A hallowed stomping ground for bohemian boundary-breakers – including anarchist Emma Goldman, jazz fiend Thelonius Monk, beatnik Allen Ginsberg and punk queen Debbie Harry – walking this graffitied strip of 8th St is like stepping into the shoes of NYC’s edgiest icons. While gentrification has softened its bite, there’s still gritty flavor to savor along the three-block stretch. Smoke shops, dumpling spots, tattoo parlors and drinking dens like speakeasy PDT attract new generations of rabble-rousers raring to make their mark.
Although St Marks Pl is only on 8th St, it earned its saintly moniker from the like-named church nearby on 10th St. Easily one of NYC’s most famous strips, St Marks Pl is also one of the city’s smallest, occupying barely half of a mile. The road, however, is jam-packed with historical tidbits that would delight any trivia buff. Some of the most important addresses include numbers 2, 4, 6, 96 and 98, and 122 St Marks Pl.
Many years ago, 2 St Marks Pl was the famous Five-Spot, where pianist Thelonious Monk got his start in the 1950s. A cast of colorful characters have left their mark at 4 St Marks Pl: Alexander Hamilton’s widow, Eliza, moved in with two of her children and their spouses in the 1830s; author James Fenimore Cooper (Last of the Mohicans) lived next door at No 6; and Yoko Ono’s Fluxus artists descended upon the building in the 1960s. The buildings at 96 and 98 St Marks Pl are immortalized on the cover of Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti album. Though it closed in the 1990s, 122 St Marks Pl was the location of a popular cafe called Sin-é, where Jeff Buckley and David Gray often performed.
As you walk along St Marks (going east from Broadway) keep an eye out for the tile-encrusted street poles of the Mosaic Trail. In the late ’80s, a local Vietnam vet named Jim Powers began decorating lampposts with bits of tile, mirror, ceramics, beads and coins as a way to deal with his PTSD. Many of them spell out local East Village landmarks or people, such as "CBGB," "Patti Smith" and PDT.
