New York Dolls — Mercer Arts Center, New York

The New York Dolls made their name playing the Mercer Arts Center at 240 Mercer Street in Greenwich Village in 1972 and 1973 — specifically the Oscar Wilde Room, a velvet-draped space in the basement of the Broadway Central Hotel. The Dolls — David Johansen, Johnny Thunders, Sylvain Sylvain, Arthur Kane, Jerry Nolan — played loud, trashy rock and roll in women's clothes and platform shoes, pre-dating both punk and glam rock while owing debts to both. Their residency at the Mercer became a downtown event, attracting an audience that included Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, and Patti Smith.

The New York Dolls were proto-punk in the most literal sense: they created the template — primitive rock, confrontational image, contempt for musicianly competence as an end in itself — that the Ramones, Sex Pistols, and Clash would refine. Malcolm McLaren managed them briefly in 1975, an experience that taught him everything he needed to know to create the Sex Pistols. Their two albums for Mercury went nowhere commercially but have never been out of print.

The Broadway Central Hotel collapsed catastrophically on August 3, 1973, killing four people and ending the Mercer Arts Center. The site is now an NYU building. A plaque commemorates the Mercer Arts Center. The New York Dolls' broader haunts — the Gem Spa newsstand on St. Marks Place, the streets of the East Village — are worth seeking out for any fan of the era.