St. Marks Place
The eastward extension of 8th St./Astor Place past 3rd Ave. There are many bars, restaurants, and shops many with a street vending presence on the block between 2nd and 3rd Aves. There's always quite a mixture of folk walking up and down the street and within the area not to mention the slew of students from Cooper Union and NYU, which has plenty of dormitories and facilities nearby. Be warned that it can be unpleasantly crowded with slow-moving tipsy people at times, but it is a good place for people-watching.
Stuyvesant St.
The only street in Manhattan that actually runs due east to the compass. There are several 18th- and early 19th-century buildings along this street, which runs from a bit south of 9th St. and 3rd Ave. to 10th St and 2nd Ave. At the corner of 10th St. and 2nd Ave. is St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery (http://www.stmarkschurch-...), a historic landmark and a very active church today, with an old and lush graveyard to the north, on and near the corner of 11th St. and 2nd Ave. Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch governor of the colony of New Netherland before the British took possession and renamed it New York, is buried in a crypt in the east wall of the church. On the other end of Stuyvesant St., at the triangle between 9th St., Stuyvesant St., and 3rd Ave., a small garden and a compass fountain were constructed a few years ago for beautification and in order to show that Stuyvesant St. does go due east to the compass.
Alamo
A sculpture at the center of Astor Place. This steel cube actually rotates as you push on any side, though you may need the strength of two or three people for a complete rotation. One of its sister cubes resides on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Tompkins Square Park
Not much to see, but a nice park nonetheless and historically significant for its long reputation of political demonstrations and radical thought. The Grateful Dead played their first East Coast show here in 1967, and the first Hare Krishna gathering outside of India took place here in 1965. The park has a curfew â it closes at midnight.
Ottendorfer Library
The oldest continuously existing free lending library in New York, it was originally designed in 1884 as a "Deutsches Bibliothek" when this neighborhood was part of Kleindeutschland Little Germany and now serves as a branch of the New York Public Library. A lovely red brick building, it contains reliefs of heroes of German culture such as Goethe. Another part of the building, constructed as a "Deutsches Dispensary," recently stopped functioning as a clinic and will reportedly be converted into condominiums soon.
Cooper Union
The only private, full-scholarship college in the United States dedicated exclusively to preparing students for the professions of art, architecture and engineering. The college, established in 1859, occupies several buildings, but the most recognizable and famous is the Foundation Building, which is situated on the block to the south of Astor Place between the two branches of Cooper Square one being the southward extension of 3rd Av. and the other, an avenue that connects the Bowery with 4th Av. at Astor Place. The college, the legacy of Peter Cooper, occupies a special place in the history of American education.