East Village: St. Marks Place between 1st Avenue and Avenue A.

I didn’t realize this until I started writing, but St. Marks Place is only three blocks long. It feels like it should be longer because—along with Broadway and Wall Street—it seems like it’s packed with cool landmarks. In fact, these three blocks are dense enough to warrant its own book (which I haven’t read, unfortunately).

This street, like much of the rest of the neighborhood, has been a revolving door for newcomers: first the immigrants from Germany, Russia, and Ukraine in the 19th and 20th centuries—then the hippies, punks, squatters, and junkies that later cultivated what we think of as the East Village.

These days, the vibe here is a bit “counterculture at brunch” as gentrification and high rents have sanded down some of the sharper edges that created the pressure-cooker era of the Tompkins Square Riot in 1988.

Between First and A is the easternmost stretch and ends at Tompkins Square park. It’s filled with nightlife spots, holdover businesses, musical curiosities, and a wall over tenements that has mostly been untouched over the past century. Honestly, this block was so overstuffed with cool stuff that I’m posting only half of what I originally intended to.

Maybe one day we’ll revisit for a bonus. Wouldn’t that be nice!

Here’s your streetview.

“Physical Graffiti” Tenements at 96-98 St. Marks Place | Approx. 1890

You may have seen these weathered tenements on the cover of Led Zeppelin’s 1975 classic “Physical Graffiti¹,” which turned these apartments into little landmarks.

The cover designer took a couple of creative liberties, such as cropping out a floor to fit the square vinyl sleeve and adding some fun tenants in the window inserts like the Virgin Mary, Lee Harvey Oswald, and King Kong, according to The Hidden Track.

Stones heads also know this stoop from the Rolling Stones’s 1981 music video for “Waiting on a Friend.” Mick and pals hang out on the stoop of number 98 for a bit before walking to a bar on the corner of First Ave.

(Oh, you want a second-by-second breakdown of the locations in the music video, followed by behind-the-scenes photos, and superimposed images of the Stones over the present day street? This website hears you.)

There’s no historical marker, just Physical GraffiTea, a tea shop that pays homage to the band, at least in name. You can get the led out with the “Deep Purple” tea blend that includes butterfly blue pea flowers, ashwaganda root, and skullcap.

Someone should open a sandwich shop called “Houses of the Hoagie.”

In 1989, number 96 hosted an anarchist bookstore called Sabotage. A blog post by Dan Sabater about the history of these bookstores in the city wrote:

“The neighborhood was hot because of lots of clashes with the police around the park and in the squats. There was a lot of aggro and pressure. Eventually the collective that ran the place split in two. The bookstore got taken over by an assortment of LES crazies and didn’t last a minute.”

Faces

A general rule of thumb here is that if there are faces on buildings—terra cotta or otherwise—I’m going to post ‘em.² That’s the By the Block promise.

East Village Books

Watch the steps and bring cash.

This subterranean book nook has thousands of well-curated books crammed into the aisles. It’s the kind of place you have to shuffle around people in the aisles and where they proudly hang up poor reviews and angry emails.

In 2024, when the contributors of the New Yorker named it one of their favorite bookstores in New York, they noted that “the bookcases are almost always covered with a thin film of dust, and the shelves do not hide their age.”

They’ve also put a lot of thought into the best methods for storing and selling books outside in their back garden without spoiling the stock under the tarps. (A lot of thought.) I missed it when I visited, but now I have another excuse for a trip back.

Bonus: This blog post has some more good photos.

Jim Power’s Mosaic Trail

You can’t walk the East Village without seeing the work of Jim Power, the "Mosaic Man." A Vietnam vet who found solace in ceramics and found-object art, Power began encrusting the neighborhood’s lampposts in the 80s.

He lived on this block at 120 St. Marks at a squat called The Cave, until it was gutted in 2006, according to New York Magazine.

Power’s relationship with the city has been a decades-long tug-of-war: Giuliani’s anti-graffiti task force ripped his work down; Bloomberg later praised it. At one point, Power even ripped down his own work in protest of a renovation at Astor Plaza that required pulling up some of his work.

He’s still around. There’s been some recent coverage of him in recent years including in 2020, when Bedford + Bowery followed him as he continued making art in the midst of the pandemic.

132 St. Marks Place | 1920

Not much to add here. I just really like this walk-up apartment on the corner of St. Marks and Ave. A. There’s some colorful graffiti, a neon sign, and classic tenement architecture.

The bar with the neon sign is a trendy spot called Empellón Al Pastor, which in the ‘80s was a punk bar called Alcatraz. The night I was exploring, a fella was belting out some pretty decent Elvis Costello and R.E.M. covers.

Seriously, there’s a lot more to include: the landmark day care place, the cool building with the Starbucks, and the Under St. Marks Theater, to start. But I think I overloaded everyone’s inbox. Time to go home.

What’s Good: Neon, graffiti, a vibrant community, and cool details everywhere in the best part of Manhattan. The photos take themselves in a place like this.

What’s Not: There’s a real story here, too, of gentrification and tenant struggles that undercut the urban utopian fantasy. I’ll go more into that when I revisit the East Village, but it does add a chill.

Block Rating: 9/10