Named after St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, no street embodies the East Village in its 20th century counterculture heyday more than St. Marks Place.

After the Civil War, the section of 8th Street between Astor Place and Avenue A was the center of “Little Germany.” In the first decade of the 20th century, Polish and Jewish communities moved in; the area is often credited with being the “birthplace of the American gangster,” as it was a known Jewish mob meeting spot.

After World War II, artists and intellectuals gravitated toward the Lower East Side from everywhere in the world. The area was still considered a slum, but a community of anarchists, communists, and general anti-establishment activists had imported radical politics and ideals in their recent immigration from Europe. W.H. Auden lived at #77 at 6 St. Marks Place; From the same building, the communist journal Novy Mir was published–Leon Trotsky, who lived at #80, was a contributor.

Music was putting down roots as well. The Five Spot (2 St. Marks Place) featured a 7 month residency by Thelonious Monk—backed by John Coltrane on tenor sax—in 1957. In 1966 Andy Warhol and Paul Morrisey created The Dom nightclub upstairs at #19, where they featured the Velvet Underground as their house band. Downstairs, impresario Jerry Brandt’s Electric Circus became an infamous psychedelic club and performance space, booking Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead and many more.

St. Marks Place once again became a counterculture magnet as the heart of New York’s punk rock scene, embodied by rock club Coney Island High at #15. Trash & Vaudeville opened at #4 in 1971 and still sells its wares today.

During the 1980s, gallery 51X introduced a new postmodern American art, showing graffiti artists like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat as well as Nan Goldin and Jeff Koons. Seminal ’80s dance and DJ band Dee-Lite lived at #34. The neighborhood’s transformation and “gentrification” that began in the ’90s brought a new crowd to St. Marks. A Japanese expatriate scene brought dozens of tiny noodle shops, sushi restaurants and grocery stores that line the street today (via Urban Spoon). The historic countercultural causeway may no longer be in perpetual rebellion, but you’ll still find a colorful street scene and a world of young New York City culture on every corner.