The East Village of ‘Mad Men’ Versus the Real 1960s One

Jordin Althaus/AMC Betty Draper (January Jones) in an East Village scene from Sunday’s “Mad Men.”

What was the East Village like in late 1967 and early 1968 In Sunday night’s season premiere of the period drama “Mad Men” on AMC, a subplot involving Betty Draper’s search for a runaway teenager takes her to the neighborhood, and though no street sign is shown, a character’s comment implies that it’s just off St. Mark’s Place. The block looks rather seedy, home to abandoned buildings, litter-strewn sidewalks and sketchy characters. In the background, someone scurries by carrying a television down the street. Was it looted Stolen

Readers of ArtsBeat’s “Mad Men” chat were divided on many aspects of the episode,  from the changes in Don Draper (fascinating or tiresome) to the meaning of Betty’s comments on rape. But the readers did agree: St. Mark’s Place in those days was actually quite cheerful and hardly one of the mean streets of the city. Here’s a sampling of their comments:

NYexpat: That wasn’t any tenement I knew on St Marks or the area.

Isabella McFArlin: All I can say is, whomever thought that looked like St. Marks Place ca. 1968 was never there, nor did they bother to look at any photos. It was a touristy street, jolly with love beads and egg creams (on the corner of 2nd Ave- you can still get these there). I wonder why they chose a street so many must remember so well and made it look like Dresden after the bombing.

Diana: I’d have believed it more if the address was Avenue B or C a few years later. This just felt like a cheap set.

Are the commenters correct Judging by photos, like this one, unearthed by Jeff Roth in The New York Times morgue, St. Mark’s Place in the late ’60s was a well-maintained neighborhood where neatly dressed women weren’t afraid to walk down the street together or with children in hand.

Meyer Liebowitz/The New York Times From February 1969, a shot of St. Mark’s Place near First Avenue.

Mr. Roth, by the way, remembers the area as fairly respectable into the early 1970s and points out, as has been noted elsewhere, that the subplot contains shades of the real-life story of Linda Fitzpatrick, a teenage runaway from Greenwich, Conn., who was found bludgeoned to death, along with her boyfriend, in a building on Avenue B in October 1967. (Her death was the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning article by J. Anthony Lukas of The Times.)

Note to Matthew Weiner, the creator of “Mad Men” who is known for caring deeply about getting historical details correct: If the scene had been set further east, many of the commenters would have had no gripe. One shared a memory from 1967:

limerockcodger: That was when I quit college and rented an “apartment” in one of those walkups on 13th & Ave. C for a month or so. I still feel guilt for making my mother have drive down and attempt to “retrieve” me. Watching last night, I could smell the undefinable stench of those buildings… the rental unit I got from a slumlord wasn’t much better than the abandoned crash pad.

Then again, Mr. Weiner, maybe even an Alphabet City location would not have helped:

Jeff K.: Any New Yorker can tell you that the whole scene was obviously fake and shot on a Hollywood backlot, where all the supposed “New York streets” are curiously free of traffic, prone to dead ends, and harboring numerous long alleyways that are completely nonexistent on the actual island of Manhattan.