Nell’s: The trendiest nightclub in 1980s New York

Where did rock stars, artists, Wall Street traders, models, and the people who hung around them in mid-1980s Manhattan go to mingle?

Nell’s, a former electronics store-turned-nightclub on West 14th Street near Eighth Avenue. It was supposed to be a throwback of sorts, a retreat from the Studio 54 kind of excess.

The space cultivated the look of an elegant, Victorian gentleman’s club—one with a velvet rope, tough door policy, and lines stretching around the block.

This ad, which ran in the November 1993 issue of Interview gives a quick look at some of the regulars (Quentin Crisp? Salmon Rushdie?). By the early 1990s, however, Nell’s had lost some of its cachet, reports a 1994 New York Times article.

Nell’s closed in 2004, but will always be remembered as a 1980s hangout. Even Patrick Bateman, Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, was a regular.

Under an arch in Astoria at midnight, 1930

Martin Lewis titled this drypoint etching Arch, Midnight. The people under the arch don’t look like they’re up to much good.

He reportedly considered two alternate titles, “Archway, Midnight” and “The Arch Over the Street, Astoria.”

Does anyone know where exactly this dark, shadowy underpass is in Astoria, and if it still exists?

The bloody, two-day “Great Gang Fight” of 1857

Lower Manhattan’s Five Points district was a wretched place in pre–Civil War New York.

As if poverty and disease weren’t bad enough, powerful gangs—backed by local politicians and ignored by a disorganized police department—ruled the neighborhood.

Such a heavy gang presence meant that violence was a normal part of life. But the Great Gang Fight—also known as the Dead Rabbits Riot—that broke out on July 4, 1857 was something else.

That evening, groups of Five Points gangs, such as the Dead Rabbits and Plug Uglies, invaded a nearby Bowery Boys clubhouse. A vicious brawl with other street gangs continued the next day.

About 1,000 gang members armed with paving stones, axes, and other weapons fought along Bayard Street between Baxter and the Bowery (as seen in the illustration above). Other thieves joined in, looting houses and keeping the police at bay.

Federal troops finally stopped the violence on the afternoon of July 5th. Officially, eight men were killed, but it’s thought that dying fighters were carried off by fellow gang members, then buried in secret.

Where was Manhattan’s lost town of Carmanville?

Carmanville was just another little hamlet, like Harsenville and the Piggery District, thriving on Manhattan’s West Side in the 19th century.

Named after its founder, a wealthy contractor named Richard Carman, Carmanville’s exact boundaries are a little unclear.

According to Phelps’ New-York City Guide, published in 1853:

“This is a pleasant village, situated upon the rising ground, on the Hudson River, in the vicinity of Fort Washington.”

Another reference, The Tree Bore Fruit, about nearby Manhattan College and published in 1953, puts Carmenville a good 28 blocks south at 155th Street.

[NYPL postcard of 155th and Amsterdam Avenue in 1917—the remains of Carmanville?]

And according to a 1914 New York Times article, a Carmanville Park once was located at Amsterdam Avenue and 152nd Street.

Still another Times article, published in 2004 to commemorate the opening of the New York City subway, has Carmanville at 125th Street.

Two New York streets named after Santa Claus

Well, in kind of a roundabout way. St. Nicholas Avenue and St. Nicholas Terrace in Harlem both honor the original St. Nick, a Fourth century bishop and the patron saint of New Amsterdam.

“These streets honor New Amsterdam’s patron saint, whose image adorned the masthead of the New Netherland that brought the first Dutch colonists to these shores,” explains a Parks Department sign at adjacent St. Nicholas Park in the 130s.

“St. Nicholas of Myra is also known as the patron saint of children, sailors, bankers, pawnbrokers, travelers, and captives—as well as the inspiration for Father Christmas or Santa Claus.

“Legend claims that he gave his considerable inheritance to charity and often made secret and anonymous gifts to the desperately needy.”

Here’s more on why New Yorkers can claim Santa as one of our own.

When cows grazed next to Grand Central

They did at least until the 1870s, when this grainy photo was taken—showing a couple of bovines relaxing in a pasture at Lexington Avenue and 45th Street.

That’s a stone’s throw from Grand Central Terminal’s train shed, which was built at Fourth Avenue (now Park Avenue) in the 40s, according to New York: An Illustrated History.

“In the distance looms the northern end of the vast iron-and-glass train shed of Grand Central Depot,” the photo caption reads.

That train shed and the adjacent station were replaced by the Beaux-Arts Grand Central Terminal that still stands today.

Here’s more farm animals grazing and chilling in New York.