Just to your right is Astor Place; walk half a block to face the District 65 building on the north side of the street. This building occupies the site of the Astor Place Opera House, the focus of the Astor Place Riot, which raged here May 10, 1849.

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The Astor Place Riot, one of the bloodiest days in New York's history, had its roots in a banal squabble between two arrogant actors. Actor William Macready, Englishman, and actor Edwin Forrest, Native son, had once been friends. Macready had helped Forrest get his start in London, and Forrest had married an English woman he met through the older actor. But over the years, professional competition and personal egotism had created friction and then outright antipathy. Their rivalry was exacerbated, and then exploited, by a growing nativist movement, then organized as the Order of United Americans, forerunner of the know-nothings and a group with much strength in the organized gangs of the Bowery and other working-class areas. The slights supposedly delivered by an effete, aristocratic Macready to a bold, Democratic Forrest - billed everywhere as "The American Tragedian" - were transformed into insults piercing the very soul of the American character. When the English actor arrived in the United States for an 1849 tour, nativists were incensed.

An attempt by Macready to play Macbeth at the Astor place Opera House on May 7, 1849 proved unsuccessful, as he was driven from the stage by an unruly crowd throwing, as he later cataloged, "eggs of doubtful purity, potatoes, a bottle of pungent and nauseating asafetida, old shoes, and a copper coin."

Convinced by city elders, including Washington Irving and Herman Melville, to try again, he announced a return to the Opera House stage for May 10. This proved to be, to put it mildly, a miscalculation. Nativist elements, fired by the temerity of this fop and organized by local ward leaders, regrouped. One of the principal instigators of the protest was Edward Z.C. Judson, a popular author who use the pen name "Ned Buntline" and who was the man that dubbed William C. Cody "Buffalo Bill." He later served a year in prison for his role in the riot.

Astor Place, from Broadway to Third Avenue, began to fill up early on the evening of the 10^th . By curtain time there were thousands of unruly citizens - estimates ran up to 20,000 - in the street, and a packed house inside. It was clear that the situation was uncontrollable.

When Macready hit the boards, the audience erupted: rowdies hurled insults, invectives, and soon chairs at the actor; by the second act, paving stones from outside were raining down on the audience and stage, but the indomitable Englishman pressed on. "The audience has paid for so much, and law compels me to give it; they would have cause for riot, if all were not properly done," he primly said.

Outside the mob, stretching from Broadway to Third Avenue and wrapping around the Opera House on both Astor Place and Eighth Street, grew increasingly aggressive, stoning both the building and the police cordon around it. Reported the New York Tribune: "As one window after another cracked, the pieces of bricks and paving stones rattled in on the terraces and lobbies, the confusion increased, till the Opera House resembled a fortress besieged by an invading army rather than a place meant for the peaceful amusement of civilized community."

The police force, obviously insufficient, became trapped with their backs up against the building, and the National Guard from the Seventh Regiment, already mobilized and prepared, was called in.

They marched up Broadway to Astor Place, wheeled right and, though coming under fierce bombardment, managed to force through the crowd to a position in the rear of the Opera House on Eighth Street. They succeeded in clearing this thoroughfare, but were less successful on the south side of the building. They marched back down on Broadway and turned again into Astor Place, but the crowd was so thick and belligerent that they were forced to proceed in single file, squeezing themselves between the building and the mob.

Here they found themselves in much the same situation the police had suffered only a few hours before: thoroughly outnumbered, pelted by rocks, and in danger of being overwhelmed. A fateful order was given for the Guard to fire point blank into the crowd. A first volley was aimed above the heads of the demonstrators, but, as this proved unconvincing, two more volleys followed, both directed squarely at the crowd (though many guardsmen refused to fire or aimed their weapons in the air).

The crowd scattered, leaving in its wake dozens of dead and wounded on the street. Sporadic fighting continued until midnight, at which time nervous soldiers fired another volley at the stragglers still in the area, felling a few more. That put an end to the battle.

The eventual death toll stood at 31 civilians dead, some 30 or 40 wounded from gunfire, and more than 100 soldiers, police, and civilians injured by paving stones, clubs, or other weapons. 86 rioters were arrested, including the aforementioned Edward Z. C. Judson. A coroner's jury exonerated the guardsmen, though it criticized the police for not being prepared.

Macready had been smuggled out of the theater in disguise and left the city the next morning. He never returned to the United States and died in England April 27, 1873. Forrest, though tainted by association with the riot and by a later scandalous divorce from his wife, continued with a successful theatrical career. He died on December 12, 1872.

Also infamous

The large apartment building at 70 East 10^th Street, between Broadway and Fourth Avenue, was the home of Leon Klinghoffer, the sole victim in the hijacking of the Mediterranean cruise ship Achille Lauro. Klinghoffer was shot in the head and thrown overboard on October 8, 1985, by members of the Palestinian Liberation Front (a breakaway group from the Palestinian Liberation Organization).