Ludlow Street

[2] At mid-century, Ludlow was in the middle of Kleindeutschland, where large numbers of German-speaking immigrants had settled, and was one of the informal boundaries of the Jewish section of the neighborhood, along with Grand, Stanton, and Pitt Streets.

[6] Other filmmakers, performers, poets, artists and musicians that lived in the building at the time included Warhol superstars Mario Montez and Jack Smith.

In the early 1980s, Ludlow Street was well known as a street where no wave Colab artists connected with ABC No Rio lived; such as Kiki Smith,[10] Fab Five Freddy, Coleen Fitzgibbon, Tom Otterness, Wolfgang Staehle, Steven Parrino, Joseph Nechvatal, Peter Fend, Walter Robinson, Aline Mare, George Condo and art critic Carlo McCormick.

The notable music club Luna Lounge, an instrumental venue that help usher in what became a new millennial wave of guitar bands like The Strokes, Interpol and The National, was located at 171 Ludlow Street from 1993 until 2005.

[16] In the 2000s, Ludlow Street was a destination street for musicians and music-lovers, and was heavily populated with fashion shops, art galleries, bars, restaurants, and performance venues such as Cake Shop, The Living Room, and Piano's making Ludlow into a small nightlife strip with a distinct subcultural flavor.

Local institutions included the bistro/cafe Pink Pony, the adjacent artist bar Max Fish, Katz's Deli (one of the city's most famous delicatessens) Motor City bar, Ludlow Street Guitars, Earthmatters Cafe (hangout of musicians/actors/writers/techies), Ludlow Studio (which was home to some of the top recording artists in the mid-1990s) and the Sombrero Mexican restaurant, better known to a generation of musicians as "The Hat."

Closed were: Pink Pony Cafe Littéraire & Ciné Club, the print shop at 139 Ludlow, Press Tea, Earth Matters natural food store and Motor City bar.