Real Estate
St. Mark’s: Still lively after all these years
BY MARTHA WILKIE
St. Mark’s Place in the East Village
has had many more than
nine lives. It’s been home to Peter
Stuyvesant’s fruit orchards, waves
of immigrants and, eventually, poets
(Auden), artists (Joan Mitchell), musicians
(Debbie Harry), counterculture
fi gures (Leon Trotsky, Lenny Bruce)
and countless other creative types.
By the 1960s, St. Mark’s Place was
the epicenter of hippie counterculture,
and in the 1970s, of rock, punk and
new wave music. Led Zeppelin’s iconic
“Physical Graffi ti” album cover was
shot there, as was a Rolling Stones video
on the stoop of the same building.
Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin founded
the Yippies on St. Mark’s Place and
it was home to radical shops such as
Trash and Vaudeville and Manic Panic.
Famed photographer Roberta Bayley,
who chronicled the punk/new wave
scene (Blondie, the Ramones, the Sex
Pistols) has lived on St. Mark’s Place
since 1975. I recently spoke with her
after she’d just returned from Buenos
Aires where her work is featured in
museums and galleries. (The Ramones
are huge in Argentina, who knew?)
She worked the door at CBGB and
knew everyone in the Downtown music
and art world. What changes has she
seen?
“When I fi rst came, there were almost
no places, just CBGB, Max’s Kansas
City,” she said. “St. Mark’s was a very
quiet block. Little by little, places started
opening: Club 57, Café Orlin. What
I liked about the ’70s music scene was
the casualness of it all. The ‘stars’ of
the scene, even the New York Dolls,
who were the most famous New York
band back then, would just be walking
down the street like anyone else, and
you could just say hello. Nobody acted
like stars. It was like San Francisco in
the ’60s when you’d see Janis Joplin taking
the Muni bus on Haight St. Then at
night, two or three good bands would
be playing, and you might have to go
back and forth between CB’s and Max’s
to catch both sets.”
“Then maybe they’d get a spot at a
bigger venue like The Bottom Line or as
opening act at the Palladium, and you’d
go see them there, and all your friends
would be there, too,” she recalled. “Nobody
was making much money, so it
didn’t make sense to have more than
a friendly rivalry with another band.
Even the groupies were friends! We
were all in it together.”
Bayley feels that today’s St. Mark’s is
still lively (and much better than during
the druggie days of the ’80s), even if a
swath of empty storefronts around the
corner from the (soon-to-be-closed) infamous
In funkier times, Anya Phillips and Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys in
front of Manic Panic, at 33 St. Mark’s Place, in 1977.
dive bar the Continental probably
portends another glass tower. The
closing of record and book shops saddens
her as do the empty retail spaces.
While she misses old favorites like Café
Orlin, she enjoys the fun new Asian
restaurants and karaoke bars that have
popped up on the street.
Bayley is optimistic that new efforts
by the city to incentivize landlords
to fi ll empty storefronts with small
businesses might help. Even the John
Varvatos shop in the old CBGB space
doesn’t get too harsh a condemnation.
Of Varvatos’s juxtaposition of expensive
clothes with remnants of 1970s
grime, she said, “A $4,000 jacket is a
little incongruous! At least it’s better
than another bank.”
PHOTO BY ROBERTA BAYLEY
Author Ada Calhoun, who grew up
on St. Mark’s, beautifully outlines the
street’s vivid history in her 2015 book
“St. Marks is Dead: The Many Lives
of America’s Hippest Street.” The title
alludes to generation after generation
claiming that their own particular “back
in the day” was the street’s peak.
“I’m dismayed by all the empty storefronts,
and by Sounds closing a couple
years back,” Calhoun said. “I’m glad
East Village Books is hanging on, and
Gem Spa and B&H. And it seems to
me that the street’s primary identity
as a place for young people to meet up
and hang out has not changed, in spite
of the new developments. Rent is skyhigh,
but the sidewalks are still free.”
To purchase prints of Bayley’s photography,
PHOTO BY MARTHA WILKIE
The Daniel LeRoy House at 20 St.
Mark’s Place was built in 1832 in
the Greek Revival style. A New
York City landmark, it’s also
listed on the National Register of
Historic Places. It’s the former
home of the Grassroots Tavern
and Sounds, the last record store
on St. Mark’s. It’s now been empty
for more than two years.
visit rockpaperphoto.com or
RobertaBayley.com.
If you enjoy the St. Mark’s spirit, here
are four places nearby to rent or buy.
Only one place for sale is actually
on St. Mark’s: No. 51, a sleek modern
one-bedroom for $820,000 in a 1920s
building. The renovation makes the
most of a long and skinny fl oor plan.
(https://streeteasy.com/building/51-
st-marks-place-new_york/10)
At 64 E. Seventh St., for a mere $18
million, is a grand and idiosyncratic
fi ve-bedroom, fi ve-bath house with a
backyard garden, roof deck (complete
with pizza oven), and fi ve fi replaces.
Built in 1899, it looks like the lair of a
very rich, mad scientist.
(http://www.ronteitelbaum.com/
East_Village_Mansion.html)
For rentals, at 10 St. Mark’s Place
is a sweet one-bedroom with an original
(nonworking) fi replace and an attractive
black-and-white kitchen, for
$2,475 a month.
(https://www.bondnewyork.com/
east-village/apartment-for-rent/saintmarks
place/1503217)
And, fi nally, there’s a newly renovated
duplex at 103 St. Mark’s Place
in a 1920s house for $2,500 a month.
It’s the former home of wildly eccentric
’80s performer Klaus Nomi. If strangers
leave roses outside Emma Lazarus’s
house, what do Nomi fans leave?
( h t t p s : / / s t r e e t e a s y . c om /
building/103-st-marks-place-new_
york/3a)
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