui Vui Cho Viet Nam.

313: Argentine tango composer Astor Piazzolla lived here in 1936, when he was 15.

315: February Eleventh

317: Jutta Neuman, handmade shoes and bags

319: Downstairs are Hair, salon with a funky neon sign, and Little King Ltd., designer rings. Planet Health used to be here, which maintained that "cooked food is poison."

321: In 1962, this basement was the first home of Cafe La Mama, pioneering off-off-broadway theater. In 1969, designers Stella Douglas and Colette Mimram "practically initiated the leather fringe binge singlehandedly" with their boutique here, which clothed such '60s icons as Timothy Leary, Johnny Winter and Jimi Hendrix. (Hendrix was friends with the designers, one of whom was married to his producer Alan Douglas.)

331: The Source, eclectic copy center since 1982, has been a favorite of musicians like They Might Be Giants (who sang a song about putting up flyers).

333: Manhattan Portage, flagship store of backpack brand. I carry one of their messenger bags, though I took the label off. Also Cadillac's Castle Designer Resale Shop.

335: H, lamps made from found objects and other unique housewares; Fabulous Fanny's, vintage eyeglasses.

337: Was 9th Street Market, hard-to-get-into restaurant

341: The Immigrant, wine bar. Was witchcraft store Enchantments, now a block down the street.

Corner: Was Angelica's Herbs, whose paranoid style detracted from its wide selection of botanical products.

South:

400 (corner): Lime Tree Market, Japanese deli

406: Flower Power Herbs & Roots has less attitude than Angelica's. Plain Canvas, a multicultural restaurant that showcased local art, was replaced by Share, a bistro designed by the Queer Eye guys.

412: Leather Rose

414: Ebisu

420: Puppy Love Kitty Cats was Bolivar Arellano Gallery, a photojournalist's gallery that had a long-running exhibit on September 11.

422: Funky Lala was eNe Salon, a friendly space that used to be a VFW lodge. My daughter got her first haircut here.

Enchantments

424: Supplies for witches and pagans--herbs, candles, oils, tarot cards etc. An East Village institution since the 1970s. Moved here from up the street.

428: Hair pi, creative hairstyling. The parlor is decorated with burlesque-themed paintings.

430: Atomic Passion was vintage housewares, now vintage clothing.

432: I Coppi, Italian

434: Mark Montano

436: No. 436, an "incubator for soon-to-be It labels" (Time Out). Was Rock Paper Scissors.

438: Itzocan Cafe, formerly Mexico Magico, charming hole in wall. Fake Orchid, Thai, was next door.

440: Stond

Corner: Doc Holliday's, ironic yet rowdy Country bar. Clog-dancing on the bar. Said to have the city's best Country jukebox. Named for the victor of the Gunfight at the OK Corral.

E
A
S
T

9
T
H

S
T
R
E
E
T

North:

P.S. 122

Corner (150 1st Ave): Former public school is now a performance space that has featured Spalding Gray, Penny Arcade, Karen Finley, Quentin Crisp, etc. Used to be home to Children's Liberation daycare, which got kicked out druing the renovation.

417: Cafe Gigi, filled with unmatched, comfy chairs

435: Dian Crystal

437: Soma sells glass pipes and graffiti art; The Good, the Bad & the Ugly, designer clothes described as "Norma Kamali meets Victorian."

441: The Exchange, a buy/sell/trade boutique, was Mayhem; Shrine Music Center is closing. Poet Frank O'Hara lived at this address from the summer of 1959 until spring 1963.

443: A. Cheng, Asian-inflected boutique

445: Bridal Veil Falls, custom-made bridal veils. The name alludes to one of the falls at Niagara.

447: In the Pink, boutique that lets you design and sew your own clothes

Corner: Cafe Pick Me Up, good place to watch the Avenue A scene. Has one of the few remaining September 11 murals on its south wall.

South:

Trinity Lower East Side Lutheran Parish

Corner: The church traces its history back to 1839, when German immigrants began what became the the Evangelical Lutheran Trinity Church of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession. Growing along with Kleine Deutschland (as the neighborhood was known in the late 1800s), the parish moved into a former Methodist church on this site in 1863 (though Methodists who barricaded themselves in the church delayed their entry). With the German community greatly declining after the General Slocum disaster of 1904, the church's membership declined from 1,750 to 15 in 1975, when the old church was demolished. The current structure, which includes a church, community center and parsonage, was built in 1996 and serves a congregation of about 120.

618: The Phatory, tiny, eclectic gallery.

La Plaza Cultural/Armando Perez

632-636 (corner): Community garden/park; notable for dramatic productions and a fence decorated with flowers made out of aluminum cans. Tito Puente has played here; there used to be a geodesic dome here built by Buckminster Fuller.

E
A
S
T

9
T
H

S
T
R
E
E
T

North:

Christodora House

Corner: Built in 1928 as a settlement house; young George Gershwin gave first piano recital here. Center of anti-gentrification protests. Iggy Pop wrote Avenue B here.

Former P.S. 64

605: Designed by the noted school architect C.B.J. Snyder, ground was broken for this school on June 12, 1904--just three days before the General Slocum disaster killed hundreds of its potential students. Lyricist Yip Harburg and director Joseph Mankiewicz went to school here; education reformer Elizabeth Irwin taught here. After the school closed in 1976, it was reborn as the El Bohio Cultural & Community Center, which housed the community group CHARAS and played a major role in the Loisaida cultural renaissance.

The auditorium at P.S. 64 has its own storied history, serving as a platform for politicians like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Gov. Alfred E. Smith and Mayor Jimmy Walker. Actors from Sydney Greenstreet and Warner "Charlie Chan" Oland to John Leguizamo and Luis Guzman have performed on the stage. Spike Lee's first student film had its debut screening here.

El Bohio was shut down in 2001 by landlord Gregg Singer despite much community protest; Singer has attempted to build a 19-story "dorm" on top of the building, and has threatened to strip off the structure's decoration to prevent landmarking. See Stop the Dorm for more info.

641: The courtyard west of this building was North Star, a soup kitchen/tent city.

647: Address of Limbo Lounge, part of the 1980s East Village scene; camp theater like Vampires Lesbians of Sodom and Psycho Beach Party was put on here.

649: Louis, discreet wine bar.

Corner (145 Ave C): Esperanto, Brazilian that was instrumental in the popularization of the Mojito.

South:

700 (corner): Home to Monika Beerle, who was murdered by cannibal Daniel Rakowitz in 1990. Building includes Higher Grounds espresso bar, and the gallery of daub painter Theresa Byrnes

710: Henry Street Settlement Day Care #3; building dates to 1876.

The family in the novel Call It Sleep moves to an apartment at the corner of Avenue D and 9th Street.

E
A
S
T

9
T
H

S
T
R
E
E
T

North:

Ninth Street Community Garden & Park

717: An 1898 building by architect George Pelham was demolished here in the 1970s.

733: A punk rock squat between two gentrified neighbors; got title to the building in 2002.

743-749 (corner): Housing Works Day Treatment and Residential Program, declared a "special project of national significance" by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The building is new, and has really nice brickwork.