Houston Street ( ) is a major east–west thoroughfare in

Lower Manhattan Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with ...

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 ...

. It runs the full width of the island of

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 ...

, from

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 Park ...

along the

East River The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary in New York City. The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Queens ...

in the east to the

West Side Highway The Joe DiMaggio Highway, commonly called the West Side Highway and formerly the Miller Highway, is a mostly surface section of New York State Route 9A (NY 9A), running from West 72nd Street along the Hudson River to the southern t ...

along the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

in the west. The street is divided into west and east sections by

Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...

. Houston Street generally serves as the boundary between neighborhoods on the East Side of Manhattan—

Alphabet City Alphabet City is a neighborhood located within the East Village in the New York City borough of Manhattan. Its name comes from Avenues A, B, C, and D, the only avenues in Manhattan to have single-letter names. It is bounded by Houston St ...

, the East Village,

NoHo NoHo, short for North of Houston Street (as contrasted with SoHo), is a primarily residential neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is bounded by Mercer Street to the west and the Bowery to the east, ...

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

, and the

West Village The West Village is a neighborhood in the western section of the larger Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. The traditional boundaries of the West Village are the Hudson River to the west, 14th Street (Manhattan ...

to the north, and 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. Traditionally an im ...

, most of the

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. "B ...

Nolita Nolita, sometimes written as NoLIta and deriving from "North of Little Italy",Roberts, Sam"New York’s Little Italy, Littler by the Year"''New York Times'' (February 21, 2011) is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. No ...

, and

SoHo Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was develop ...

to the south. The numeric street-naming grid in Manhattan, created as part of the

Commissioners' Plan of 1811 The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 was the original design for the streets of Manhattan above Houston Street and below 155th Street, which put in place the rectangular grid plan of streets and lots that has defined Manhattan on its march uptown u ...

, begins immediately north of Houston Street with 1st Street at Avenue A. The street's name is pronounced "", in contrast to the city of

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

, Texas, whose name is pronounced "". The street was named for William Houstoun, while the city was named for

Sam Houston Samuel Houston (, ; March 2, 1793 – July 26, 1863) was an American general and statesman who played an important role in the Texas Revolution. He served as the first and third president of the Republic of Texas and was one of the first two i ...

Description

At its east end, Houston Street meets

in an interchange at

East River Park East River Park, also called John V. Lindsay East River Park, is public park located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, administered by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Bisected by the Williamsburg Bridge, it stretches ...

. West of FDR Drive, it intersects with Avenue D. Further west, other streets, including First Avenue, the

Lafayette Street Lafayette Street is a major north-south street in New York City's Lower Manhattan. It originates at the intersection of Reade Street and Centre Street, one block north of Chambers Street. The one-way street then successively runs through Chi ...

and

, intersect Houston Street. The Broadway intersection is the division point between East Houston Street and West Houston Street.

Sixth Avenue Sixth Avenue – also known as Avenue of the Americas, although this name is seldom used by New Yorkers, p.24 – is a major thoroughfare in New York City's borough of Manhattan, on which traffic runs northbound, or "uptown". It is commercial ...

intersects Houston Street at a curve in the road in

. East of Sixth Avenue, Houston street is bidirectional and separated by a

median In statistics and probability theory, the median is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, a population, or a probability distribution. For a data set, it may be thought of as "the middle" value. The basic fe ...

; west of Sixth, the street is narrower and unidirectional westbound.West Houston Street - NYC.gov
/ref> West Houston Street terminates at an intersection with

West Street The Joe DiMaggio Highway, commonly called the West Side Highway and formerly the Miller Highway, is a mostly surface section of New York State Route 9A (NY 9A), running from West 72nd Street along the Hudson River to the southern t ...

near

Pier 40 Pier 40 (officially known as Pier 40 at Hudson River Park) is a parking garage, sports facility, and former marine terminal at the west end of Houston Street in Manhattan, New York, within Hudson River Park. It is home to the New York Knight ...

on the Hudson River.

History

Houston Street is named for William Houstoun, who was a delegate from the state of Georgia to the

Continental Congress The Continental Congress was a series of legislative bodies, with some executive function, for thirteen of Britain's colonies in North America, and the newly declared United States just before, during, and after the American Revolutionary War. ...

from 1784 through 1786 and to the Constitutional Convention in 1787.Peretz Square

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 ecolog ...

. Accessed July 12, 2007. "North Street, then the northern boundary of settled Manhattan, was later renamed for William Houstoun, a Georgia delegate to the Continental Congress; at the time of the renaming, the more famous Sam Houston was an unknown teenager" The street was christened by

Nicholas Bayard Nicholas Bayard (c. 1644–1707 or 1709) was a government official and slave trader in colonial New York. Bayard served as the mayor of New York City from 1685 to 1686. He is historically most notable for being Peter Stuyvesant's nephew and for ...

(b. 1736), whose daughter, Mary, was married to Houstoun in 1788.Moscow, Henry. ''The Street Book: An Encyclopedia of Manhattan's Street Names and Their Origins.'' New York: Fordham University Press, 1990. . p. 61. The couple met while Houstoun, a member of an ancient and aristocratic Scottish family, was serving in the Congress. Bayard cut the street through a tract he owned in the vicinity of Canal Street in which he lived, and the city later extended it to include North Street, the northern border of New York's east side at the beginning of the 19th century. The current spelling of the name is a corruption: the street appears as ''Houstoun'' in the city's Common Council minutes for 1808 and the official map drawn in 1811 to establish the street grid that is still current. In those years, the

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

hero

, for whom the street is sometimes incorrectly said to have been named, was an unknown teenager in

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

. Also mistaken is the explanation that the name derives from the

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

words ''huis'' for ''house'' and ''tuin'' for ''garden.'' The narrow, westernmost stretch of the current Houston Street, from

to the

, was known as "Hammersley Street" (also spelled "Hamersly Street") until the middle 19th century, and was inside

. It later came to be regarded as the Village's southern boundary. In 1891,

Nikola Tesla Nikola Tesla ( ; ,"Tesla"
''

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 ...

in the early 1930s during construction of the

Independent Subway System The Independent Subway System (IND or ISS), formerly known as the Independent City-Owned Subway System (ICOSS) or the Independent City-Owned Rapid Transit Railroad (ICORTR), was a rapid transit rail system in New York City that is now part of th ...

's Sixth Avenue Line. The street widening involved demolition of buildings on both sides of the street, resulting in numerous small, empty lots. Although some of these lots have been redeveloped, many of them are now used by vendors, and some have been turned into playgrounds and, more recently,

community garden A community garden is a piece of land gardened or cultivated by a group of people individually or collectively. Normally in community gardens, the land is divided into individual plots. Each individual gardener is responsible for their own plo ...

s. Lower Manhattan's

district takes its name from an

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

for "South of Houston", as the street serves as SoHo's northern boundary; another, narrower neighborhood north of Houston Street is correspondingly called

. In 1971, Houston Street became the southernmost street in Manhattan to extend between both the Hudson and East Rivers, when the

World Trade Center World Trade Centers are sites recognized by the World Trade Centers Association. World Trade Center may refer to: Buildings * List of World Trade Centers * World Trade Center (2001–present), a building complex that includes five skyscrapers, a ...

was constructed and deprived Fulton Street of that title. With the reconstruction of the

, Fulton Street was extended past Church Street to

, but is closed off to vehicular traffic west of Church Street. A reconstruction project rebuilt parts of the street between 2005 and 2018.

Transportation

, Houston Street is served by the

New York City Bus MTA Regional Bus Operations (RBO) is the surface transit division of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). It was created in 2008 to consolidate all bus operations in New York City operated by the MTA. , MTA Regional Bus Operations ru ...

route from the

to Washington Street. The bus route itself had replaced an earlier streetcar line, which is now the from Avenues A to C. A portion of the

New York City Subway The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, an affiliate agency of the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Opened on October 2 ...

IND Sixth Avenue Line The IND Sixth Avenue Line is a rapid transit line of the B Division of the New York City Subway in the United States. It runs mainly under Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, and continues south to Brooklyn. The B, D, F, and M trains, which use th ...

runs under Houston Street, between Sixth Avenue to just before Avenue A; there are stations at Second Avenue () and Broadway – Lafayette Street (). Additionally, there is a station at Seventh Avenue, for the

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 ...

(). The

Bleecker Street Bleecker Street is an east–west street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is most famous today as a Greenwich Village nightclub district. The street connects a neighborhood today popular for music venues and comedy, but which was ...

station () has station entrances on the north side of Houston Street, due to its connection with the Broadway – Lafayette Street station as part of a larger station complex. Exit 5 on the

is on Houston Street. The street also connects directly with the

; however, by then, Houston Street is westbound-only.

References

External links

* {{Streets of Manhattan, state=collapsed East Village, Manhattan Greenwich Village Lower East Side SoHo, Manhattan Streets in Manhattan West Village

Description

History

Transportation

References

Further reading

External links