Gem Spa
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| Private | |
| Genre |
Newsstand Candy store |
| Headquarters | 131 2nd Avenue, East Village, Manhattan, United States |
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Number of locations
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St. Mark's Place and Second Avenue |
| Products | Egg cream, Newspapers, Magazines |
| Owner | Goldfeder family (1920s-1957) Ruby Silverstein and Harold Shepard (1957-~1969) Irving Stein (1971) Ray Patel (1986-present) |
Gem Spa is a newspaper stand and candy store located on the corner of St. Mark's Place and Second Avenue in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It opened under another name in the 1920s, and received its current name in 1957. It is open 24 hours a day, and is known for being commonly considered to be the birthplace of the authentic New York City-style egg cream, which its awning describes as "New York's Best." It does not stock pornographic magazines, and it gets magazines delivered one or two days before other New York City newsstands.
In the 1950s, Gem Spa was a gathering place for beats, and in the 1960s it was a hippie hangout, known for selling a wide selection of underground newspapers.New York Magazine named it the best newsstand in the East Village in 2001, and it has been featured on television programs about food, including Kelly Choi's Secrets of New York.
The building in which Gem Spa is located, 131 Second Avenue, or 36 St. Marks Place, was built in 1898-1900 and was designed by Louis F. Heinecke in the Renaissance Revival style. It is located within the East Village/Lower East Side Historic District, which was created in October 2012.
The Lower East Side History Project reports the site was an outlet for the Chain Shirt Shop in 1922, and that Gem Spa had opened by the 1950s. Sociologist Daniel Bell, who claimed in the 1970s that his uncle Hymie created the egg cream, says that another man called Hymie owned a candy store serving egg creams on the site of Gem Spa in the 1920s.Village Voice reported in the 1970s that people remembered going to the store before World War I. For thirty years up until 1957 the store was owned by the Goldfeder family.
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Wikipedia