Hester Street is a street in the Lower East Side of the

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

borough A borough is an administrative division in various 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 In the Middle A ...

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 ...

. It stretches from

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 ...

to Centre Street, with a discontinuity between

Chrystie Street Chrystie Street is a street on Manhattan's Lower East Side and Chinatown, running as a continuation of Second Avenue from Houston Street, for seven blocks south to Canal Street. It is bounded on the east for its entirety by Sara Delano Roosev ...

and

Forsyth Street Forsyth Street runs from Houston Street south to Henry Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The street was named in 1817 for Lt. Colonel Benjamin Forsyth. Forsyth Street's southernmost portion, south of Canal Street, runs parall ...

for

Sara Delano Roosevelt Park Sara Delano Roosevelt Park is a park in the Lower East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. The park, named after Sara Roosevelt (1854–1941), the mother of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, stretches north–south along seven blo ...

. 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 immigrant culture, more recently it has been absorbed by Chinatown, although some kosher 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 colonist who served as a politician in the Province of New York. He gained wealth in New Amsterdam (later New York City) in the fur trade and tobacco business. In what became known as 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. 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 th ...

, a

Founding Father of the United States The Founding Fathers of the United States, known simply as the Founding Fathers or Founders, were a group of late-18th-century American revolutionary leaders who united the Thirteen Colonies, oversaw the war for independence from Great Britai ...

. In November 1851, the assistant board of aldermen of New York City voted in favor of removing a

liberty pole A liberty pole is a wooden pole, or sometimes spear or lance, surmounted by a "cap of liberty", mostly of the Phrygian cap. The symbol originated in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of the Roman dictator Julius Caesar by a group of R ...

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 neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. The street runs from Chatham Square at Park Row, Worth Street, and Mott Street in the south to Cooper Square at 4th Street in the north.Jackson, Kenneth L. ...

. 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. 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 Correspondent

SuChin Pak SuChin Pak ( ko, 박수진, born August 15, 1976) is a South Korean-born American television news correspondent and podcaster, best known from her early days working for MTV News. She joined MTV News as a correspondent in May 2001. Life and car ...

, 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 ''Bread Givers'' is a 1925 three-volume novel by Jewish-American author Anzia Yezierska; the story of a young girl growing up in an immigrant Jewish household in the Lower East Side of New York City. Her parents are from Poland in the Russian Em ...

'' by Jewish-American author

Anzia Yezierska Anzia Yezierska (October 29, 1880 – November 20, 1970) was a Jewish-American novelist born in Mały Płock, Poland, which was then part of the Russian Empire. She emigrated as a child with her parents to the United States and lived in the ...

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 ''24 Carrots'' is the ninth studio album by Al Stewart, released in 1980. It was Stewart's first album with his new band Shot in the Dark. Tracks 1-4 are co-written with Peter White. The single " Midnight Rocks" reached #24 on the Billboard ch ...

'', 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-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 1911. He often produce ...

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