New York Songlines: Forsyth Street

West:

Sara D. Roosevelt Park

Second African Burial Ground

The playground between Stanton and Rivington streets is on the site of where African-Americans were interred after the closing of the more famous downtown cemetery in 1794. At the time, this was unwanted part of the ruined Delancey estate. In 1853, as the city grew uptown, this burial ground was closed, and the bodies (supposedly) relocated to a churchyard uptown.

The cemetery is commemorated by the M'Finda Kalunga Community Garden, in this park between Rivington and Delancey, whose name means "Garden at the Edge of the Other Side of the World" in the Kicongo language.

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Corner (135 E Houston): Gem Soho, the upscale brand of the Clarion hotel chain; was fairly recently a Howard Johnson Express, an affordable if generic place to sleep on the Lower East Side.

210: myplasticheart, designer toy store and gallery opened 2004.

Alternative Education Complex

198 (corner): Includes the Jeffrey C. Tenzer Learning Center, Auxiliary Services for High Schools, Cascades High School and the Lyle Center Satellite Academy.

STANTON ST         ===> E

188 (corner): This four-story building was part of the development project that the Garden of Eden was bulldozed to make room for in 1986.

184: The tenement previously at this address was the home of Adam Purple, who in 1975 began turning the vacant lots behind his building into the Garden of Eden, one of the neighborhood's first community gardens--using in part horse manure biked down from Central Park. It was flattened by court order in 1986 to make room for a lowrise development. The present six-story building at this address dates to 2001.

170 (corner): Yi Cheng Trading Co., Chinese restaurant

RIVINGTON ST         ===> E

Corner (45 Rivington): Rivington House--big pink building, built as P.S. 20 in the 1890s, is now a residential AIDS facility--the largest in the country. Terry Miller, writer of Greenwich Village and How It Got That Way, died here.

150: EastSide Sound, a major recording studio founded in 1972 whose clients have included Lou Reed, John Zorn, Santana, Sting, Eric Clapton, Laurie Anderson, Mariah Carey, Cindy Lauper, Keith Richards, Peter Frampton, Beyonce, Herbie Hancock, Violent Femmes, System of a Down and many others. The studio moved here from Allen Street in 2001.

148: K&H Trading, restaurant

146: Laura Woods, described by The New York Times as a "fallen woman," was shot by estranged husband Adolph Adams at this address--the "den" of Mme. Hutchinson--on May 20, 1884. The current building dates to c. 1910.

Corner (38 Delancey): A 20-story residential building completed in 2010.

West:

Wah Mei Bird Garden

In this community garden, established by the Forsyth Street Garden Club, Chinese men gather early every morning to give their songbirds a daily dose of fresh air.

Part of this section of Sara D. Roosevelt Park was leased to commercial vendors in 1994 in an effort to get them off of Grand Street. The project, known as Dragon's Gate, did not thrive, and the vendors were kicked out after the city accused some of erecting permanent structures. The space is now used for basketball.

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Spanish Delancey 7th-Day Adventist Church

Corner (43 Delancey): On this site in the 1880s was a chapel of the Allen Street Presbyterian Church, an unsuccessful missionary effort to convert the neighborhood's Jews that was based in two repurposed houses. This gave way to the current, more impressive structure, built in 1890 as the Forsyth Street Church. Architect J. Cleveland Cady, who also designed the original Metropolitan Opera House and part of the Natural History Museum, gave it a dramatic double staircase leading up to the triple-arched entrance; he also provided space for retail, commercial activity that continues to subsidize the site's more spiritual endeavors.

In 1900, the church was bought by the Jewish congregation Poel Zodek Anshei Illia--roughly, Do-Gooding People of Illia, a Lithuanian village near Vilnius. The synagogue began to decline in the 1920s, as Jews began to move from the Lower East Side; in the late 1960s, the congregation sold the building to the present worshipers, a group of Seventh-Day Adventists (an idiosyncratic Christian sect that traces back to an upstate New York movement that believed the world would end in 1844) that was originally based on Union Square. The Adventist congregation includes many immigrants from Mexico, Ecuador and the Philippines.

120: Triple Good Corporation, grocery

110 (corner): Don Juan Grocery & Deli

BROOME ST         ===> E

108 (corner): Windsor Hotel, a small, affordable hotel in a six-story building from 2000.

100: Grotto, subterranean Italian

Corner (272 Grand): Fairtown Trading Inc., Grand China Meat Market. Was Penchina Textile Corp, wholesale dry goods distributor, until 1993.

West:

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Corner (271 Grand): Egg Custard King Cafe was Hing Wong House

72: Yuan Seng Restaurant Trade Services

70: Wah Hing Coffee Shop

Corner (119 Hester): Hung Wan Lai Grocery. Building c. 1910.

HESTER ST         ===> E

Here is the track and football (soccer?) field associated with IS 131/Pace High School.

M.S. 131: Dr. Sun Yat Sen School

Block (100 Hester): A large middle school serving a largely Chinese immigrant student body, with an emphasis on computer-aided learning. It shares quarters with Pace High School, a small school affiliated with Pace University, and the Emma Lazarus High School for English Language Learners, named for the "Give me your tired..." poet. The building, which spills over onto the former footprint of Forsyth Street, dates to 1983; AIA Guide likes the "curvilinear, extroverted, expansive" design by Warner, Burns, Toan & Lundy.

West:

Manhattan Bridge

This was the last of the three suspension bridges crossing the lower East River, opening to traffic in 1909. The chief engineer was Othniel Foster Nichols, assisted by two of the most famous bridge engineers in U.S. history--Leon Moisseiff and Rudolph Modjeski.

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St. Barbara Greek Orthodox Church

27: Built 1892 as the Kol Israel Anshe Poland synagogue, remade as a Greek Orthodox church in 1932.

Corner (1 Eldridge): 328 Cafe

West:

Manhattan Bridge

Forsyth runs parallel to the Manhattan Bridge for three blocks.

Corner (88 East Broadway): Under the Manhattan Bridge is the spacious 88 East Broadway Mall, which includes the New White Swan Bakery.

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East:

Corner (79 Division): Fred Tea Shop

Corner (90 East Broadway): May's Bakery; Forever Love Wed- ding Center

West:

Manhattan Bridge

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East:

Corner (87 East Broadway): Manna Two Bakery