Nadeem SalaamGem 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. 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.”
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.
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.
Gem Spa is featured on the back cover of the first album by the New York Dolls. Poets Allen Ginsberg and Ted Berrigan both mentioned the stand in their works. Gem Spa is the name of one of the main works painted by Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1982.
It had been a Beat mecca in the 1950s, a hippie hangout in the sixties and more recently was the scene of a famous photograph of the Dolls. From 1957 until at least 1969 the store was owned by Ruby Silverstein and Harold Shepard, who employed 11 staff to keep it open 24 hours a day – Silverstein estimated that every 30 seconds someone walked in the store. The clientele initially mainly bought Jewish and foreign-language papers, which began to change around 1963 as they sold more copies of the Village Voice and underground magazines. Silverstein and Shepard gave the store its current name, initially Gem’s Spa – the name comes from Gladys, Etta, and Miriam, the names of the wives of Silverstein and Shepard and Shepard’s ex-wife.
In 1966, The Village Voice called it the “official oasis of the East Village”; it was known as a “hippie hangout”. Abbie Hoffman gathered people for his 1967 protest at the New York Stock Exchange at Gem Spa, Allen Ginsberg called it a “nerve center” of the city, and the Art Workers’ Coalition had their offices above the store. Robert Mapplethorpe bought Patti Smith an egg cream there shortly after she moved to New York in 1967. In the late 60s it was midway between two other iconic venues, the Fillmore East and the Electric Circus.
The current owner is Ray Patel, who was born in the early 1940s in Gujarat, India. He runs the store with his wife and bought the store in 1986, when he replaced one brick wall with glass. He does no advertising and relies instead on word of mouth. He learned making egg creams from the previous Italian owner, who in turn learned it from his Jewish predecessor. The store manager Salim said in 2010 that only four people know the recipe.
Gem Spa longtime owner (since the mid-80s) Ray Patel declared, “Gem Spa is not closing!” Which, when it comes to nearly 80-year-old iconic New York City spots, is a great thing to say if you want to tempt fate. And here we are, not five years later, and things have changed.
Gem Spa is no longer a spot where you can pick up both a pack of smokes and a fedora—after one employee got caught selling underage smokers cigarettes earlier this year, they lost their license to sell tobacco products and lottery tickets. More recently, and more noticeable to passerby, they removed some items from their sidewalk, including Zoltar, and what remained was positioned alongside an “everything must go” sign, which EV Grieve spotted. Most notably, they are no longer a 24/7 operation—the new hours are 8 a.m. to midnight, and their regular overnight guy has moved out of NYC, according to Gothamist.
Ray Patel’s daughter, Parul, has been keeping up shop at Gem (she told Gothamist she is helping her parents and does not take a paycheck). In May, writer Jesse Jarnow reported on some changes at the storefront for Gothamist, and Parul Patel spoke of some new measures to bring in business, including a newly launched Instagram account (which hasn’t been updated since May), and more Instagrammable egg cream flavors.
“This is a legendary place,” she told Gothamist. “It’s iconic. It’s actually protected as a landmark, the building is.” But the building is owned by someone else, the Patels lease out their storefront, and if business isn’t booming, it threatens closure. As locals have noticed the rolled down gate during now-closed hours this week, rumors suggested things were over. But as of now, Gem Spa is still open.
According to Vanishing NY, however, they are struggling. “Recently, the rent went up. Then Gem lost their license to sell cigarettes and lottery tickets due to a former employee’s negligence. As Patel explained, those sales are critical. People who come to buy those items also buy newspapers and magazines, which are expensive for the shop to carry.
At the same time, the landlord told Gem to clean up the historically and happily jumbled front exterior of the store—so away went the newspaper racks and Zoltar the fortune teller. Gone, too, are the magazines, at least for now. Once Gem gets their cigarette and lottery license back, the papers and magazines may return. But that is another four months away.”
Patel asks that locals buy their coffee, their Juuls, their candy and sodas and snacks and egg creams and, yes, fedoras, at Gem Spa. And not one of the generic nearby chains, unless you want Gem Spa to be replaced by one.