Lafayette Street and Broadway (Greenwich Village): Lafayette Street and Broadway (Greenwich Village)

Today, it's hard to believe that Astor Place was once home to wealth and influence. Lafayette Street is an undistinguished thoroughfare, steering a grimy route along the edge of the East Village and down into SoHo. All that's left to hint that this might once have been more than a down-at-heel gathering of industrial buildings is Colonnade Row , just south of Astor Place. This strip of four 1832 Greek Revival houses with a Corinthian colonnade is now home to the Colonnade Theater. The Public Theater , at no. 425, is legendary both as a forerunner of Off-Broadway theater and as the original venue of hit musicals like Hair . For years it was run by the director Joseph Papp, who pioneered Shakespeare in the Park. On the ground floor you'll find the celeb-studded performance space/restaurant/bar, Joe's Pub , named in his honor.

Head one block west to Broadway and look north: filling a bend in the street is the lacy marble of Grace Church , on the corner of 10th Street, which was built and designed in 1846 by James Renwick (of St Patrick's Cathedral fame) in a delicate neo-Gothic style. Dark and aisled, with a flattened, web-vaulted ceiling, it's one of the city's most successful churches - and, in many ways, one of its most secretive escapes.

Lafayette Street and Broadway (Greenwich Village)

• Lafayette Street and Broadway (Greenwich Village)

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