Houston Street — that's HOW-stun, for the first-time visitors — has seen many changes since it was mapped as the southern boundary of Manhattan's famous street grid under the Commissioners' Plan of 1811. In fact, the 1811 plan was the first time the street, named for William Houstoun, was spelled "Houston." The misspelling stuck. Houstoun was the Georgia-born son of Sir Patrick Houstoun, a Scottish aristocrat and member of the state's colonial Government. The younger Houstoun represented Georgia at the Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention of 1787, where he met Mary Bayard, of the prominent Manhattan family, whom he married in 1788. The original segment of Houstoun's namesake street was part of the Bayard family's property. Over the ensuing decades, Houston was merged with neighboring thoroughfares (North Street on the east side; Hammersley Street on the west) until it spanned the breadth of the entire island. This walk covers the tumultuous early decades of the 20th century, when subway construction and increased automobile traffic molded Houston into its current form. Let's take a look!

Construction on the Sixth Avenue extension at Bedford Street, 1928. The six-story buildings at left are 174-178 West Houston Street (although the entrances are actually on Bedford). Until 1925, Sixth Avenue extended only as far South as Carmine Street. As it had done for the 1917 Seventh Avenue extension, the city used eminent domain to clear existing structures between Carmine and Canal Streets— including the entirety of the forgotten Hanover, Congress, and Clark Streets — to make way for construction of the IND Eighth Avenue subway under the new Sixth Avenue extension. The new Eighth Avenue line opened in September 1932, seven years after work began on the extension aboveground.