Astor Place (Manhattan)

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Astor Place looking west on Third Avenue and St. Mark's Place

Tony Rosenthal's Alamo

The single block of Astor Place that leads to Broadway predates Manhattan's grid plan.

Astor Place is named for John Jacob Astor. Astor arrived in New York in 1783, and progressed to the point where he became the richest person in the United States at that time, and one of New York City's most famous sons. He died at the age of 75 in 1848, and the street was named for him soon thereafter.

Source: "The Street Book"; an encyclopedia of Manhattan's street names and their origins. By Henry Moscow.

Astor Place was the site of the Astor Place Opera House on the corner of East 8th Street. Built to be a fashionable theater in 1847, it was the site of the Astor Place Riot of May 10, 1849. Anti-British feelings were running so high among New York's Irish at the height of the potato famine that they found an outlet in the rivalry between actors Edwin Forrest and the English William Charles Macready. The appearance onstage of the Englishman in Macbeth occasioned so violent a protest in the streets that the police overreacted and fired into the crowd. At least eighteen died and hundreds were injured. The theater itself never recovered from the associations and was razed in the 1860's.

The current Off-Broadway Astor Place Theater, with only 299 seats, has been located in the landmark Colonnade Row on Lafayette Street, half a block south, since 1969. It was known for premiering works by downtown playwrights like Sam Shepard and since 1991 as home to Blue Man Group. The Joseph Papp Public Theater (home to the New York Shakespeare Festival) is located across the street.

The trapezium-shaped traffic island in the center of Astor Place is a popular meeting place, hangout spot, and center of much skateboarding activity. But the island is most notably home to Tony Rosenthal's sculpture "Alamo", known popularly as "The Cube", which consists of a large, black metal cube mounted on one corner. The sculpture can be spun on its vertical axis by one person with some effort, and two or more people without trouble. In 2003, the cube was the subject of a prank played by the ATF squad (All Too Flat) in which it was turned into a giant Rubik's Cube. The members of the organization were careful with the prank, as they didn't want to be destructive. The cube stayed up for about 24 hours before NYC maintenance removed the painted cardboard panels from the sculpture. "The Cube" was taken away for repairs in September, 2005, and for a short time a makeshift memorial out of white tubes replaced it. It was restored in December, 2005, and is still able to spin.

[edit] Historic Places

The Cooper Union

One of the original libraries making up the New York Public Library, the Astor Library was housed in the Astor Library Building. The building is home today to Joseph Papp Public Theater.

The Astor Place Subway station is among the original 28 subway stations and is on the List of Registered Historic Places in New York.

The Cooper Station Post Office is just two blocks north.

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln came to the attention of the fledgling Republican party with his Cooper Union Address. Given in The Cooper Union's Great Hall, the 'Right Makes Might' speech examined federal control of slavery and the thoughts of the signers of the Constitution. Cooper Union also housed one of the first free public libraries.

The beautiful Peter Cooper Memorial by Augustus Saint Gaudens is one block south on Cooper Square.