It is the continuation of 9th Street west of Sixth Avenue. As a result of the Stonewall riots in , the street became the center of the world's gay rights movement in the late s.
To this day, the inn and the street serve as an international symbol of gay pride. Christopher Street is named after Charles Christopher Amos, the owner of the inherited estate which included the location of the street. Christopher Street is, technically, the oldest street in the West Village , as it ran along the south boundary of Admiral Sir Peter Warren 's estate, which abutted the old Greenwich Road now Greenwich Avenue to the east and extended north to the next landing on the North River, at present-day Gansevoort Street.
The street received its current name in , when the Warren land was acquired by Warren's eventual heir, Charles Christopher Amos. Charles Street remains, but Amos Street is now 10th Street.
The road ran past the churchyard wall of the Church of St. Luke in the Fields built —22; rebuilt after a fire, —85 still standing on its left, down to the ferry landing, commemorated in the block-long Weehawken Street [ 5 ] laid out in , the shortest street in the West Village. At the Hudson River , with its foundation in the river and extending north to 10th Street, Newgate Prison, the first New York State Prison, occupied the site from to , when the institution was removed to Sing Sing and the City plotted and sold the land.
West Street is on more recently filled land, but the procession of boats that had made the inaugural pass through the Erie Canal stopped at the ferry dock at the foot of Christopher Street, November 4, , where it was met by a delegation from the city; together they proceeded to the Lower Bay, where the cask of water brought from the Great Lakes was ceremoniously emptied into the salt water. In , Jane Jacobs , resident in the area and author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities published that same year, headed a group that successfully stopped Mayor Robert Wagner 's plan to demolish twelve blocks along West Street north of Christopher Street, including the north side of Christopher Street to Hudson Street , and an additional two blocks south of it, slated for " urban renewal ".
