41e. Wall Street Historic District
Location: Roughly bounded by Cedar Street, Maiden Lane, Pearl Street, Bridge Street, South William Street, Greenwich Street, and Trinity Place.
Built: N/A
Architect: N/A
National Register Number: 07000063
Listed: February 2, 2007
Visited: December 30, 2007
It's dark, dark in the day time. This is Thames Street, between the Trinity and U.S. Realty Buildings. Right outside the frame of this picture were some guys nervously selling bootleg pocketbooks from a bundled bedsheet.
The historic district designation was also likely a gesture towards the preservation of downtown's oddball street plan. Drawn up in large part by the Dutch settlers with no thought to a future of skyscrapers and megalopolis-sized street traffic, their integrity has been compromised many a time (best detailed here--Hi Mr. Walsh!), eventually prompting the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission to landmark the street plan itself.
Nothing sadder than a Wiki page nobody edits. The kidsnyc.com entry for the alley pictured above, Marketfield Street, says it "was called Petticoat Lane in 1696, because it was the location of NYC's 1st hookers." Yeah, right--it took prostitutes seventy years to appear after the first European settlement? I don't think so. Otherwise, though, it's completely believable it was once a center of low living. Just look at it--even with the erection of the glassy 2 Broadway building on its corner, it still feels forboding, desperate. The street is obscure enough to ensure interesting results when you Google it: here's an 1879 NYT article about a random fight between two toughs outside a saloon; a morbid 1852 squib about how a gentlemen who worked in the alley "burned to a crisp" (their words, seriously) in a house fire; it also figures in a 1908 Black Hand bomb threat. OK, little of this has has much to do with the street, but...isn't the opening up of the NYT archive the greatest thing ever? I mean, Luc Sante--I love the dude, I do (he used to hang out at ILx, my former bulletin board of choice), but the sheer volume of antique sleaze the NYT offers us kinda renders Low Life completely redundant, doesn't it? Man.
Built: N/A
Architect: N/A
National Register Number: 07000063
Listed: February 2, 2007
Visited: December 30, 2007
It's dark, dark in the day time. This is Thames Street, between the Trinity and U.S. Realty Buildings. Right outside the frame of this picture were some guys nervously selling bootleg pocketbooks from a bundled bedsheet.
The historic district designation was also likely a gesture towards the preservation of downtown's oddball street plan. Drawn up in large part by the Dutch settlers with no thought to a future of skyscrapers and megalopolis-sized street traffic, their integrity has been compromised many a time (best detailed here--Hi Mr. Walsh!), eventually prompting the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission to landmark the street plan itself.
Nothing sadder than a Wiki page nobody edits. The kidsnyc.com entry for the alley pictured above, Marketfield Street, says it "was called Petticoat Lane in 1696, because it was the location of NYC's 1st hookers." Yeah, right--it took prostitutes seventy years to appear after the first European settlement? I don't think so. Otherwise, though, it's completely believable it was once a center of low living. Just look at it--even with the erection of the glassy 2 Broadway building on its corner, it still feels forboding, desperate. The street is obscure enough to ensure interesting results when you Google it: here's an 1879 NYT article about a random fight between two toughs outside a saloon; a morbid 1852 squib about how a gentlemen who worked in the alley "burned to a crisp" (their words, seriously) in a house fire; it also figures in a 1908 Black Hand bomb threat. OK, little of this has has much to do with the street, but...isn't the opening up of the NYT archive the greatest thing ever? I mean, Luc Sante--I love the dude, I do (he used to hang out at ILx, my former bulletin board of choice), but the sheer volume of antique sleaze the NYT offers us kinda renders Low Life completely redundant, doesn't it? Man.
Labels: Financial District
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