Asia Society Museum presents an exhibition of 227 photographs taken by famed Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, capturing the history, culture, and atmosphere of 1980s New York from his unique perspective.
The Slocum Memorial Fountain by sculptor Bruno Louis Zimm was donated by the Sympathy Society of German Ladies and installed in Tompkins Square Park, a central feature of the neighborhood. The nine foot upright stele is made of pink Tennessee marble with a low relief of two children looking seaward as well as a lionhead spout.
'The Finish, Tompkins Square Park' Manhattan, 1906 Annual Report
The Hamilton-Holly House is an 1831 landmarked, Federalist style building which has housed the clothing store Trash And Vaudeville since 1971 (and has sold spandex to famous and not so famous rock and rollers ever since.)
This building is most notably characterized by its unusual 26-foot width and 3-1/2-story height, long parlor floor windows, unique vermiculated, rounded entranceway, molded pediment lintels, peaked roof, and double segmental dormers.
The high-stoop and peaked roof also makes this a unique Federal-era construct.
This house, along with the entire block, was developed by Thomas E. Davis, who sold 4 St. Marks place to US Secretary of Treasury, Alexander Hamilton's Son in 1833, and lived here with his widowed mom and their immediate families for nearly a decade. (Alexander Hamilton was killed in a pistol duel with Arron Burr a few years prior.)
The Van Wyck family owned 4 St. Marks in 1855 when a classified ad appeared in The New York Times reading, ''Respectable middle-aged Scotch or German Protestant woman wanted to do the general work of a small family; apply immediately at No. 4 St. Marks Place.''
By 1870, the neighborhood was much less fashionable, and a census record shows the building was used as a boarding or lodging house.
It has been widely rumored that Last of the Mohicans author, James Fenimore Cooper lived here in the 1830s, but little evidence shows this is the case. At least not during this time period. (There were already two families of Hamiltons and Hollys occupying the space, among other discrepancies and lack of evidence.)
In the 1950's and 60's, this building hosted a variety of cutting-edge performance art spaces which ended up challenging the limits of the First Amendment in Vietnam War-era America.
The Tempo Playhouse and the New Bowery Theater were two notables, but The Bridge Theater really “pushed the limits” of freedom of speech and was eventually shut down.
The Bridge Theater was a Fluxus art house, and hosted the likes of Yoko Ono, The Fugs, and the Bread and Puppet Theater. Fluxus art is based on the work and philosophy of artist Allan Kaprow; and is mainly comprised of group-based, improvised, interactive, mixed-media performance art.
Call it "Streetscapes Lite," after Christopher Gray's column in the Sunday NY Times. I apply my full geek powers and talent for time-wasting to researching the history of locations and buildings and other places in my neighborhood that I find interesting.
With new layouts and color scans, the online version of ABC No Rio Dinero preserves the early history of a pioneer Lower East Side art space that was the unplanned progeny of the "Real Estate Show," an illegal exhibition in an abandoned, city-owned building squatted by artists on New Year’s Eve 1980.
Compiling art and articles from the period, sections of the book spotlight Collaborative Projects Inc. (Colab), the Time Square Show, the South Bronx art space Fashion-Moda, Group Material, PADD, and East Village music and art in the 1980s. Amongst the featured artists and writers are young, up-and-comers of the 1980s like Kiki Smith, Tom Otterness, John Ahearn, Tim Rollins, Walter Robinson, Jeffrey Deitch, and Bob Holman; the No Rio stalwarts Becky Howland, Bobby G, Peter Cramer and Jack Waters; photographers Martha Cooper, Lisa Kahane, and Tom Warren; and established voices like Lucy Lippard, and -- in a poetry section edited by Josh Gosciak -- Amiri Baraka, Miguel Pinero.
Originally opened in 1926 as the independently operated Commodore Theatre, this movie house/Yiddish theater was taken over by Loew's Inc. and later became known as the Village Theater. It can credit Lenny Bruce as appearing on its stage.
In March 1968 it became the Fillmore East concert venue. ....
In the fall of 1980, it was converted into what was to become New York City's best and most celebrated gay disco The Saint, which became famous world-wide. This continued until May 2, 1988 when the doors closed following a non-stop 48 hours party. The building was used spasmodically for a couple of years for live events, then stood empty for a few years until the auditorium was demolished in around 1995.
Today the narrow facade remains and the lobby is now remodeled as an Emigrant Savings Bank. Apartments/condos called Hudson East were constructed on the site of the auditorium.
A few groups rallied unsuccessfully to save the building for conversion to a recording studio or other performance use. Now, only the theater's Second Avenue entrance has been retained as part of a four-story commercial building that the Hudson Companies sold to Emigrant Savings Bank. A bank branch occupies the one-time theater lobby. The rest of the theater was razed to make way for the new apartment building.... A plaque will be placed at the building's entrance telling passers-by of the storied night spots that once occupied the site -- despite the fact ... that the people who will rent apartments here will probably be too young to remember them.
Aces & Eights at 34 Avenue A, brings back the glory days of East Village art with a fun exhibition of evocative, post-pop photographs by Curt Hoppe in a lively, lounge setting. Who could be more perfect for the bar’s first foray into serious art than the legendary Hoppe, who as a young artist was one of the most talked about stars of the notorious “New York / New Wave” show at PS1 which helped launch the careers of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Robert Mapplethorpe and others, back in 1981.
For most of the last twenty years, Hoppe has keapt a relatively low profile steering clear of downtown shenanigans for a lucrative career making exquisite photo-realist paintings of scenes in the Hamptons. Hoppe has always used his own photographs for his paintings. Recently turning his camera on city scenes, he has accumulated a profusion of exciting new images, and began thinking about exhibiting the photographs themselves. When Aces and Eights called, it seemed the perfect opportunity to give the new work its first public test.
Aces & Eights’ decision to show art was an outgrowth of the spirited exchanges on EV Grieve’s neighborhood blog between then general manager Tom Michaelsen and East Village residents concerned about the bar’s Upper-East-Side, preppy reputation. “Our style is sometimes a little different,” says Michaelsen, “but there is much about East Village culture that we share and we’re proud to be part of the community and its history.”
The show, up through this weekend and featuring more than 200 artists and 300 works, is part retrospective of the experience of squatting and part history of the building and the people it has housed, including both squatters and unknown inhabitants from previous centuries who left traces of their lives hidden behind walls or buried in the ground outside. Mr. Castrucci said he was motivated in part by a desire to document what had in some ways been a secret existence.
By many measures life is now less arduous, Mr. Castrucci said, but he still relishes the independence and freedom he and others found in the pre-gentrified days of the East Village, when it seemed for a while that the future could be written by anybody bold enough to act.
“We were a mixture of volunteers and dropouts from society” he said. “And I still haven’t figured out what category I was in.”
We lived on the Bowery near the St. Marks from the 60's thru the 80's. It was fondly nicknamed "The Itch". Nobody dared sit in the front row because it was reserved for the "Hell's Angels" ... Everyone was stoned. I remember a triple feature of "Eraserhead", "Freaks", and at midnight "El Topo" ( or El Poto"). After the show we staggred out and had cabbage soup at the Kiev. Those were the days.
