4th Street (Manhattan)
4th Street is a street in Lower Manhattan, New York City. It starts at Avenue D as East 4th Street and continues to Broadway, where it becomes West 4th Street. It continues west until the Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue), where West 4th Street turns north and confusingly intersects with West 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th Streets in Greenwich Village. Most of the street has the same 40-foot (12 m) width between curbstones as others in the prevailing street grid, striped as two curbside lanes and one traffic lane, with one-way traffic eastbound. The portion from Seventh to Eighth Avenues is westbound (northbound geographically) and is approximately 35 feet (11 m) wide, a legacy of the original Greenwich Village street grid. The section of four short blocks from MacDougal Street to University Place which forms the southern border of Washington Square Park is called Washington Square South.[2]
The north/south portion (from Sixth Avenue to 13th Street) was formerly called Asylum Street, after the Orphan Asylum Society, which stood on Asylum Street between Bank Street and Troy Street (now West 12th Street). The asylum was demolished in 1833 and the street was renamed West 4th Street. Later, the cross streets (Amos, Hammond, and Troy) were renamed West 10th, 11th, and 12th Streets, causing the current confusion.[3]
Located near Washington Square Park's south-west corner, between MacDougal Street and Sixth Avenue, The Washington Square Methodist Church (135 West Fourth) is an early Romanesque Revival marble edifice designed by Gamaliel King and built in 1859–60.[4] Dubbed the "Peace Church" for its support of Vietnam War protesters, Washington Square Church long provided a neighborhood base for activist groups such as the Black Panthers and Gay Men's Health Crisis. The church was sold in 2005 to a developer for conversion into residential units.[5]During construction, parts of the church were salvaged to form the furniture and interior architecture of Urban Spring, a cafe in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
Judson Memorial Church, located at the corner of Thompson Street and Washington Square South, was designed by architect Stanford White and stained glass master John La Farge.
The West Fourth Street subway station (A, B, C, D, E, F, <F>, and M trains) at Sixth Avenue is one of the major transfer points in the New York City Subway.
The street is home to the basketball and handball West Fourth Street Courts, known as "The Cage", a hangout for some of New York's best basketball players and the site of a citywide streetball tournament.[6]
