Avenue A is a north–south avenue located in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, east of First Avenue and west of Avenue B. It runs from

Houston Street Houston Street ( ) is a major east–west thoroughfare in Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs the full width of the island of Manhattan, from FDR Drive along the East River in the east to the West Side Highway along the Hudson River i ...

to 14th Street, where it continues into a loop road in Stuyvesant Town, connecting to Avenue B. Below Houston Street, Avenue A continues as

Essex Street Essex Street is a north-south street on the Lower East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. North of Houston Street, the street becomes Avenue A, which goes north to 14th Street. South of Canal Street it becomes Rutgers Street, the ...

. It is considered to be the western border of Alphabet City in the East Village. It is also the western border of Tompkins Square Park.

Sections

Under the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 that established the Manhattan street grid, the avenues would begin with First Avenue on the east side and run through Twelfth Avenue in the west. East of First Avenue the plan provided four additional lettered avenues running from Avenue A eastward to Avenue D wherever they could be fitted. While First Avenue was the easternmost avenue in most of Manhattan, several discontinuous sections were designated as ''Avenue A'' north of present-day Alphabet City. Asser Levy Recreation Center

Asser Levy Place

A short section of Avenue A from 23rd to 25th Streets in Kips Bay, Manhattan, was cut off from the existing section in 1947 with the construction of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. The two-block section was renamed in 1954 after Asser Levy, one of the first

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

citizens of New York City, and a strong and influential advocate for

civil liberties Civil liberties are guarantees and freedoms that governments commit not to abridge, either by constitution, legislation, or judicial interpretation, without due process. Though the scope of the term differs between countries, civil liberties ma ...

. The eastern side of Asser Levy Place contains the

Asser Levy Recreation Center The Asser Levy Recreation Center is a recreational facility in Kips Bay, Manhattan, New York City, composed of the Asser Levy Public Baths and Asser Levy Playground. It is bounded by East 23rd Street to the south, East 25th Street to the nort ...

, which includes the Asser Levy Public Baths, built in 1905-08. Asser Levy Place closed in October 2013 to become part of the Recreation Center The park now contains concrete Ping-Pong tables, a track and field, exercise equipment, and painted children's games such as hopscotch. It is being built by

New York City Department of Parks and Recreation The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, also called the Parks Department or NYC Parks, is the department of the government of New York City responsible for maintaining the city's parks system, preserving and maintaining the ecolo ...

to replace the western end of the Robert Moses Playground at 42nd Street and

FDR Drive The Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive, commonly called the FDR Drive for short, is a limited-access parkway on the east side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It starts near South and Broad Streets, just north of the Battery Par ...

being sold to the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...

, in preparation for a future East River Greenway phase on the FDR Drive, underneath the

United Nations headquarters zh, 联合国总部大楼french: Siège des Nations uniesrussian: Штаб-квартира Организации Объединённых Наций es, Sede de las Naciones Unidas , image = Midtown Manhattan Skyline 004.jpg , im ...

between East 38th and 60th Streets. AvenueA2

Beekman Place

Beekman Place, located at the

headquarters of the United Nations zh, 联合国总部大楼french: Siège des Nations uniesrussian: Штаб-квартира Организации Объединённых Наций es, Sede de las Naciones Unidas , image = Midtown Manhattan Skyline 004.jpg , im ...

, runs as a short street between Mitchell Place/49th Street and 51st Street. Though not part of the original Avenue A in the 1811 plan, it is named after the Beekman family (members of whom include Wilhelmus Beekman, whose namesakes also include downtown's Beekman Street and William Street), who were influential in New York City's development.

Sutton Place and York Avenue

Sutton Place was also formerly designated as Avenue A; in its original length it ran between East 53rd and 92nd Streets. Effingham B. Sutton constructed a group of brownstones in 1875 between 57th and 58th Streets, and is said to have lent the street his name, though the earliest source found by ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' dates back to 1883. The

New York City Board of Aldermen The New York City Board of Aldermen was a body that was the upper house of New York City's Common Council from 1824 to 1875, the lower house of its Municipal Assembly upon consolidation in 1898 until the charter was amended in 1901 to abolish ...

approved a petition to change the name from "Avenue A" to "Sutton Place", covering the blocks between 57th and 60th Streets.Gray, Christopher
" Streetscapes/Sutton Place, Sutton Place South and One Sutton Place North; A Prestigious Enclave With a Name in Question"
''

'', September 21, 2003. Accessed December 27, 2007. In 1928, a one-block section of Sutton Place north of East 59th Street, and all of Avenue A north of that point, was renamed York Avenue in honor of World War One US Army Sergeant Alvin York, who won the

Medal of Honor The Medal of Honor (MOH) is the United States Armed Forces' highest military decoration and is awarded to recognize American soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, guardians and coast guardsmen who have distinguished themselves by acts of val ...

for an attack in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive on October 8, 1918. This section is the only former section of Avenue A to still use the Avenue A address system (as it only has four-digit building numbers).

Pleasant Avenue

The northernmost section of Avenue A, stretching between East 114th and 120th Streets in

East Harlem East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem or and historically known as Italian Harlem, is a neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City, roughly encompassing the area north of the Upper East Side and bounded by 96th Street to the south, ...

, was renamed Pleasant Avenue in 1879.De-Classified 4-A
Forgotten NY. Accessed January 1, 2008.Pollak, Michael

''

'', December 12, 2004. Accessed January 1, 2008. The addresses on Pleasant Avenue are not continuous with those on Avenue A (which would be in the 2000-series if they were continuous).

References

External links

New York Songlines: Avenue A
a virtual walking tour
East Harlem Giglio Society
{{DEFAULTSORT:Avenue A (Manhattan) East Village, Manhattan Italian-American culture in New York City *A