Journey through over four centuries as we walk down New York City’s oldest street! Originally a Native American footpath and Dutch farm road, site of the first free Black homesteads, and Washington’s triumphal march route during the British evacuation, it was the lower stretch of the Boston Post Road, one of America’s first highways. It witnessed 19th  century gang wars, the bloody Astor Place Riot, and the anti-slavery speech at Cooper Union that propelled Lincoln to presidency. Though landed gentry like the Delanceys settled here, it soon became the working-class main street for sailors, shopgirls, gangs, gays, sporting men, and waves of immigrant Irish, Italians, Germans, Jews, and Chinese.

This was New York City’s first entertainment district, it has seminal links to tap dance, vaudeville, Yiddish theater, Houdini, Stephen Foster, Irving Berlin, Mae West and modern tattooing.  Abstract Expressionism, Beat literature, improvisational jazz and punk rock also have their roots here. Comparing it to the more upscale Broadway, Walt Whitman found it “more democratic, with a broader, jauntier swing.” Though it declined in the 1900s, when flop houses and dive bars proliferated, it nonetheless became home to affordable jewelry, lighting, and restaurant supply stores, and a live-work home for artists like Marc Rothko, Maya Lin, William Burroughs, Robert Frank, Nan Goldin and Debbie Harry.