Rivington Street is a street in the

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

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 ...

, which runs across 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 ...

neighborhood, between the

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 ...

and

Pitt Street Pitt Street is a major street in the Sydney central business district in New South Wales, Australia. The street runs through the entire city centre from Circular Quay in the north to Waterloo, although today's street is in two disjointed sect ...

, with a break between Chrystie and Forsyth for Sara D. Roosevelt Park. Vehicular traffic runs west on this

one-way street One-way traffic (or uni-directional traffic) is traffic that moves in a single direction. A one-way street is a street either facilitating only one-way traffic, or designed to direct vehicles to move in one direction. One-way streets typicall ...

. It is named after James Rivington, who under cover of writing one of the most infamous

Loyalist Loyalism, in the United Kingdom, its overseas territories and its former colonies, refers to the allegiance to the British crown or the United Kingdom. In North America, the most common usage of the term refers to loyalty to the British Cr ...

newspapers in the American colonies, secretly ran a spy ring that supplied

George Washington George Washington (, 1799) was a Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. As commander of the Continental Army, Washington led Patriot (American Revoluti ...

with information. Early in the 20th century, the street was the home of many Italian and Jewish immigrants, hence the birthplace of many second generation Italian and Jewish Americans.

George Burns George Burns (born Nathan Birnbaum; January 20, 1896March 9, 1996) was an American comedian, actor, writer, and singer, and one of the few entertainers whose career successfully spanned vaudeville, radio, film, and television. His arched eyeb ...

lived there for a time.

Points of interest

The site of the second African burial ground in New York lies between Rivington and Stanton Streets, now a playground in the Sara D. Roosevelt Park. The M'Finda Kalunga community garden is also at this location. Several functioning synagogues remain on Rivington Street, a reminder of the large

Jew Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly inte ...

ish immigrant population that once inhabited the Lower East Side. The synagogue of the First Roumanian-American Congregation existed from about 1860 until 2006. The Rivington Street municipal bath was located on Rivington Street from 1900 to 1975. In the early 1980s, Rivington Street between Essex and Bowery earned notoriety as a "drug supermarket" famous for "having the best drugs in the city." Rivington Street is a cross street to the Lower East Side's main thoroughfares. It has, in recent years, become part of an area known as "Hell Square"; there is a high saturation of restaurants and bars along the street. Once home to the

Rivington School Rivington School was an art group that emerged from the East Village art scene in the 1980s in New York City. Many of the artists of the Rivington School were involved in welding and forging sculptures, performance art or street art. The group, t ...

of artists, notable establishments on Rivington Street include the

University Settlement House A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...

(the first

settlement house The settlement movement was a reformist social movement that began in the 1880s and peaked around the 1920s in the United Kingdom and the United States. Its goal was to bring the rich and the poor of society together in both physical proximity an ...

in New York), the Rivington Street Settlement house (established 1889), the

no wave No wave was an avant-garde music genre and visual art scene that emerged in the late 1970s in Downtown New York City. The term was a pun based on the rejection of commercial new wave music. Reacting against punk rock's recycling of rock and r ...

art center and hardcore

punk rock Punk rock (also known as simply punk) is a rock music genre that emerged in the mid-1970s. Rooted in 1950s rock and roll and 1960s garage rock, punk bands rejected the corporate nature of mainstream 1970s rock music. They typically produced sh ...

venue

ABC No Rio ABC No Rio is a collectively-run nonprofit arts organization on New York City's Lower East Side. Founded in 1980 in a squat at 156 Rivington Street, following the eviction of the 1979–80 Real Estate Show, the center featured an art gallery s ...

, the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center, and the newly constructed 21-story Hotel on Rivington.

In popular culture

Rivington Street was used for the cover to the

Beastie Boys The Beastie Boys were an American Hip-hop, hip hop and Rap rock, rap rock group formed in New York City in 1979. They were composed of Ad-Rock, Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz (vocals, guitar), Adam Yauch, Adam "MCA" Yauch (vocals, bass), and Mike D, ...

' album '' Paul's Boutique''. The intersection of Rivington and

Ludlow Street Ludlow Street runs between Houston and Division streets on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. Vehicular traffic runs south on this one-way street. Name Ludlow Street was named after Lieutenant Augustus Ludlow, the nava ...

, where the cover photo was taken, was renamed " Beastie Boys Square" on September 9, 2023. The

art movement was named after an abandoned public school building located on Rivington Street. In 1979,

Genya Ravan Genya Ravan (born Genyusha Zelkowitz; April 19, 1940), also known as Goldie, is an American rock music, rock singer and music producer. She was lead singer of the Escorts, Goldie and the Gingerbreads, and Ten Wheel Drive. Early life Genyusha Zel ...

wrote and recorded her autobiographical song "202 Rivington Street", the address being where her family settled after their escape from the Holocaust in 1947. Like much of her work, including "Jerry's Pigeons" from her 1978 album ''Urban Desire'', the ballad contains numerous references to neighborhood landmarks, including Pitt Street Park. "Laundry on strings hanging from iron bars with nowhere to escape" - From "202 Rivington Street" by Genya Ravan (1979): "Oh darlin, the New York City Jammed my Brain, all I get from this city is heat and my heaters don't care". D.W. Griffith's 1910 film In the Ghetto begins in Rivington Street. There are authentic sequences of the Rivington Street markets in that film, corresponding with the photography of George Grantham Bain in the inset above. The novel ''Rivington Street'' by Meredith Tax tells the story of a Jewish immigrant family from Russia's life on the Lower East Side in the early twentieth century. In Moyshe Nadir's 1932 Yiddish poem, "Rivington Strit" (Rivington Street), the poet meets an old Jewish peddler who extemporizes a poetic history of the area. In the movie ''

A Hatful of Rain ''A Hatful of Rain'' is a 1957 American drama film directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Eva Marie Saint, Don Murray, Anthony Franciosa, Lloyd Nolan and Henry Silva. The story is based on a 1955 Broadway play of the same name

'' (1957), the main characters live in an apartment at 967 Rivington (apartment 3H). In the novel '' What Makes Sammy Run?'', the protagonist Sammy Glick turns out to have lived on Rivington Street at the beginning of his career, then named "Samuel Glickstein", when he is hired as a copy boy by ''The New York Record''. The street is described by the narrator as one of a conglomerate of "jumbled ghetto streets" into which millions of Jews are crowded.

Lady Gaga Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (born March 28, 1986), known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Known for her image reinventions and versatility across the entertainment industry, she is an influ ...

makes mention of The Rivington Rebels, a group of local area partiers, in her 2011 studio album '' Born This Way''. The lyrics, from the track "Heavy Metal Lover", are as follows, "Dirty pearls and a patch for all The Rivington Rebels. Let's raise hell in the streets, drink beer, and get into trouble." In '' Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore'', Rivington Street is revealed to be the location of Jacob's bakery.

References

External links

Rivington Street: New York Songlines

- photographs of all storefronts on Rivington St.

Hoodlow
{{coord, 40, 43, 10.86, N, 73, 59, 13.82, W, region:US, display=title Streets in Manhattan Lower East Side