Gay street new york

12 Gay Street

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12 Gay Street

Beautiful townhouse, once a “Pirate’s Den” speakeasy, is among Greenwich’s most haunted buildings.

Welcome to Modern York City’s iconic Gay Street, a short, twisted Manhattan road west of 6^th Avenue. The road has appeared in countless films, including ’s A Evening to Remember, and several music videos, such as Sheryl Crow’s “A Alter Would Do You Good. But why New York Ghosts has included it on its chilling tour of Greenwich Village is because Gay Street abounds with history and lingering paranormal activity.

“A huge misnomer hangs over the source of the label of Gay Street.”¹ Its beginnings possess nothing to execute with the city’s LGBT culture. In fact, started out as an passage of stables and was most likely named after an early wealthy landowner. Wealthy New Yorkers who lived in Waverly Place when Washington Square opened in would hold their horses there. During the equal era, a morgue was located in this area. Many believe the morgue’s dead continue to haunt the neighborhood. Many tattered corpses

City Beautiful Blog

12 Gay Street: Where the Ghosts still come to Party

This silent house on Gay Road, built in , was once a bustling speakeasy and the home of a mayor’s mistress.

Thanks to its name, this charming little street happens to be one of the city&#;s most photographed. Alas, it was called “Gay Street” long before the word “gay” developed its present meaning. The avenue was most likely named in the manner of most Greenwich Village streets—after a person. Though Sidney Howard Gay, abolitionist and editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard newspaper, would have been a wonderful guess, he was still a boy when the first reference to “Gay Street” appeared. In all likelihood, it was simply named after some lesser-known individual with the similar jolly last name.

Gay Avenue is much narrower today than it was in the earlyth century—because it wasn&#;t even a authentic street! Rather than serving as a walking way, it housed stables for horses—the major means of transportation for the wealthy Village inhabitants at the time.

As the city grew north and the wealthy

There are few streets in Manhattan as beautiful as Gay Street, that preciously bent path in the West Village that&#;s been the home to speakeasies and scandals, linking Waverly Place to Christopher Lane. Due to its proximity to Christopher, the first heart of New York&#;s gay and lesbian society, it also happens to have one of the most photographed street signs in the city.

A gigantic misnomer hangs over the origin of the call of Gay Street. To expose it, we demand to go all the way back to Wouter Van Twiller&#;s ownership of the land back in the Dutch days. Van Twiller reportedly had his very own brewery which stood on this very spot. Much later on, as part of the estate of Sir Peter Warren, a morgue allegedly stood here as adequately. Beer and death &#; the roots of Homosexual Street! (See yesterday&#;s story on the early origins of Greenwich Village and our prior article on the history of Christopher Street).

Before , nearby Christopher Street was called Skinner Road and the area still retained a bit of its rural quality. But things were getting fancy over on Waverly Place.

(W.A. Roge

photo by Alice Lum

&#;In Greenwich Village a curving little street, one block long, winds it way from Christopher Street to Waverly Place; lined with tiny Federal houses on one side and later, Greek Revival buildings on the other.
print demonstrating the Jefferson Market Courthouse in background -- NYPL Collection
Wouter van Twiller built a brewery here in the 17th Century, one that was long gone by the time the tiny, slim street was laid out in the early years of the 19th Century. On April 23, , the first documented refer of Gay Street appeared in the Common Council minutes which told of a complaint made by a health inspector against A. S. Pell&#;s privy.

As the refined Greek Revival homes on Washington Square nearby began rising in the s, Gay Road was widened, in , demolishing the s period houses on the west side. Working-class Greek Revival homes replaced them with stables behind that served the wealthy homeowners of Washington Square.

Mrs. Patton of West 29th Highway was brought to No. 12 Lgbtq+ on August of After disembarking from an 8t