Mark's Place , after the nearby St. Mark's Place is considered a main cultural street for the East Village. Vehicular traffic runs east along both one-way streets. Mark's Place features a wide variety of retailers. Venerable institutions lining St. Mark's Place have included Gem Spa and the St. Mark's Hotel. There are several open-front markets that sell sunglasses, clothing, and jewelry. In her year history of St. Mark's Place St. Marks Is Dead , Ada Calhoun called the street "like superglue for fragmented identities" and wrote that "the street is not for people who have chosen their lives Such farms were located around the area until the s.
The Commissioners' Plan of defined the street grid for much of Manhattan. The plan was amended many times as the grid took shape and public spaces were added or eliminated. The marketplace proposal was scrapped in , allowing 8th Street to continue eastward to the river.
After the Commissioners' Plan was laid out, property along the street's right of way quickly developed. Row houses were also built on Eighth Street. The street ran between the Jefferson Market , built in at the west end, and the Tompkins Market, built in , at the east end.
These were factors in the street's commercialization in later years. Eighth Street was supposed to extend to a market place at Avenue C , but that idea never came to fruition. Davis developed the east end of the street and renamed it "St. Mark's Place" in Mark's Place between Third and Second Avenues between and Although the original plan was for Federal homes, only three such houses remained in Meanwhile, Eighth Street became home to a literary scene.
In the s, Eighth Street housed an educational scene as well. The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art , a then-free institution for art, architecture and engineering education, was opened in At the same time, German immigrants moved into the area around Tompkins Square Park.
