Hester Street is a street on the

Lower East Side The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Historically, it w ...

of the

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borough A borough is an administrative division in various English language, English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History ...

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

. It stretches from Essex Street to Centre Street, with a discontinuity between Chrystie Street and Forsyth Street for Sara Delano Roosevelt Park. There is also a discontinuity at Allen Street, which was created in 2009 with the rebuilding of the Allen Street Mall. At Centre Street, Hester Street shifts about to the north and is called Howard Street to its far western terminus at Mercer Street. Historically a center for

Ashkenazi Jewish Ashkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that Ethnogenesis, emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium Common era, CE. They traditionally spe ...

immigrant Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as permanent residents. Commuters, tourists, and other short- ...

culture, more recently it has been absorbed by

Chinatown Chinatown ( zh, t=唐人街) is the catch-all name for an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside Greater China, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including Europe, Asia, Africa, O ...

, although some

kosher (also or , ) is a set of dietary laws dealing with the foods that Jewish people are permitted to eat and how those foods must be prepared according to Jewish law. Food that may be consumed is deemed kosher ( in English, ), from the Ashke ...

and Jewish-owned stores remain. __NOTOC__

History

WLA brooklynmuseum Street Scene by George Benjamin Luks

Hester Street was named after Hester Leisler, the daughter of Elsje Tymens and the insurrectionist

Jacob Leisler Jacob Leisler ( – May 16, 1691) was a German-born politician and colonial administrator in the Province of New York. He gained wealth in New Amsterdam (later New York City) in the North American fur trade and tobacco business. In what became k ...

, who was burned at the stake. Through her mother she was related to prominent Dutch families of the Hudson Valley, including the Bayards and the Van Cortlandts. She married Barent Rynders, Jr, a New York merchant, in 1696. She was the great-great-grandmother of

Gouverneur Morris Gouverneur Morris ( ; January 31, 1752 – November 6, 1816) was an American statesman, a Founding Father of the United States, and a signatory to the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution. He wrote the Preamble to the ...

, a

Founding Father of the United States The Founding Fathers of the United States, often simply referred to as the Founding Fathers or the Founders, were a group of late-18th-century American Revolution, American revolutionary leaders who United Colonies, united the Thirteen Colon ...

. In November 1851, the assistant board of aldermen of New York City voted in favor of removing a liberty pole at the junction of Hester Street and Division Street. The Franklin Building Association held its second regular monthly meeting at Washington Hall, on December 3, 1851. The building was located at the corner of

Bowery The Bowery () is a street and neighbourhood, neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City, New York. The street runs from Chatham Square at Park Row (Manhattan), Park Row, Worth Street, and Mott Street in the south to Cooper Square at 4th ...

. On April 15, 1912, an investigator reported that a parlor house on Hester Street had three ''inmates'' (prostitutes) who were waiting to entertain customers. 70 Hester Street was home to the First Roumanian-American Synagogue from 1881 to 1902, after which it moved a short distance to Rivington Street, where it remained until a 2006 fire.See Epstein (2007), p. 182, Dunlap (2004), p. 78, Vitullo-Martin (2006), and the ''American Jewish Year Book'', Vol. 1, p. 203. Dunlap (2004), p. 78, says the 70 Hester Street building was constructed in 1882. The ''American Jewish Year Book'' lists the rabbi in 1899 as Abram Zolish. As part of an experiment, in 1948, Hester Street was converted to a one-way eastbound street during the afternoon rush hour; it carried one-way westbound traffic at other times. Hester-Street-Fair-Packed

At the east end of Hester Street, an open-air market called the Hester Street Fair currently runs on weekends from April through October. The market is on a parcel of land owned by Seward Park Co-op and is run by

MTV News MTV News was the news production division of MTV. The service was available in the US with localized versions on MTV's global network and an online news team. In 2016, MTV refreshed the MTV News brand to compete with the likes of BuzzFeed and ...

Correspondent SuChin Pak, her brother Suhyun Pak, Adam Zeller, and Ron Castellano.

In popular culture

Hester Street is featured in Abraham Cahan's 1896 novel '' Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto'', and is the title of the 1974 period film '' Hester Street'', adapted from Cahan's novel. The street is mentioned in the first stanza of Lola Ridge's 1918 poem, "The Ghetto":

Cool, inaccessible air''
''Is floating in velvety blackness shot with steel-blue lights,''
''But no breath stirs the heat''
''Leaning its ponderous bulk upon the Ghetto''
''And most on Hester street...

The first chapter of the 1925 novel '' Bread Givers'' by Jewish-American author Anzia Yezierska is called “Hester Street”. The novel tells the story of a young girl growing up in an immigrant Jewish household on the Lower East Side of New York City in the 1920s.

Al Stewart Alastair Ian Stewart (born 5 September 1945) is a British singer-songwriter and folk-rock musician who rose to prominence as part of the British folk revival in the 1960s and 1970s. He developed a unique style of combining folk-rock songs wi ...

references Hester Street as part of the immigrant experience in his song "Murmansk Run/Ellis Island" on his 1980 album '' 24 Carrots'', in part as follows:

''Well you wake up in the morning on Hester Street and run to the factory, You can't afford to be late''
''Working every morning, every evening, every day for your money, Yet there's nothing to save''

Notable people

The sculptor

Jacob Epstein Sir Jacob Epstein (10 November 1880 – 21 August 1959) was an American and British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British subject in 1910. Early in his ...

was raised at 102 Hester Street.

References

Notes

External links

*
picture of Hester Street near Essex

Panorama of Hester St. c1902

- photographs of buildings and stores along Hester St from the Lower East Side through Chinatown and Little Italy. {{Lower East Side Chinatown, Manhattan Lower East Side Streets in Manhattan Jews and Judaism in Manhattan