This building was formerly the Astor Opera House, site of the infamous 1849 Astor Place Riot. On the evening of May 10, 1849, a crowd some 15,000 strong gathered outside the Astor Place Opera House to protest the appearance of the English Shakespearean actor, William Charles Macready. A symbol of British aristocracy, Macready (1793-1873) had not endeared himself to Americans, most of whom he considered boorish and uncultured. In expressing its distaste for Macready, the crowd championed Edwin Forrest (1806-1872), an American-born Shakespearean actor who shared their fierce working-class determination not to be dominated by elite outsiders.

Members of the crowd, primarily young males, began pelting the theater with paving stones, the debris from a nearby construction site. The stones rained down on the building and on the unarmed police called in to protect the theater and the English actor. Assault followed assault. The crowd would not be repulsed. Policemen were injured. Finally, the militia was summoned to quell the disturbance. When the echo of gunfire quieted, 23 people lay dead or dying, and over 100 were wounded, some seriously.

Two police forces? In 1857, due to Mayor Fernando Wood's massive corruption, the New York State Assembly abolished the Municipal police and installed the new Metropolitan police that would be controlled by New York State. Fernando Wood refused to stand his men down which lead to two competing police forces operating (and brawling) at the same time. This conflict erupted into a full-blown riot when the Municipal Police repulsed an attempt by the Metropolitan Police to arrest Mayor Wood in City Hall. Hundreds of policemen fought on the steps and in the halls of City Hall. It was only when the Metropolitan Police Board brought in the Seventh Regiment to surround City Hall that Wood surrendered himself into custody.

Though now Columbus Park, it was this area that sparked the Dead Rabbit Riots (or the Bowery Riots) on July 4th, 1857. Taking advantage of the ongoing conflict between the Metropolitan and Municipal Police, the Dead Rabbits (an Irish immigrant gang) attempted to seize territory from the Bowery Boys (and their allies.) This sparked a massive riot during which an estimated thousand criminals fought, killed, and looted. Order was only restored when the Eighth and Seventy-First Regiments of the militia marched through the Bowery with fixed bayonets.

The New York City Draft Riots were a week-long violent action that occurred in Manhattan in the summer of 1863. The impetus for the riots was discontent among working-class populations (largely Irish immigrants) with new laws regarding a draft for the Civil War. What began as a discontent regarding the draft quickly devolved into race riots. White mobs attacked black people and their homes, public buildings, the homes of abolitionists, churches, and in a violent conflagration, the Colored Orphan Asylum at 44th Street and Fifth Avenue was burned to the ground. The police department attempted to quell the violence but had little luck. (The police superintendent John Alexander Kennedy was brutally beaten.) The military eventually arrived and by July 16 (four days after the riot had begun) there were several thousand Federal troops in the city. The results of the riots were drastic, 120 people killed, more than 2000 injured, hundreds of homes and business damaged and 11 black men lynched.

Orange Riots at 25th Street and Eighth Avenue, 1871. Following violence the year before uptown on July 12th, (known as Marching Day in Northern Ireland), in 1871 the police barred the Loyal Order of Orange (an Irish Protestant group) from parading again. After complaints were lodged by newspaper, the order itself, and a number of elite businessmen, the police and Tammany Hall relented and allowed the parade. The event began under heavy police and National Guard presence (about 5000 men) at Lamartine Hall, the Orangemen’s headquarters at Eighth Avenue and 29th Street. The parade was met by angry Irish Catholic crowds and the violence escalated to the point that rocks, shoes, and bottles were being thrown; the police and militia were using their clubs and bayonets, and shots were fired into the dense crowds. In all the riot caused the deaths of over 60 civilians – mostly Irish laborers – and three Guardsmen.

Following the police killing of James Powell, a fifteen-year-old boy, on July 16th, 1964, Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant erupted into six consecutive nights of rioting and protests. Disparate groups in both communities, outraged at continued racism and police brutality, organized a series of meetings that looked for solutions in the form of everything from passive protest to active revolution. Throughout the riots, protestors clashed with the police, whose presence and anti-riot tactics were inflammatory for the grieving neighborhoods. Four thousand New Yorkers were said to have taken part in the riots that ended on July 22nd, leaving one rioter dead, and hundreds more injured and arrested.

On August 6th 1988, an attempt to clear Tompkins Square Park of its homeless and squatter population was met with opposition by the parks inhabitants, advocates, and community activists. Tensions rose and a melee erupted between the hundreds of police and protestors when the police charged the protestors lines. The violence continued until 6am and provoked a citywide conversation on police brutality.

On the morning of May 8th of 1970, 700 activists, mostly college and high schoolers, gathered at the intersection of Broad and Wall Street to protest the Kent State shootings and Vietnam War. However as the day wore on, hundreds of construction workers, mobilized by the head of the AFL-CIO John Brennan, arrived as counter-protestors and began harassing the activists. At first, the construction workers simply pushed the activists but realizing the police were indifferent to their actions breached the line and started assaulting them. In what became known as the hard-hat riots, the construction workers then pursued the students and beat them, as well as forcing their way into PACE University and City Hall. Only six arrests were made as the police largely observed the riot for which they were widely condemned.

In the early morning of June 28th, 1969 the police raided the bar (as they often did to gay establishments in the 1960s). The patrons of the bar did not disperse as ordered but instead fought back, angrily remaining on the streets in front of the bar, growing in numbers, and chanting at the rough treatment of those arrested. The Stonewall Riots (sometimes referred to as the Stonewall Uprising) lasted for the next six days and included demonstrations that encompassed the surrounding blocks. This event is considered the beginning of the modern LGBT rights movement.

The Crown Heights riots occurred from August 19-21 of 1991. Two children of Guyanese immigrants were struck by a motorcade of Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, injuring both severely with one of the children subsequently dying. This inflamed the race relations of the densely populated neighborhood and sparked a number of days of riots, during which Jewish businesses and homes were targeted. Eventually, on August 22nd 1,800 police officers were dispatched and the violence died down. Following the riots, Public School 167 was the site of an important meeting between the mayor, police, and the African American and Jewish communities affected by the violence.