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40°43′02″N 73°59′41″W / 40.7171°N 73.9948°W / 40.7171; -73.9948 Hester Street is a street in the Lower East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. 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.^[1] At Centre Street, Hester Street shifts about 100 feet (30 m) to the north and is called Howard Street to its far western terminus at Mercer Street.

Historically a center for Ashkenazi Jewish immigrant culture, more recently it has been absorbed by Chinatown, although some kosher and Jewish-owned stores remain.

History

Hester Street was named after Hester Leisler, the daughter of Elsje Tymens and the insurrectionist Jacob Leisler, 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.^[2]^[3] She was the great-great-grandmother of Gouverneur Morris, a Founding Father of the United States.^[4]

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.^[5] 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.^[6] On April 15, 1912, an investigator reported that a parlor house on Hester Street had three inmates (prostitutes) who were waiting to entertain customers.^[7]

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.^[8]

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.^[9]

The Hester Street Fair on a typical weekend afternoon

At the east end of Hester Street, an open-air market called the Hester Street Fair currently runs on weekends from April through October.^[10] The market is on a parcel of land owned by Seward Park Co-op and is run by MTV News 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.^[11]^[12]

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...

^[13]

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 in the Lower East Side of New York City in the 1920s.

Al Stewart 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:^[14]

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 was raised at 102 Hester Street.

References

Notes

^ Allen & Pike Streets
^ Purple, Edwin R. Contributions to the history of ancient families of New Amsterdam and New York New York : Privately printed, 1881.Electronic reproduction. New York, N.Y. : Columbia University Libraries, 2008. JPEG use copy available via the World Wide Web. Master copy stored locally on [3] DVD#: ldpd_6499396_000 01, 02, 03. Columbia University Libraries Electronic Books. 2006.
^ "Mrs. Barent Rynders, Jr. (1673-1762)". New York Historical Society Museums Collection. New York Historical Society. Retrieved 6 August 2021.
^ Wright, Robert K, and Morris J. MacGregor. Soldier-statesmen of the Constitution. Washington, D.C: Center of Military History, United States Army, 2007. Pp. 112-114. Print.
^ New York City, New York Daily Times, 1851-11-13, p. 1.
^ Special Notices, New York Daily Times, 1851-11-29.
^ Commercialized Prostitution in New York City, George Jackson Kneeland, New ed., rev. to date, New York, 1914, p. 16.
^ 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.
^ "New Traffic Rules for Canal St. Zone; One-Way Crosstown Arteries to Be Set Up Saturday for 60-Day Test Period". The New York Times. 1948-12-16. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-01-15.
^ Chou, Jessica (2011-06-10). "Hester Street Fair". New York. Archived from the original on 2018-11-19. Retrieved 2018-02-02.
^ Valeria Tinkler-Villani (2005). Babylon Or New Jerusalem?: Perceptions of the City in Literature. Rodopi. p. 214. ISBN 90-420-1873-9.
^ Edward S. Shapiro (May 1995). A Time for Healing: American Jewry Since World War II. JHU Press. p. 151. ISBN 978-0-8018-5124-7.
^ Ridge, Lola. "The Ghetto." The Ghetto: And Other Poems. New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1918. Print.
^ "murmansk run /ellis island lyrics". alstewart.com. Archived from the original on 2018-08-09. Retrieved 2018-11-28.