Centre Market Place is a charming New York alley that’s easy to miss.
It’s just a one-block sliver of pavement behind the old Police Headquarters (now a luxurious residence) on Centre Street.
The alley is all very contemporary Nolita, with brightly painted townhouses topping expensive boutiques. But for the past 150 years or so, it was just another crowded strip in a poor stretch of the East Side.
It’s a block now mostly scrubbed clean of its rougher edges, which included a public bath at number nine on the Broome Street end.
Called the People’s Bath House and built by a private charity in the 1890s, it used to be crowded with mostly Italian immigrant tenement dwellers.
The site where it once stood is now an empty lot.
Centre Market Place also had an illustrious resident in the 1930s: crime photographer Weegee.
His one-room apartment, perfectly located near all the police action, was at number five.
A gritty industry thrived on the street as well: guns. Several gun shops were located there through much of the 20th century, fueled by the NYPD.
The gun dealers are gone, but the sign (below) still exists at number seven for Sile, a gun distributor with a branch in Brescia, Italy.
Ephemeral New York 