Houston Street ( ) is a major east–west thoroughfare in
Lower Manhattan in
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 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 Quee ...
in the east to the
West Side Highway 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 Ne ...
in the west. The street is divided into west and east sections by
Broadway.
Houston Street generally serves as the boundary between neighborhoods on the
East Side of Manhattan—
Alphabet City, the
East Village,
NoHo,
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 to the north, and the
Lower East Side, 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. ...
,
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 ...
, 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 deve ...
to the south. The numeric street-naming grid in Manhattan, created as part of the
Commissioners' Plan of 1811, 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 ...
, Texas, whose name is pronounced "". The street was named for
William Houstoun, while the city was named for
Sam Houston.
Description
At its east end, Houston Street meets
FDR Drive 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 stretche ...
. West of FDR Drive, it intersects with
Avenue D. Further west, other streets, including
First Avenue, 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. ...
,
Lafayette Street and
Broadway, intersect Houston Street. The Broadway intersection is the division point between East Houston Street and West Houston Street.
Sixth Avenue intersects Houston Street at a curve in the road in
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 ...
. 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 f ...
; 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 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 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 ecolo ...
. 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 (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: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
hero Sam Houston, 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 U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 36th-largest by ...
.[ Also mistaken is the explanation that the name derives from the Dutch words ''huis'' for ''house'' and ''tuin'' for ''garden.''] The narrow, westernmost stretch of the current Houston Street, from Sixth Avenue to the West Side Highway, was known as "Hammersley Street" (also spelled "Hamersly Street") until the middle 19th century, and was inside 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 ...
. It later came to be regarded as the Village's southern boundary.
In 1891, Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla ( ; ,["Tesla"](_blank)
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; 1856 – 7 January 1943 ...
established his laboratory on Houston Street. Much of Tesla's research was lost in an 1895 fire.
The street, originally narrow, was markedly widened from Sixth Avenue to 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'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 gardens.
Lower Manhattan's 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 deve ...
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 NoHo.
In 1971, Houston Street became the southernmost street in Manhattan to extend between both the Hudson and East Rivers, when the World Trade Center was constructed and deprived Fulton Street of that title. With the reconstruction of the World Trade Center, Fulton Street was extended past Church Street to 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 ...
, 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 route from the FDR Drive 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 ...
's IND Sixth Avenue Line 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 (). 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 ...
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 FDR Drive is on Houston Street. The street also connects directly with the West Side Highway; however, by then, Houston Street is westbound-only.
References
Further reading
* Knight, Sam
"What a Street! (But Do You Ever Remember Being There?)"
''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 ...
'', October 17, 2004.
*
*
External links
*
{{Streets of Manhattan, state=collapsed
East Village, Manhattan
Greenwich Village
Lower East Side
SoHo, Manhattan
Streets in Manhattan
West Village