New York Songlines: Centre Street

West:

Cleveland Place

A little triangular park where Lafayette and Centre intersect is named for Grover Cleveland, the only president with two non-consecutive terms, and the only Democratic president between 1869 and 1913--making him popular with New York City's Democratic establishment. He was a former New York governor as well, and he lived and worked in Manhattan during a couple of periods in his life.

It's also called Joseph Petrosino Square, after a NYPD officer who went undercover against anarchists and the Black Hand. He was killed in 1909 investigating the Mafia in Sicily.

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Corner (225 Lafayette): The East River Savings Bank Building went up in 1927 to a Cass Gilbert design, originally housing one of the city's oldest banks, founded in 1848. It was converted to condos in 2004 and is now known as The Spring.

On the seventh floor in the late 1940s and '50s were the offices of EC Comics, whose horror comics like Tales From the Crypt were the focus of the comic book panic of the mid-'50s. EC also originated Mad magazine here.

25: Double Trouble; Le Jacdian Bistro

23: Va Tutto!, cozy Tuscan with a garden in back.

21: Rescue

19: Mexican Radio, bar whose name evokes a great song by Wall of Voodoo.

17 (corner): Eileen's Special Cheesecake is said to be some of the best in town. Next to it used to be Room 4 Dessert, stylish ice cream shop--which earlier was the wine bar Bar Veloce, aka Bar Tonno aka Bar Sasa.

West:

Corner: The Corner, diner that's both old-school and hip.

Corner (406 Broome): Bar Martignetti, American

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East:

Corner (100 Ken- mare): Hoomoos Asli, Israeli kebabs. Upstairs is Penine Hart Gallery, old-fashioned antique shop.

West:

241: The original location of Secret Society Records, later renamed Chung King Studios--a pun on owner John King's name. It's been called the Abbey Road of rap; Run-DMC, LL Cool J and The Beastie Boys all recorded their early hits here. Since relocated to Varick Street.

Corner (158 Grand): Landmark Cafe and Restaurant

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Police Building

240 (block): This Baroque palace, designed by Hoppin & Koen, was the headquarters of the NYPD from 1909 until 1973. Some 2,000 anarchists, Bolsheviks and other subversives were round- ed up and brou- ght here during the Palmer Raids of November 7-8, 1919; all non-citizens, including Emma Goldman, were deported.

It was converted into luxury co-op apartments in 1988. Supermodels Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Linda Evangelista all bought lofts here; Steffi Graf and Winona Ryder are also said to have lived here.

West:

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Block (239 Canal): This building with a red pagoda roof and a facade decorated with dragons and phoenixes was the Golden Pacific National Bank, which opened here in 1983 and went under two years later, taking $17 million in local deposits with it.

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East:

Odd Fellows Hall

224 (corner): This landmark building was built in 1847-48 for the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a fraternal organization whose New York branch was chartered in 1844. (The idea behind the name was that it was a guild for workers who didn't fit into other guilds.) The architects were Joseph Trench and John B. Snook; it followed the Italianate model Trench had recently pioneered with the A.T. Stewart store on Broadway.

Corner (217 Hester): There's a peculiar amount of stabbing connected with this address. Abraham Ward was arrested at his home here in 1921 and charged with stabbing to death former police officer John L. Coffey. In 1904, Tomaso Fresi, an eight-year-old resident here, was taken to court after stabbing a neighbor girl in the neck, putting her in the hospital in a dispute over a balloon. And fruit vendor Tony Firia, who lived here, was stabbed in the neck by Antonio Suonatore in 1896, in what sounds like an organized crime attack.

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Corner (235 Canal): Horizontally banded five-story office building from 2008 has an HSBC (Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Co.) branch on the ground floor; Eastbank used to be here.

West:

153 (corner): Golden Carriage Bakery; Cheung Hing Jewelry

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Corner (234-238 Canal): New Land Plaza, two-story retail building from 1977.

West:

139 (corner): A nine-story building from 1910, now an office development catering to Chinatown professionals--complete with a seal of approval from a feng shui master.

133 (corner): Where this eight-story building stands was once the stream that drained the Collect Pond--it turned into the canal that is Canal Street's namesake.

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East:

Corner (125 Walker): In 1982, this building was given to a collection of Chinatown agencies to mitigate the impact of a new jail built in the neighborhood. From 1994-2002, this was the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center, offering health and social services and education to the Chinatown community. The Center subsequently moved to Canal Street.

West:

Manhattan Civil Courthouse

111 (corner): A "sleek but dull cube" (AIA Guide) built in 1960, designed by William Lescaze and Matthew Del Gaudio.

A bas relief on the side of the building depicts Justice pointing to a baby and rejecting a snake. The innocence vs. guilt symbolism is somewhat out of place on a civil courthouse, but perhaps it reflects the fact that a lot of landlord/tenant disputes are settled here.

Sources differ on whether the site of the original Tombs was where the Civil Courthouse now is, or just to its south. It was originally an island in the Collect Pond where hangings were carried out. The city's prison, formally called the Halls of Justice, was built there in 1839-- after the pond had been filled in--in an Egyptian Revival style that gave it its nickname. In 1842 Charles Dickens would write, "Such indecent and disgusting dungeons as these cells would bring disgrace upon the most despotic empire in the world." John C. Colt, whose brother invented the revolver, was to be hanged for murder here on November 18, 1842, but he may have escaped via an elaborate fake suicide ruse.

Collect Pond Park

The name commemorates the largest body of fresh water on Manhattan, originally a source of drinking water and shellfish--the name comes from the Dutch word "kalch," meaning "lime," a reference to the piled-up oyster shells.

In 1796, inventor John Fitch tested one of his prototype steamboats on the pond. Unable to get financial backing, he killed himself in 1798. Robert Fulton, who took part in Fitch's experiments here, would later start the first commercial steamboat line.

Polluted by the tanneries and slaughterhouses that lined its southern shore, the pond became a public nuisance and had to be drained by the ditch that gave Canal Street its name; by 1811 it was dry land.

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The Tombs

Block (125 White): Formally known as the Manhattan Detention Complex, these buildings connected by a pedestrian bridge are a jail for those being arraigned or standing trial in the nearby Criminal Court. It's a semi-modern successor to the jail built in 1838 on a former island in the Collect Pond, built in an Egyptianate style that resembled a mausoleum, hence the nickname inherited by the current complex.

The southern building was built in 1941; the northern one, replacing a torn- down section of the 1941 building, went up in 1990. The jail, which holds about 900 short-term inmates, was dubbed the Bernard B. Kerik Complex by Rudolph Giuliani in 2001, honoring the chauffeur whom Giuliani had elevated to police commissioner; after Kerik's many ethical failings came to light, the name was removed by Mayor Bloomberg.

Among the notable criminals held here are Bernard Goetz, Sid Vicious, Sean "Puffy" Combs, "Preppy Murderer" Robert Chambers and the guy who killed John Lennon.

Harlan Ellison was held here on a gun charge, an experience that became the basis for his novel Memos From Purgatory. Eric Cash is booked here in the novel Lush Life. Jim Carroll sings in "People Who Died" that "Bobby hung himself from his cell in The Tombs." Denzel Washington's release from prison in the film American Gangster was shot here.

West:

89: From 1869 to c. 1902, here were the offices of Howe & Hummell, a law firm that represented John Barrymore, P.T. Barnum, Lillie Langtry, Edwin Booth, high-society divorce seekers, more than a thousand accused killers and a host of "arsonists, brothel keepers, bucket-shop proprietors, confidence men, forgers, safecrackers and other members of the city's underworld"--New York Chronology. The firm's name was advertised here by an illuminated sign with letters four feet high.

Department of Health, Hospitals & Sanitation

75 (block): A "boxy neo-Classical cum Art Deco cube" (AIA Guide put up in 1935 to a Charles B. Meyers design. Bears the names of healthcare pioneers like Koch, Behring, Leewenhoek, Ehrlich, Billings and Harvey.

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East:

Louis J. Lefkowitz State Office Building

80 (block): This nine- story building, designed by William Haugaard, was built from 1928-30 to house state government offices. It was renamed in 1984 in honor of New York's longest-serving attorney general, in office 1957 to 1978. The City Clerk and Marriage Bureau moved their offices here from the Municipal Building in 2009.

West:

Foley Square

Named for Tammany Hall leader Big Tom Foley in 1926, a year after his death. Foley, in addition to being an alderman, sheriff, Tammany district leader and a mentor of Alfred Smith, was a saloonkeeper, and his last joint was located where his square is now.

The park in Foley Square is Thomas Paine Park, commemorating the great advocate for the American Revolution, who died in New York City.

The sculpture in the fountain here is called The Triumph of the Human Spirit; the boat-like shape represents the slave trade and all U.S. immigration; the black granite forms that rise above the "boat" are patterned on African antelope carvings.

There was an obscure TV show called Foley Square, a legal drama that ran for a few months in 1985-86.

See a 360-degree panorama of Foley Square!

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Point (2 Lafayette): This building houses the Municipal Credit Union and the New York City Department for the Aging. Corte Cafe is on the ground floor.

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West:

Surrogate's Courthouse

31 (block): This Beaux Arts masterpiece, designed by John R. Thomas, was built between 1899 and 1907 at a cost of more than $7 million. It was originally known as the Hall of Records, but it's always been home to the Surrogate's Court, which handles wills, estates and adoptions.

Flanking the entrance are Philip Martiny's allegorical figures representing Law and Philosophy. Justice and Authority used to be represented on the Centre Street side, but they were removed to the New York County Courthouse when that roadway was widened in 1961.

The facade also features Martiny's statues of historical figures connected with New York and New Amsterdam, many of them now obscure: From left, they are David Pietersen de Vries, Caleb Heathcote, DeWitt Clinton, Abram S. Hewitt, Philip Hone, Peter Stuyvesant, Cadwallader D. Colden and James Duane.

The gorgeous interior was inspired by the Paris Opera House, whose influence can also be seen on Grand Central Terminal.

This was where Nicole Kidman worked in Batman Forever, Keanu Reeves did some lawyering in Devil's Advocate and Gary Oldman met his fate in Romeo Is Bleeding.

Built in 1799 this site was the Manhattan Company Reservoir, the holding tank for Aaron Burr's water company, designed in an Egyptian style with a statue of Aquarius the water-bearer. Burr had started the company because it was easier for an existing company to go into banking than to get a new bank chartered; the bank that he got going through this gambit eventually put the "Manhattan" in Chase Manhattan. Alexander Hamilton's objections to this roundabout creation of a competitor to Hamilton's Bank Of New York sparked a feud that eventually culminated in the fatal Burr/Hamilton duel of 1804.

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City Hall Park

This was originally set aside in 1686 by the Dutch colonial government as The Commons, a pasture adjacent to the Collect Pond where townsfolk could take their livestock to eat and drink. It soon became the city's main park, serving as a gathering place for celebrations--and protests.

On August 11, 1766, New Yorkers angry that their Liberty Pole protest in the park had been taken down, threw bricks at British soldiers here, who retaliated with bayonets--resulting in the first (non-fatal) bloodshed of the Revolutionary era. General George Washington had the Declaration of Independence read here on July 9, 1776. In 1826, African-Americans rioted here against slave-catchers pursuing escapees from the South. Another riot here in 1837 opposed the raising of the price of flour from $6 to $15 a barrel. During the Draft Riots of 1863, rioters attacked blacks here.

When Albany in 1857 replaced the corrupt Municipal Police with a new organization known as the Metropolitan Police, the two forces clashed here in a melee that left one officer permanently crippled. Closer to the present, police rioted here in September 1992 against Mayor David Dinkins' Civilian Complaint Review Board proposals.

When author Jack London was homeless for a time, he spent his nights in City Hall Park-- a time that inspired his novel The People of the Abyss.

Tweed Courthouse

52 Chambers: Built between 1861 and 1871, this former Criminal Courts Building was supposed to cost $250,000; it ended up costing as much as $14 million, with much of the difference being pocketed by William ''Boss'' Tweed and his Tammany Hall cronies. This graft, excessive even for those days, helped land Tweed in jail, but it is a remarkably beautiful building.

This site was earlier the New York Institution, the city's almshouse; the residents were transferred to Bellevue in 1816, after which the building served to house the New-York Historical Society, the Society Library, the American Academy of Fine Arts and the Bank for Savings.

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East:

State Court Building

Corner (60 Centre): This hexagonal building with a Roman portico was originally the New York County Courthouse, replacing the Tweed Courthouse. Architect Guy Lowell won a 1912 design competition, though the building was not completed until 1927. Above the columns is a quote from George Washington: "The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government." The sculptures above the pediment represent Law, Truth and Equity.

This imposing building often appears in films; Kris Kringle was tried here in Miracle on 34th Street, as was Charlie Sheen in Wall Street; Keanu Reeves tried a case here in The Devil's Advocate, Henry Ford had jury duty here in Twelve Angry Men, a rival to The Godfather was assassinated on the steps and Ray Liotta testified here against the Goodfellas-- to name just a few.

The courthouse is built in part on the site of the Old Brewery, one of the filthiest and overcrowded dwellings in the notorious Five Points slum.

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Thurgood Marshall Federal Courthouse

Block (40 Centre): Designed by Cass Gilbert and Cass Gilbert Jr. as a Classical temple with a 24-story tower topped by a gold pyramid-- reminiscent of the elder Gilbert's Woolworth Tower. Completed in 1936, the year of Gilbert's death. Renamed (at Sen. Hillary Clinton's initiative) for the great Supreme Court justice, who on the other side of the bench successfully argued Brown v. Board of Education.

Courtrooms here have heard the trials of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Imelda Marcos and former Miss America Bess Myerson.

12: Walt Whitman lived at Mrs. Chipman's boardinghouse at this address in 1842. He wrote a comic story for the New York Aurora about being locked out after coming home too late and having to spend the night in a city shelter.

Municipal Building

1: New York City launched an architectural competition in 1907 to build an administrative center for the newly consolidated five buroughs. The winning design, by McKim, Mead & White, mixed Imperial Roman and Renaissance motifs; it was the firm's first skyscraper.

The distinctive tower rising above the building's U-shaped base is topped by Adolph Weinman's 20-foot-tall copper-clad statue of Civic Fame--the largest statue in New York after Liberty. Allegorical friezes representing Civic Duty and Civic Pride adorn the western facade. Stalin was a fan of the building and had Moscow University's main building patterned after it.

With a million square foot of space, the building houses most of the Mayor's Office, as well as those of the Manhattan Borough President, the Public Advocate, the Comptroller and the Landmarks Preservation Commission. It's where minimalists and couples in a hurry go to get married--14,000 times a year. It's also the home of WNYC, New York's public radio station since 1922--now broadcast from the tower.

Brooklyn Bridge

Construction on the bridge began in 1870; when completed in 1883, it was half again as long as any other suspension bridge in the world. At least 16 people died in its construction, including its architect, John Augustus Roebling, who contracted tetanus after his foot was crushed by a ferry. His son Washington Roebling, who inherited the project, was stricken by compression sickness while working in cassions, leaving Washington's wife Elizabeth Warren Roebling to become the de facto chief engineer.

Soon after it was opened, on Memorial Day 1883, a panic on the bridge resulted in a dozen people being trampled to death.

Con artists actually have succeeded in repeatedly selling the Brooklyn Bridge to gullible victims.