The Word Is Third, Part Two
Continuing the walk east on 3rd St. in Greenwich Village from Part One last week, get some lunch at Gristede’s at Mercer St. The supermarket was begun by German immigrant brothers Charles and Diedrich Gristede with one store on 42nd St. and 2nd Ave. in 1891. Customers found the selection and service to their liking and the brothers opened new stores around town. By 1948 Gristede’s had 141 locations in Manhattan, Bronx, and the northern suburbs. The company had its ups and downs and at one time or the other had partnered with both Sloan’s and Food Emporium. Today, Gristede’s is owned by billionaire John Catsimatidis, who ran for mayor a few years ago and currently owns radio station WABC. Along with the old Food Emporium, Sloan’s and d’Agostino’s, as an “outer borougher” these were sort of mystery supermarkets to me since they were found almost exclusively in Manhattan. In Brooklyn, I patronized Key Food and in Little Neck, the World’s Smallest Stop & Shop that has since become a J-Mart.
This 1970 mural by Polish-born, New York based, Jewish-American abstract painter, sculptor, collage artist Tatiana “Tania” Lewin (1920-1982) on W. 3rd St. near Mercer is the only remaining City Walls mural, as far as I know, that’s still visible in its totality. City Walls was a not-for-profit organization established in 1967 by muralist Jason Crum and other artists to brighten up otherwise drab NYC locations.
The works created by Crum (who later moved to Colorado) and his cohorts are no longer possible as so many empty surfaces are sold to advertisers who blare their wares in empty spaces that are becoming scarcer and scarcer. City Walls addressed, in a small way, the feeling that NYC was circling down the drain. If it was, it may as well look a little brighter.
Between Broadway and the Bowery, 3rd St. is interrupted as it’s called Great Jones St. between those two storied roads. E. 3rd St. begins its numbering at the Bowery, another clue that there was never a time when Great Jones was called E. 3rd. At #8 E. 3rd St. is a massive six-story brick building now home to the Renewal on the Bowery homeless assistance agency. The building went up in 1915 and was originally the Bowery branch of the YMCA, which has a lengthy history assisting the unfortunate on the Bowery, a neighborhood presence since 1872. In 1931, the branch served over 1.3 million meals in its cafeterias, managed to secure jobs for over 1000 men and provided overnight lodging in dormitories as well as longer-term shared accommodations for over 100,000 men.
A painted sign that partially reads “Bowery Branch YMCA” can still be seen on the building’s west end. The YMCA moved out in 1947, but the building has been home to assistance agencies since then. Directly to the rear of the building you can find the New York Marble Cemetery.
The spare 1968 Roman Catholic Church of the Nativity stands at 46-48 2nd Ave., opposite the New York Marble Cemetery, replacing an earlier Greek temple-styled, Ionic-columned building constructed in 1831 as a Presbyterian church, but sold to the Catholic parish in 1842. The original church was demolished just before the new one was constructed.
I was dismayed, but not shocked to find the church abandoned. It merged with another parish in 2015 and closed the building. The property was sold in 2020.
#55 E. 3rd is part of the East Village Catholic Worker complex. At 34-36 E. 1st St., social activist and convert to the Catholic Church Dorothy Day (1897-1980) initiated the St. Joseph Hospitality Church, a soup kitchen/hostel/office for the publication of The Catholic Worker in 1967. Day took the paper and Catholic Worker’s operations here to nearby 55 E. 3rd in a building known as Maryhouse in the 1970s. For several years Day resided in southwest Staten Island in a housing project set up by Spanish immigrants in the mid-20th century; it was razed in 2000. Reportedly, the canonization candidate died here at 55 E. 3rd.
This Street View clip from 2011 shows the Hell’s Angels NYC headquarters at #77 E. 3rd in 2011. The Angels moved out in 2019, decrying the East Village’s yuppification. The gang had been in the East Village since 1977 and had indulged in drug trafficking, but some said they prevented worse crimes (also the reason Howard Beachers celebrated the presence of John Gotti for so many years). One didn’t think about touching or moving any of the sawhorses protecting the chopper parking.
When I was a kid just out of school around 1980, we were heading into an E. 3rd Street bar one night when it was realized that the Angels were on the same block. A cross word or a disagreement with an Angel could result in unpleasantness that could leave permanent marks, so we thought better of it.
The campanile, or bell tower, of Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, 173 E. 3rd between Aves. A and B, dominates the East Village skyline. The church is cathedral-sized and the bell tower was once taller than it is today, as its original 250-foot height was lowered to 232 feet in 1912. The parish is one of the oldest in Manhattan, established in 1844 to serve German Catholic immigrants, and the church itself was consecrated by Bishop “Dagger John” Hughes in 1852—two years after St. Patrick’s Cathedral construction got underway. The church also contains a crypt below ground. Today its services are still bilingual but in English and Spanish. Oddly, there are no signs marking it as Most Holy Redeemer outside the building.
Bullet Space, an art gallery/performance space at #292 E. 3rd between Aves. C and D, now owns the space but it was originally inhabited by squatters on the property. In their own words on their website: “A community access center for images, words, and sounds of the inner city. The center was founded in the winter of 1985 and was part of the squatter movement and reconstructed with or without the formal sanction of the city, invisible officialdom. The ground floor of the building is open-like, a bulletin. ‘Bullet’ first originated from the name brand of heroin sold on the block—known as bullet block, encompassing the accepted American ethic of violence; ‘Bullet Americana’—translating that into the art form as weaponry.”
With that, we’ve run out of 3rd St., as its easternmost section was taken over by the Lillian Wald Houses several decades ago.
—Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013)