Back in May of 2019 – one short year before the COVID lockdown hit New York – I posted an exhaustive little entry documenting the historical trajectory of the Hamilton-Holly House at 4 St. Marks Place. Colloquially named for its most famous tenant, Eliza Hamilton – widow of Alexander – the address became better known, throughout the `80s and `90s, at least, as the home of fabled punk haberdashery, Trash & Vaudeville, one's best option for procuring things like bondage trousers, brothel creepers and Dead Boys t-shirts. A St. Marks Place landmark, of a sort, its signature neon was fleetingly featured in the opening montage of "Saturday Night Live," and was also a place of employment for neighborhood punks like the late Fran Powers. It was in the downstairs chamber of Trash wherein Scorsese met and recruited Fran and his punky peers to serve as extras in the Club Berlin scene in "After Hours," as floridly discussed at great length on this old post.
Trash & Vaudeville, of course, decamped from the spot back in 2016, moving to East 7th Street and its colorful proprietor, Jimmy Webb, passed away in 2020. Jimmy’s second shop, the similarly inclined I Need More on Orchard Street in the Lower East Side, closed three short months after Webb’s demise. Last time I checked, Trash & Vaudeville on East 7th was still in operation.
Back at 4 St. Marks Place, here in 2025, the “garden level” is still empty and dormant, whilst the second floor now plays host to a gallery called Art Gotham, which is certainly preferable to yet another bubble tea emporium or vaping venture.
The reason I’m dredging all this back up, however, is because my friend Susan Fensten posted a remarkable photo on Facebook, recently, that I felt really compelled to share. I asked if I could re-purpose, and she gamely said yes.
Here’s how she set it up…
St. Mark's Place. 1969. Photo by David Gahr. (35mm Negative my collection.) We lived across the street at 7 St Mark's Place up until 1967. The rent was $41.00 a month! I love this picture so much for many reasons, one of them being that my mother bought an old carved wooden bed frame for $8.00 from this store right before we moved uptown. She painted the bed pink and orange.
So, anyway, here is that photo below. Obviously, by 1969, St. Marks Place had already accrued a reputation as something of a bohemian hotbed (what with the fabled Electric Circus, which would have been in full, psychedelic swing across the street, and hallowed jazzbo hangout, the Five Spot on the corner of Third Avenue), but this photo still exudes such a faint whiff of folksy quaintness.
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