lowermanhattan

maps © Hagstrom Inc.

This 1946 Hagstrom of the Wall Street area (boxed in gray) of Manhattan shows a large number of streets that have disappeared over the decades, many of which made it into the 1970s.

The Sixties and Seventies were eras in which dozens of streets were eliminated to make way for developments like the World Trade Center.

Below we'll show you where the streets were and what's where they were (are?) now!

STREET LOCATION WHAT'S THERE NOW?

between Water and South Streets north of Coenties Alley 55 Water Street, built in 1972

between Water and South Streets north of Old Slip survives as a public walkway between 77 Water Street (1970) and 95 Wall Street

between Water and South Streets just south of Wall Street 95 and 111 Wall Street

between Water and South Streets north of Pine Street Wall Street Plaza (1973); Continental Center (1983)

between Bridge and Pearl Streets west of Whitehall Street 1940s city directories list Chesebrough Court, but today no trace exists.

between William Street and Broadway, just south of Wall Street Exchange Place. Laid out by the Dutch, it was originally called Tuyn (Garden) Street, later as Church Street. It was named for the Merchants Exchange, first built in 1825; through a series of absorptions, it's now part of Citicorp.

between the East and Hudson Rivers, north of John Street
Fulton Street. West of Broadway, it was named Partition Street; east of Broadway, Fulton was called Fair Street. Both were renamed for the inventor of the steamship, Robrert Fulton.

Before 1971, Fulton was the southernmost street in Manhattan to go river to river. The construction of the World Trade Center cut it back to Church Street. Today, the title is held by Houston Street.

"College Place" sign on West Broadway and Warren Street.

TRIBECA

Formerly a Syrian enclave, this area was known for its active piers and for the old Washington Market.

maps © Hagstrom Inc

In the 1946 map at left every street except Chambers, Warren and Murray west of Greenwich Street has been eliminated through one development or another, most notably Independence Plaza (1975).

In this area, two tiny alleys in the former Washington Market area were sacrificed (see below).

In the mid 18th Century there were also several streets that haven't been there for quite awhile.

STREET LOCATION WHAT'S THERE NOW?

between Warren and Chambers Street just west of Greenwich Street Independence School

between Jay and Duane Streets east of West Street Borough Of Manhattan Community College (begun 1976, completed 1980)

Dey and Greenwich Sts. north to Murray Street The former World Trade Center site south of Vesey St. (1970); renamed West Broadway (about 1845)

old name of College Place below Murray Street; extended north to Canal Street Renamed West Broadway about 1845

Canal Street at about Chapel Street north to Amity (West 3rd) Street
Renamed and widened as West Broadway (about 1845)

Notable: West Broadway itself between Houston Street and Washington Square Park was renamed LaGuardia Place after Fiorello LaGuardia's death in 1947. The portion south of Vesey Street was obliterated by the World Trade Center construction in the late 1960s.

College Place west to West Street, south of Murray Street The former World Trade Center site (1970). Robinson Street was renamed Park Place in the late 1800s, then eliminated by construction of the WTC.

474 Washington Street west to West Street south of Canal Street Subsequently absorbed by Canal Street as it was widened. However, another tiny street named for a New Jersey town, Weehawken Street, survives ten blocks north of here.

CIVIC CENTER EAST

More than any area of lower Manhattan, the Lower East Side and the area between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges has been almost completely changed since the early part of the 20th Century as housing projects have replaced the ancient tenements and confusing maze of streets that used to dominate the region. The infamous Five Points lurked at the western edge of this area.

The levelling of Scollay Square in Boston to make rom for the new Government Center in the 1960s is comparable to this area for general elimination of a neighborhood.

In addition, many streets that formerly went through this area have been drastically cut back: for example, Cherry Street, which used to start at Pearl and Dover Streets at an intersection called Franklin Square (at a point where the Third Avenue El passed beneath the Brooklyn Bridge), now begins at Catherine Street. Water Street began at Whitehall and proceeded uninterrupted to Jackson Street; today its lower part has become a main thoroughfare, while its northern part has been chopped to bits.

STREET LOCATION WHAT'S THERE NOW?

eastern extension of Chambers Street, from Park Row and Duane Street east to James Street and Cherry Street Police Headquarters; Governor Al Smith Houses (1952). Today, Avenue of the Finest replaces it, although in a southeast direction to South Street.

southern extension of The Bowery, from Chatham Square south to Pearl Street
Renamed St. James Place in 1947 in honor of Governor Al Smith, a parishioner at St. James Church on Oliver Street.

Notable: Shearith Israel, the oldest cemetery in Manhattan, is on this street.

Park Row between Nassau Street and the Bowery Renamed Park Row in the late 1800s

from Gold Street east to Pearl Street at Peck Slip
Southbridge Towers (1969)

Notable: Ferry Street was probably named for the nearby Fulton Ferry which connected the Fulton Streets in Manhattan and Brooklyn from the late 1700s to the 1920s.

from Ferry Street north to Frankfort Street Southbridge Towers

John Street northeast to Hague Street Southbridge Towers, Brooklyn Bridge vehicular approaches, New York Telephone Building. A short stretch of Cliff Street survives between John and Fulton Streets.

Tiny alley between Cliff Street and Pearl Street
Bell Atlantic Telephone Building.

Notable: name reflected Manhattan's early Netherlands legacy as do Dutch Street and St. Nicholas Avenue.

The northern end of William Street extended well north of where it does today, all the way to Pearl Street near Park Row; today only goes as far north as Beekman. NY Infirmary Beekman Downtown Hospital (1971); Pace University (1970); Brooklyn Bridge vehicular approaches; Police Headquarters. A small piece of William Street can be seen at Frankfort Street east of Park Row.

Frankfort and Gold Streets under the Brooklyn Bridge northeast to New Chambers Street
A small piece survives under the Brooklyn Bridge approach, from Frankfort northeast to Avenue of The Finest at Madison Street. The rest of Rose Street was replaced by Murray Bergtraum High School (1976).

Notable: for a brief time in 1844, Rose Street was home to the mayor's official residence.

Forgotten Fan Peter Sefton has an account of the old days on Rose Street:

Even in the 1920s, Rose Street was called dingy and gloomy, but it was once a street of mansions and with a lively past.

In 1834, there was a series of anti-Black and anti-abolitionist street disorders, partially in reaction to British endorsement of the abolitionist cause. one evening, after attacking a theatre where the manager was an Englishman, to a mob battered down the front door of the wealthy abolitionist Lewis Tappan's Rose Street mansion. While ransacking the house, the rioters piled his furniture in the street and poured kerosene over it. But the story is told that, when someone tore a portrait of Washington off the wall and tried to use it for kindling, there was a roar of protest-"for God's sake, don't burn Washington!"

As a later 19th century writer noted "In an instance, the spirit of disorder was laid, and the portrait was handed carefully from man to man, til, at length, the populace carried it to a neighoring house for safety", attended by an honor guard of rioters. It's unknown what proportion of this was patriotic fervor and what was admiration for the greatest kicker of British butt in history.

This lull in the riot probably saved Tappan's house from total destruction, because the "leatherheads" of the police force drove off the rioters, who still managed to bombard them with bricks and to torch the furniture pile.

The Dover paperback Old New York in Early Photographs has a evocative shot of the corner of Rose & Duane Streets. Not many mansions around even in 1890.

Frankfort Street near Cliff Street northeast to Pearl Street at New Chambers Street Brooklyn Bridge vehicular approaches; Bell Atlantic Telephone Building

Tiny alley, extended from New Bowery at Pearl street southeast to Cherry Street Governor Al Smith Houses (1952)

Another short alley, between Roosevelt and James Streets, crossing New Chambers Governor Al Smith Houses

Pearl Street at Park Row southeast to South Street
Chatham Green Houses (1961), Gov. Al Smith Houses.

Notable: Rosevelt, or Roosevelt, Street appears on maps in the mid-1800s, so it was not named for Teddy. "Roosevelt" is a prominent Dutch name in the NYC area throughout its history. A Roosevelt owned property in the area in the late colonial period.

Between 84 Henry Street and Madison Street. This was a southeastern extension of Forsyth Street along the Manhattan Bridge.

Between 73 Catherine Street and the intersection of Monroe and Market Streets. The one-block street bent to the northeast.

When first laid out on maps of the late 1700s, Hamilton Street was called Cheapside, after the London thoroughfare; it was renamed about 1827.
Knickerbocker Village, built in 1934, which was the very first major housing project in NYC to be partially aided by public funds.

from Chatham Street (Park Row) and Pearl Street west to Broadway Magazine Street became part of Pearl Street in the mid-1800s. The section of Pearl Street between Lafayette Street and Broadway was demapped in 1963 to make way for what is now called the Jacob Javits Federal Office Building (26 Federal Plaza)

FIVE POINTS / CIVIC CENTER WEST

Five Points, (the approximate location of which is circled in grey) which had long been wiped out by the time this 1946 map was published, would by all accounts put the West 42nd Street of the 1970s and 1980s to shame for its collection of thieves, brigands, prostitutes, murderers and fiends.

"The Deuce" had nothing on Five Points, which centered around a 1792 brewery on Cross Street near its intersection with Anthony and Orange Streets, at first known as Coulter's Brewery, but by 1838 had become a rooming house known as the Old Brewery.

From Kenneth Dunshee's 1952 account in As You Pass By:

The Old Brewery was a five-story building, old and dilapidated. Along one wall an alley led to a single large room in which more than seventy-five men and women of assorted nationalities and races lived together. This was the Den Of Thieves. The name was appropriate. Along the other wall ran another filthy lane called Murderer's Alley worse than the first.

Upstairs there were about 75 other chambers, housing more than 1,000 people...men, women and children. The section was a warren, with underground passages and murderous cul-de-sacs, into which the police dared venture only in large numbers, for the Old Brewery for a period of more than fifteen years averaged a murder a night.

Five Points was too tough, too unlawful, too unsavory to last, even in the New York of a century ago. The Old Brewery was razed, the last of the gangs destroyed. Today it bears little resemblace to the bull-baiting, rip-roaring hell it was in 1850.

And from Charles Dickens in America: Notes For General Circulation (1842):

What place is this, to which the squalid street conducts us? A kind of square of leprous houses, some of which are attainable only by crazy wooden stairs without. What lies behind this tottering flight of steps? Let us go on again, and plunge into the Five Points. This is the place; these narrow ways diverging to the right and left, and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth. Such lives as are led here, bear the same fruit as elsewhere. The coarse and bloated faces at the doors have counterparts at home and all the world over. Debauchery has made the very houses prematurely old. See how the rotten beams are tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken forays. Many of these pigs live here. Do they ever wonder why their masters walk upright instead of going on all fours, and why they talk instead of grunting?

By the 1920s, most of the vestiges of the old Five Points had been replaced by court houses, and by the 60s, high rise apartments had obliterated the last of its little wood frame and brick buildings. It's a shame, though, that some of the buildings of this notorious slum couldn't have been preserved in some way.

STREET LOCATION WHAT'S THERE NOW?

Hudson Street east to Five Points at Orange Street
Renamed for General William Worth, a Mexican War hero, ca. 1850.

Notable: Worth's tomb is at a traffic island at Fifth Avenue and 25th Street across from Madison Square.

Chatham Street (Park Row) near Pearl Street north to Prince Street
Renamed Baxter Street, after Mexican War hero Lt. Col. Charles Baxter, ca. 1850. The city renamed it to disassociate it from the reputation it picked up in the Five Points era.

Today the section between Park Row and Worth Street is occupied by the U.S. Courthouse (1936) and New York County Courthouse (1926).

From abt. Chambers and Elm Streets northeast to Mott Street near the Bowery
Renamed Park Street in the late 1800s. The city replaced the crowded tenements in the area partially due to the pleas of reformer Jacob Riis; the street was named for Columbus Park, which replaced the slums.

The notorious Old Brewery was located on Cross Street just southwest of Five Points at Anthony and Orange Streets.

Today, Park Street has been mostly wiped out, first by Columbus Park, the New York County Courthouse in 1926. The last remaining section, between Mulberry and Mott Streets, was renamed Mosco Street in the 1970s.

Between Cross and Anthony Streets west of Five Points
New York County Courthouse (1926).

Notable: Little Water Street ended in a cul de sac known as Cow Bay (after a bay in the Collect Pond, which, with a group of tanneries and rendering plants, occupied this site before the Five Points slum appeared in the late 1830s). Cow Bay was ground zero for the most notorious tenements of Five Points, with dwellings known as Jacob's Ladder, the Gates of Hell, and Brickbat Mansion.

Leaving the ghosts of Five Points behind, lucky that we've survived to walk another day, we move over to the cluster of streets west of the Civic Center, where quite a few changes have been made since the mid-1800s.

Lafayette Street didn't come into existence until the early 1900s, when its route was carved from the former Elm Street, Marion Street and Lafayette Place, and connected to Centre Street at the Municipal Building.

The city's major prison in the 19th Century, the Tombs, was located on Elm Street.

In 1990, a long-forgotten African Burial Ground was found on a construction site at the present Elk (Elm) and Duane Streets. The ground has since been preserved and a monument is in the works.

The landmarked Colonnade Row on today's Lafayette Street was built in 1833 by architect Seth Geer and originally consisted of nine houses, of which only four remain today. When first built the houses were occupied by social bright lights of the era such as the Astors and Vanderbilts.

As Lafayette Street grew, ironically Colonnade Row shrunk!

STREET LOCATION WHAT'S THERE NOW?

Chambers Street north of City Hall north to Centre and Spring Streets
Renamed Elk Street in 1939 in honor of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, New York Lodge #1, on the stretch between Chambers and Duane Streets.

North of Duane, its route was taken over by the new Lafayette Street in the early 1900s.

Collect (Centre) Street west to the Hudson River
Franklin Street. From Collect (later Center) Street west to Chapel Street (West Broadway), it was known as Sugarloaf Street, and from West Broadway west to the Hudson River it was called Provost Street. By 1816, the name was changed to honor Benjamin Franklin.

A probable explanation for the unusual name is that one of the city's prime industries in the early 19th Century was distilling rum, of which sugar is a prime ingredient. The Rhinelander Sugar House, which stood at Rose and duane Streets from 1763-1892 was used by the British as a prison during the Revolutionary War.

Duane Street at St. Andrew's Church northeast to Pearl Street
Cardinal Hayes Place.

This little alley is now working on its THIRD name. Originally Augustus Street, it was later called City Hall Place and in 1941 it was again renamed for Patrick Cardinal Hayes who had died in 1938.

Great Jones Street north to Astor Place and East 8th Street
Originally a dead end on Astor Place that was home to John Jacob Astor and son William's mansions, and the distinctive "Colonnade Row", built in 1833.

It was later cut through to Centre Street near City Hall, assuming the path of Elm Street, in response to increased traffic after the Brooklyn Bridge was opened in 1883.

on Reade Street east of Broadway Parking lot

on Elk Street north of Reade
Parking lot.

These two tiny alleys were gone by the mid-1970s.

Hamill Place was named for Pete Hamill.

Not the columnist, novelist and newspaperman, though. This Pete Hamill was a political leader who succeeded Thomas Foley (of Foley Square fame) as Tammany Hall boss. The alley was named Hamill Place in 1936.

from Centre Street north of Foley Square northeast to Worth Street.

The former route of Hamill Place is now a pedestrian walkway
A pedestrian walkway. When Foley Square was renovated in the 1990s, Hamill Place was demapped and subsequently obliterated.

from Pearl Street east of Foley Square northeast to Baxter Street

Kent Place has also become a pedestrian walkway.

When the U.S. Courthouse Annex was built in 1995, Kent Place was demapped. Like Hamill Place it too became a pedestrian walkway.

Bishop Crook lamppost with Kent Place sign, 1970s

Between East 11th and East 12th Streets east of 3rd Avenue New York University built an annex here in the early 1980s, obliterating the alley.

Sources:

Low-Life, Luc Santé, 1992 Vintage
The Street Book, Henry Moscow, 1978 Hagstrom
As You Pass By, Kenneth Dunshee, 1952 Hastings House
AIA Guide To New York City, Willensky and White, 1988 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Twelve Historical New York Street and Transit Maps, John Landers, 1997 H&M Productions
Hagstrom New York City maps, 1946, 1984, 1998
New York City At A Glance, 1916 Wehman Brothers

E-mail me at erpietri@earthlink.net.

STREET	LOCATION	WHAT'S THERE NOW?
	between Water and South Streets north of Coenties Alley	55 Water Street, built in 1972
	between Water and South Streets north of Old Slip	survives as a public walkway between 77 Water Street (1970) and 95 Wall Street
	between Water and South Streets just south of Wall Street	95 and 111 Wall Street
	between Water and South Streets north of Pine Street	Wall Street Plaza (1973); Continental Center (1983)
	between Bridge and Pearl Streets west of Whitehall Street	1940s city directories list Chesebrough Court, but today no trace exists.
	between William Street and Broadway, just south of Wall Street	Exchange Place. Laid out by the Dutch, it was originally called Tuyn (Garden) Street, later as Church Street. It was named for the Merchants Exchange, first built in 1825; through a series of absorptions, it's now part of Citicorp.
	between the East and Hudson Rivers, north of John Street	Fulton Street. West of Broadway, it was named Partition Street; east of Broadway, Fulton was called Fair Street. Both were renamed for the inventor of the steamship, Robrert Fulton. Before 1971, Fulton was the southernmost street in Manhattan to go river to river. The construction of the World Trade Center cut it back to Church Street. Today, the title is held by Houston Street.