40°43′12″N73°59′18″W / 40.72000°N 73.98833°W /40.72000; -73.98833
Ludlow Street runs betweenHouston andDivision streets on theLower East Side ofManhattan inNew York City. Vehicular traffic runs south on thisone-way street.
Ludlow Street was named after LieutenantAugustus Ludlow, thenaval officer who wassecond-in-command to CaptainJames Lawrence on theUSSChesapeake during the ship’s engagement withHMSShannon on June 1, 1813. It was to Ludlow that Lawrence said "Don't give up the ship."[1]
The land that is now Ludlow Street was once part of the huge De Lancey Estate,[2] which had been confiscated fromJames De Lancey after theRevolutionary War, due to his status as aLoyalist, andauctioned off.[3] By the early 19th century,speculative builders had constructed decent housing for workers on Ludlow Street, as well as other streets nearby, such as Eldridge,Forsyth andChrystie Streets.[2] At mid-century, Ludlow was in the middle ofKleindeutschland, where large numbers ofGerman-speaking immigrants had settled, and was one of the informal boundaries of theJewish section of the neighborhood, along withGrand,Stanton, and Pitt Streets.[4]
As far back as 1962Theatre of Eternal Music membersTony Conrad andAngus MacLise lived and worked at 56 Ludlow[5] and in 1965Lou Reed,John Cale andSterling Morrison ofThe Velvet Underground lived and recorded there. The earliest known recorded version ofAll Tomorrow's Parties was recorded there.[6] Other filmmakers, performers, poets, artists and musicians that lived in the building at the time includedWarhol superstarsMario Montez andJack Smith.[7] Tony Conrad has produced two CDs from theJack Smith tape archives subtitled56 Ludlow Street that were recorded at 56 Ludlow Street between 1962 and 1964.[8] In the mid-1970s Gary Weis made some short films ofTaylor Mead talking to his cat in the kitchen of his Ludlow Street apartment calledTaylor Mead's Cat. From 1980 to the mid-80s actor/videomaker Craig Calman lived in the building adjoining Taylor Mead's.[9] An excerpt from Tyler Hubby's filmTony Conrad: Completely in the Present documentsTony Conrad making afield recording on Ludlow Street.
In the early 1980s, Ludlow Street was well known as a street whereno waveColab artists connected withABC No Rio lived; such asKiki Smith,[10]Fab Five Freddy,Coleen Fitzgibbon,Tom Otterness,Wolfgang Staehle,Steven Parrino,Joseph Nechvatal,Peter Fend,Walter Robinson,Aline Mare,George Condo and art criticCarlo McCormick. In 1980,Coleen Fitzgibbon made a video calledLudlow about Ludlow Street.[11] From 1983 to 1989, the bimonthly cassette publicationTellus Audio Cassette Magazine was based out of 143 Ludlow Street. Leonard Abrams started theEast Village Eye cultural magazine at 167 Ludlow Street. In 1989 theBeastie Boys used a photo of the southwest corner of Ludlow andRivington Street as the cover for their albumPaul's Boutique.[12] Theintersection was renamed “Beastie Boys Square” on September 9, 2023. In 2015,Mitch Corber created a short documentary video calledLudlow Street with Clayton that featuresClayton Patterson walking down the street, discussing its cultural demise due togentrification.[13] Wolfgang Staehle presented an extended digital photographic record of Ludlow Street in his exhibition atPostmasters Gallery in 2016/2017.[14] From 1995 to 2004 the performing and visual arts spaceCollective:Unconscious was located at 145 Ludlow Street. In 2009, theSchool of Visual Arts established its Ludlow Residence at 101 Ludlow Street, which houses 350 art students. The notable music clubLuna Lounge, an instrumental venue that help usher in what became a new millennial wave of guitar bands likeThe Strokes,Interpol andThe National, was located at 171 Ludlow Street from 1993 until 2005.[15]
By the end of the 1990s the street was dubbed "Downtown'sDisneyland" byNew York Magazine and "the New Bohemia" by theNew York Times.[16]
In the 2000s, Ludlow Street was a destination street for musicians and music-lovers, and was heavily populated with fashion shops,art galleries, bars, restaurants, and performance venues such asCake Shop,The Living Room, andPiano's making Ludlow into a smallnightlife strip with a distinctsubcultural flavor. Local institutions included thebistro/cafe Pink Pony, the adjacent artist bar Max Fish,Katz's Deli (one of the city's most famousdelicatessens) Motor City bar, Ludlow Street Guitars, Earthmatters Cafe (hangout of musicians/actors/writers/techies), Ludlow Studio (which was home to some of the top recording artists in the mid-1990s) and the Sombrero Mexican restaurant, better known to a generation of musicians as "The Hat." The art and cultural gallery Ludlow 38 is the downtown satellite for contemporary art of theGoethe-Institut New York. The space was designed by artists Ethan Breckenridge andLiam Gillick. In 2005 artistWolfgang Staehle createdOne day of life on Ludlow Street (New York). The work consists of 6716 images displayed in approximately 8 second intervals over 24 hours.[17]
In 2013, Ludlow Street between Delancey and Houston Streets lost to rising rent many small interesting shops, bars and cafes that once gave the street its distinctive flavor. Closed were: Pink Pony Cafe Littéraire & Ciné Club, the print shop at 139 Ludlow, Press Tea, Earth Matters natural food store and Motor City bar.[18] However,Banksy installed a majorstreet art installation on Ludlow Street in the fall of 2013 as part of hisBetter Out Than In residency: a strange vision of horses with camera-lens goggles rearing up by a car covered with cowering humans. The work is Banksy’s largest New York work to date.[19]
Notes
According to the album, Paul's Boutique is inBrooklyn...but we all know this photo was taken in theLower East Side. With a Paul's Boutique sign hanging up on the Lee's Sportswear storefront, the shot was taken at 99 Rivington Street, where Rivington and Ludlow intersect.
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