Typically our “What’s in a Name?” series looks into the name of a building or a place and what’s behind the name as we know it. But today we are going to look into the history that has been lost when streets have been named to represent their colonial past. We will look into the […]
Some years back, we had a series called ‘What’s In A Name?,’ exploring the reason behind some of the names found on buildings, streets, parks, or other locations in our area that we perhaps don’t give much thought to. One such example in our neighborhood might be the Stewart House. Built c. 1960 and located at […]
Off the Grid has featured many posts about some of the place names within Greenwich Village and the East Village, including Bleecker Street, Taras Shevchenko Place, and Father Demo Square. So a series of posts on how some Manhattan neighborhoods have gotten their names, particularly Greenwich Village, caught our eye.
It’s one of the quaintest and most intriguing streets in the West Village. It’s located just a block from the Stonewall Inn, the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement. And as Off the Grid favorite Jerry Seinfeld would say, it’s thin, clean, and neat. So in honor of Thursday’s National Coming Out Day, Off […]
As we continue to document the research we have compiled on every building and site in the East Village, we run across some incredible stories of the neighborhood’s history. Such is the case for a site at 358-362 East 8th Street, a lush green oasis in the middle of the block between Avenues C and […]
Strolling through Father Demo Square at 6th Avenue and Carmine and Bleecker Streets, one might naturally assume that the name of the park has something to do with the neighboring Our Lady of Pompei Church, whose bell tower rises over the west end of the plaza. That assumption is correct, but who really was Father […]
If you’ve taken a trip to the new Cooper Union building or gone for a beer at McSorley’s, you’ve most likely noticed that small one-block street that runs between St. George’s Ukrainian Church and Cooper Union, between Seventh Street and Sixth Street. This little off-the-grid street is known as Taras Shevchenko Place, named after the […]
It is hard to imagine Bleecker Street, with its high fashion boutiques, small businesses, cafes, and food shops as farmland, but then again it is hard to visualize any part of Manhattan in its rural state. Bleecker Street’s provenance is that of the Bleecker family, prominent New York City citizens who owned farmland in the […]
Included within the boundaries of the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s proposed East Village/Lower East Side Historic District is the venerable limestone and terra cotta-clad Saul Birns Building, located on the west side of Second Avenue between 6th & 7th Streets. The building definitely stands out on Lower Second Avenue, which is lined primarily with converted early-to-mid-19th […]
Sometimes determining the provenance of a street’s name is fairly easy. It is true for Bank Street in Greenwich Village, which was named for … you guessed it … a branch of the Bank of New York, which located to the area during New York’s first yellow fever epidemic in 1799. Today we will look […]