Someone started a thread on the Lower East Side Facebook page that really intrigued me, so I’m sharing some of the cogent info here. I have no idea of the true provenance of some of these photographs, but some are, I believe, “tax photos” of New York City real estate. There’s a great archive of same to be found on this site if you’re curious.
In any case, here in 2024, the southeasterly corner of East 7th Street on Avenue A is occupied by Jesse Malin’s celebrated bar, Niagara, above, which has held court at 112 Avenue A since about 1997. That’s the interior of same right above, which I snapped in 2016.
Prior to 1997, the space was another colorful bar named King Tut’s Wah-Wah Hut, above. I drank within the confines of King Tut’s on several occasions in the very late `80s and early `90s.
Well before that iteration, meanwhile, the space in question was A7, the hallowed ground-zero of what would become known as New York Hardcore, otherwise truncated to NYHC. I’ve spoken about A7 a few times here, notably here, here, here, here, here and here, should you be interested.
But what was there prior to its halcyon days as A7? I’ve never really had a clue.
I am invariably projecting, but I want to say that the first time I ever laid eyes on that corner was as a child at some point in the late `70s from behind the backseat window of a moving car, and spying the cryptic legend “DEAD BOYS” hastily scrawled in spray paint on the wall that has played host to the mural of the late Joe Strummer since 2002. I certainly would love to believe that’s true, but it’s probably just a fanciful mental fabrication fueled by years of reverent mythologizing. I have no idea if anyone ever actually tagged the Dead Boys on that wall, but if you happen to remember that, as well, please do corroborate.
But beyond the Lower East Side’s days as the still-hotly-contested birthplace of Punk Rock, it should be remembered that this part of town has a rich, storied history all its own and played host to countless concerns, over the years, serving several different generations of New Yorkers. It’s conceivably very easy to sit in a neighborhood bar of the moment and forget how many separate ventures have occupied the space, over the vast span of years since the building was erected, ultimately reducing the perceived significance it once being a cultural hotspot of comparatively recent times to a meager footnote. This is not at all to suggest that A7 or King Tut’s Wah-Wah Hut or Niagara aren’t significant to a wide demographic, but rather that it’s prudent to remember one's place in the broader continuum.
To that end, a top contributor on the Lower East Side page named Jarrod Henry posted the picture below, appended with the caption:
Mary's Candy Store, later known at A7 (The birthplace of NYHC), now known as Niagara.
Prompted by same, readers chimed with some tax photos of the corner in question, notably from 1938…
…and another from some point in the 1940’s...
In any case, I can find no real record online of a Mary’s Candy Shop, although – really – why would there be? But I wonder what Mary would have thought about all the shenanigans that have gone down in her humble little store front in the ensuing decades.
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