NEW YORK (CelebrityAccess) – The corner of Ludlow Street and Rivington in NYC will be renamed Beastie Boys Square … after a nearly nine-year battle to get it changed.
In 2014, a proposal was submitted to rename the Lower East Side corner, which served as the cover of the Beastie’s 1989 album, Paul’s Boutique, to Beastie Boys Square. The proposal was rejected by the local Community Board. On Thursday (July 14), a renewed application for the name change was approved by the NYC City Council and is now pending the signature of Mayor Eric Adams. The bill is expected to be called to a vote and approved shortly after, according to Council member Christopher Marte to American Songwriter.
Beastie Boys Square will honor the group and members Michael “Mike D” Diamond, Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, and the late Adam “MCA” Yauch, who died after a long battle with cancer at the age of 47 in 2012.
“As many of us know, once the Beastie Boys hit the scene, it really changed the hip-hop game,” said Marte in a statement. “I see it as a celebration. A celebration for the Lower East Side, a celebration for hip-hop, and especially a celebration for our community who has been organizing for a really long time to make this happen.”
LeRoy McCarthy, who began the work to get the square re-named, also worked to get a mural up commemorating the 25th anniversary of Paul’s Boutique on the same corner in 2014.
The Beastie Boys came together in 1981, with Yauch from Brooklyn and Diamond and Horovitz from Manhattan, with the East Village and Lower East Side of Manhattan a pivotal meeting point for the rappers, from writing out of their apartment at 59 Chrystie Street and four years before their full length debut Licensed to Ill – was recorded in a basement on Avenue A. On the cover art for Pauls Boutique, it showed panorama of the intersection, photographed from 99 Rivington Street and credited to Nathaniel Hörnblowér, a pseudonym used by Yauch.
“The Beastie Boys lived and breathed the Lower East Side as the Lower East Side lived and breathed the Beastie Boys,” said Marte. “MCA, Ad-Rock, and Mike D put this neighborhood on the hip-hop map not just by calling it their home but putting it front and center on one of their top albums. There’s no denying these guys were punks, maybe not their neighbors’ favorite neighbors, but that’s what the Lower East Side was and always will be: a home to people who do things a little differently.”
