St. Marks Place

Join urban planner/cultural historian Laurence Frommer for a stroll down one of the East Village’s most historic, yet largely unprotected thoroughfares. St. Marks Place played a central role in the neighborhood’s development in the 1830s, with the construction of elegant row houses for the city’s elite as the city was growing northward. In the mid-19th century, handsome tenements, houses of worship and other institutions were erected for German immigrants, followed by Eastern Europeans and later, Latinos. In the mid-20th century the street drew a vibrant mix of artists, intellectuals and activists. Despite the fact that St. Marks Place runs along the northern boundary of the area’s central historic district, designated in 2012, the street was inexplicably not included in it and much of it remains unprotected. We will examine this conundrum via the street’s built fabric, from the home of Alexander Hamilton’s widow to the Polish immigrant social club that became Andy Warhol’s Electric Circus and the historic Theater 80, which played an important role in the development of both Off- and Off-Off-Broadway.