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Gay Street (Manhattan)

Greenwich VillageStreets in Manhattan
NYC Greenwich Village Gay Street
NYC Greenwich Village Gay Street

Gay Street is a short, angled street that marks off one block of Greenwich Village in the New York City borough of Manhattan. Although coincidentally encompassed by the Stonewall National Monument, the street's name does not refer to the LGBT character of Greenwich Village, or to any other LGBT issues. Rather, the name may come from a family named Gay who owned land or lived there in colonial times: a newspaper of May 11, 1775 contains a classified ad where an "R. Gay", living in the Bowery, offers a gelding for sale. This street, originally a stable alley, was probably named for an early landowner, not for the sexuality of any denizens, who coincidentally reside in Greenwich Village, a predominantly homosexual community. Nor is it likely, as is sometimes claimed, that its namesake was Sidney Howard Gay, editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard; he would have been 19 when the street was christened in 1833. The mistaken association with an abolitionist is probably because the street's residents were mainly black, many of them servants of the wealthy white families on Washington Square. Later it became noted as an address for black musicians, giving the street a bohemian reputation. Since it was once too narrow to be a full-fledged street, the City of New York widened it in 1833. As a result, Federal houses of 1826-1833 line the west side of the street, while on the east side, following a hiatus caused by the Panic of 1837, the houses are from 1844-1860, with remnants of Greek Revival detailing in doorways and window surrounds.The street extends from Christopher Street one block south to Waverly Place, between and roughly parallel to Sixth and Seventh Avenues. It runs through the site of a brewery owned by Wouter van Twiller, who succeeded Peter Minuit as Governor of New Netherland in 1633. The name first appeared officially in the Common Council minutes for April 23, 1827, which record a health inspector's complaint against a privy belonging to one A. S. Pell of Gay Street. The 1943 movie A Night to Remember portrays 13 Gay Street as the address of the building where most of the action, including a murder, occurs. The opening shots of Cyndi Lauper's video for "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" were shot on Gay Street in September 1983. In 1996, Sheryl Crow made a video on Gay Street for the song "A Change Would Do You Good." On Good Friday, April 14, 2017, an anonymous person chained a wooden cross to a street sign on the sidewalk of Gay St. This anonymous person moved the cross to different parts of the street for several days. On April 23rd, residents of the street painted the cross in bright, rainbow colors, and added the word "Love," to the top of the cross.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Gay Street (Manhattan) (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Gay Street (Manhattan)
Gay Street, New York Manhattan

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 40.73362 ° E -74.0004 °
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Gay Street 15
10014 New York, Manhattan
New York, United States
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NYC Greenwich Village Gay Street
NYC Greenwich Village Gay Street
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New York Women's House of Detention

The New York Women's House of Detention was a women's prison in Manhattan, New York City which existed from 1932 to 1974. Built on the site of the Jefferson Market Prison that had succeeded the Jefferson Market in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, the New York Women's House of Detention is believed to have been the world's only art deco prison. It was designed by Sloan & Robertson in 1931 at a cost of $2,000,000 and opened to the public by Richard C. Patterson, Jr. on March 29, 1932. It did not receive its first inmates until some time later. Its location at 10 Greenwich Avenue gave the women inmates an opportunity to try to communicate with people walking by. After the prison was officially closed on June 13, 1971, Mayor Lindsay began the demolition of the prison in 1973, and it was completed the following year. It was replaced with a garden.Ruth E. Collins was the first superintendent at the prison. She embraced the design of the prison, labeling it "a new era in penology". Her mission was to effect the moral and social rehabilitation of the women in her charge, giving them a chance for "restoration as well as for punishment". She commissioned a number of art works as part of her mission to uplift the women and treat them all as individuals. Among the Women's House of Detention's most famous inmates were: Polly Adler Jane Alpert Angela Davis Dorothy Day Andrea Dworkin Miriam Moskowitz Ethel Rosenberg Afeni ShakurIn its later years, allegations of racial discrimination, abuse and mistreatment dogged the prison. Angela Davis has been outspoken about the treatment she witnessed. Andrea Dworkin's testimony of her assault by two of the prison's doctors led to its eventual closing. Audre Lorde described the House of Detention as, "a defiant pocket of female resistance, ever-present as a reminder of possibility, as well as punishment."In 2022, the historian Hugh Ryan published a history of the prison called The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison. He writes, "It was one of the Village's most famous landmarks: a meeting place for locals and a must-see site for adventurous tourists. And for tens of thousands of arrested women and transmasculine people from every corner of the city, the House of D was a nexus, drawing the threads of their lives together in its dark and fearsome cells."