New York Songlines: Church Street

West:

Canal Street Station

Block (350 Canal): This Art Moderne post office, designed by Alan Balch Mills, dates to 1937. The exterior is pink-and-black terra cotta. The relief inside, titled Indian Bowman, is by sculptor Wheeler Williams.

C
H
U
R
C
H

S
T
R
E
E
T

East:

Corner (342 Canal): Pro Audio

327: Church Street Surplus

325: Space Surplus Metal, est. 1979, is a shop that sells metal--steel, copper, brass, zinc, etc.

323: Westside Coffee Shop

321 (corner): Sea World Restaurant. An odd name-- like they're going to serve killer whale or something.

West:

AT&T Long Distance Building

After selling its glitzy Madison Avenue HQ to Sony, AT&T moved its main offices here, a massive 1932 Art Deco skyscraper designed by Ralph Walker to hold Ma Bell's long lines.

The lobby features a mosaic map of the world and an allegorical ceiling depicting long-distance communication to Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia.

C
H
U
R
C
H

S
T
R
E
E
T

East:

Corner: Michelangelo's Pizza Coffee Shop

315: Kingsland Buildings, 1867

313: Was Lo Scalco, Italian

311: Macao Trading Co., atmospheric Asian/Portuguese. Used to be Sugar.

305 (corner): Stuzzicheria, spinoff of Bar Stuzzichini. Was Burrito Bar, hipster hangout with 1960s motif--now reincarnated in Brooklyn.

West:

Tribeca Grand

Located at the bottom of the dramatic atrium is the Church Lounge, a venue for world-famous DJs. The Grand Screen often hosts movie premieres; Michael Moore premiered Fahrenheit 9/11 for families of September 11 victims here.

Hugh Grant's character in Two Weeks Notice lived here. One of the wildest parties I ever attended was held here.

C
H
U
R
C
H

S
T
R
E
E
T

East:

301 (corner): Bread Tribeca, Ligurian, is in an 1868 Italianate/ Second Empire building by John B. Snook.

297: Second Empire building by William T. Bure, completed 1870.

295: 1868 Italianate building by Isaac Duckworth

293: 1868 Second Empire building

apexart

291: Thinky arts group founded 1994. As part of an exhibition here, artist Maureen Connor created a detailed history of this building, an 1877 design by John Butler Snook. Fading sign on building says "D. Rich Co.," a business here in 1949-51 that was possibly related to the building's first occupant, the Emma Rich Restaurant, where Herman Melville once ate. The previous building on the spot was condemned in 1875 by anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock, having served since 1845 as a bordello run by Naomi Vreeland, great-grandmother of Diana Vreeland.

289: 1868 Second Empire building by Charles Duggin

Corner (283-287): Petrarca Vino e Cucino, spinoff of Arqua across the street, was the Baby Doll Lounge, divey topless bar that opened in 1975-- forced out of business by Giuliani. Featured in the film In the Cut and in the Jay McInerney novel Model Behavior.

West:

C
H
U
R
C
H

S
T
R
E
E
T

East:

281 (corner): Arqua, Tuscan named for the owner's hometown, Arqua Petrarca. Opened c. 1985.

279: From 2005-08, this was Collective: Unconscious, an Off-Off-Broadway experimental theater driven from the Lower East Side and then from Tribeca by gentrification. Until 1999, this space was the Harmony Burlesque Theater, a Fellini-esque lapdancing establishment.

277: B-flat, bar launched by the former manager of the East Village hideaway Angel's Share; used to be i Restaurant & Lounge?

275: The building with Neighborhood Gourmet Eatery has been home since the mid-1960s to husband-and-wide minimalist musicians La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela; one musical piece of theirs, part of the Dream House series, ran uninterrupted here from September 1955 through January 1970.

273: South's, friendly bar

Corner (90 Franklin): Franklin Tower, a 1929 Art Deco building where Mariah Carey and Ben Stiller have lived.

West:

250 (block): Human Resources Administration: General Support Services, Office of Revenue and Investigation.



On the southeast corner is Auction Sale Pick-Up.

C
H
U
R
C
H

East:

257: Up & Co; Process Studio Theatre

253: La Lumia clothing; Kori, Korean with an East-meets-West flair

251: Darlene Restaurant, American-Spanish-Mexican

Corner (65 Leonard): Isobel's Kitchen

West:

240 (corner): This was the site of the Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, founded in 1796, the first African-American church in New York City. A major founder was Peter Williams, who had become a wealthy tobacco grower after purchasing his freedom from the John Street Methodist Episcopal Church, which had bought Williams to be its enslaved sexton. It was here that Sojourner Truth, a member from 1829 until 1843, renounced her slave name. Anti-abolitionist rioters attacked the church on July 9, 1834. Here now is the library for New York Law School.

236: The first African-American newspaper, Freedom's Journal, was founded here in 1827, the year slavery was abolished in New York State. The co-editor was John Russwurm, the first African-American college graduate.

New York Law School

Corner (59 Worth): The main building of an institution founded in 1891 by Columbia Law faculty and students protesting interference by university trustees. Among its early lecturers were Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes, and it counts among its graduates Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, Sen. Robert Wagner and poet Wallace Stevens.

C
H
U
R
C
H

S
T
R
E
E
T

East:

Corner (71 Worth): RBC NYC was the first coffee shop on the East Coast to have a Slayer, an $18,000 espresso machine that takes six months to learn how to operate. Don't ask for a decaf espresso--they've never found one that meets their standards.

West:

Corner: Worthy Eyes, optician

220 (corner): Buckle My Shoe Nursery School

C
H
U
R
C
H

East:

AT&T Long Lines Building

Block: Built in 1974 to house long-distance switching equipment--a giant tower inhabited mainly by electronics. Designed to function even after a nuclear war.

West:

200 (corner): Sunny's Deli; Hedy's; French Grill (aka M.C. Choi's Grill)

C
H
U
R
C
H

East:

199 (block): State Insurance Fund Building. Houses a non-profit organization established in 1914 to provide low-cost workers' compensation insurance to businesses.

West:

178: Terrace Fish & Chips; Taco House

176: Pakistan Tea House is a favorite of taxi drivers.

Corner: Mike's Papaya

C
H
U
R
C
H

East:

193 (corner): Gold Center Jewelry

191: Down Town Shoes

189: Burrito Mariachi

185: Paradise Fashion

183: New Shezan Restaurant, Bengali

179: Goodluck Candy & Tobacco II

177: Barua Gift Shop

Corner (78 Reade): Mocca Espresso Lounge

West:

Block (105-107 Chambers): The Cary Building is a cast-iron landmark from 1857, designed by John Kellum, primary architect of the Tweed Courthouse. The north and south facades are lovely, but the east wall, exposed by the widening of Church Street in the 1920s for subway construction, looks pretty awful. Businesses on the blank side of the Cary Building include:

166: We Are Nuts About Nuts

158: Fast Broadway Shoe Repair

154 (corner): Dona Bella Pizza

C
H
U
R
C
H

S
T
R
E
E
T

East:

165 (block): Businesses in this building include Mimi's Cafe (at Reade), Capri Caffe, Quisqueyana Cigars, Mix Grill and Korner Jewelry (at Chambers).

West:

Corner (108 Chambers): Imperial Coffee House

148: The oddly named Motown Gift Shop

C
H
U
R
C
H

East:

149 (block): Businesses in this building include Downtown News, India Bazaar and Taste of Tandoor.

West:

Corner (37 Warren): Benjamin Moore, formerly Janovic Paints, in a 1931 seven-floor building

130: Christian Science Reading Room

C
H
U
R
C
H

East:

125 (corner): Downtown Florist is on the corner of Tribeca Space, aka 25 Murray Street, a troubled block-spanning condo conversion project.

West:

This block was, from 1760 until 1857, the original campus of King's College, which was renamed Columbia University in 1784. John Jay (class of 1764), Gouverneur Morris ('68), Robert R. Livingston ('64) and DeWitt Clinton ('90) all graduated from here; Alexander Hamilton attended from 1773 to 1776, when the school was shut down for the Revolution; he was given an honorary degree in 1788 and became a trustee.

Corner (38 Murray): A 21-story building from 1964.

C
H
U
R
C
H

East:

Corner: Famous Pizza

113: In Style Boutique

111: Bangal Curry

107: Downtown Deli

105: Key West Locksmith

Corner (27 Park Pl): Above Express BBQ (formerly Park Place Jewelry) was Club Remix--formerly known as B-52.

West:

100 (block): A 19-story glass-and-steel building from 1959, designed by Emery Roth & Sons. This building was undamaged by the September 11 attacks but was filled with dust. It reopened in the summer of 2002. In 2009, The Wall Street Journal called it "the least occupied building in the Big Apple."

C
H
U
R
C
H

S
T
R
E
E
T

East:

99 (block): The building under construction here was started in 2008 and is now scheduled to be completed in 2014. It's a project of Silverstein Properties, the same company involved in the interminable World Trade Center reconstruction. The architect is Robert A.M. Stern, who did the Times Square master plan, several project for Disney and the George W. Bush library. If it's ever finished, this building will be the tallest residential building in New York City, at 912 feet and 68 stories.

The building torn down for this project housed the Moody's financial research firm, which played a major role in the inflation of the housing bubble. It was built in 1951 for Dun & Bradstreet. Over the entrance was Credit: Man's Confidence in Man, a somewhat homoerotic 1951 work of art that has been moved to Moody's new headquarters at 7 World Trade Center.

West:

Federal Office Building

90 (block): Built 1935 in architect Louis Simon's mixture of Classical and Art Deco. The building, with more than a million square feet of space, is owned by the Postal Service, which uses it as the major mail sorting facility for Lower Manhattan. It also houses the New York City Housing Authority and the Legal Aid Society.

It suffered blast and water damage during the September 11 attacks, as well as heavy contamination from asbestos, lead dust and other toxins, but no major structural injuries.

C
H
U
R
C
H

S
T
R
E
E
T

East:

St. Peter's Church

Corner (22 Barclay): This is the site of the oldest Catholic church in New York State, built here in 1785 on a site that was then outside of town--away from anti-Catholic mobs. Protesters still surrounded the church on December 24, 1806, outraged that parishoners were celebrating the "popish superstition" of Christmas.

In 1805, Elizabeth Ann Seton converted here to the religion that would make her its first U.S.-born saint. Pierre Toussaint, a black Haitian born into slavery who became a wealthy philanthropist in New York City, also worshipped here.

After the original church was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1835, this replacement, designed by John R. Haggerty and Thomas Thomas in the Greek Revival style, was completed in 1835.

It was hit by the landing gear of one of the planes involved in the September 11 attacks; FDNY chaplain Father Mychal Judge was laid out in front of the altar here after his death. The World Trade Center Cross was displayed here from 2006-11 before being moved to the site of the National September 11 Memorial.

85: The address of painter John Wesley Jarvis, where his friend Thomas Paine stayed in 1806.

Corner (30 Vesey): Underwood Building, an 18-story office building from 1911, designed by Starrett & Van Vleck for the Underwood typewriter company.

West:

Ground Zero

Site of 5 WTC

Corner (200 Greenwich): Was the nine-story Dean Witter Building, destroyed in the September 11 attacks. Future site of 2 World Trade Center, aka 200 Greenwich Stret, a planned 88-story building that will rise to 1,349 feet--99 feet taller than the Empire State Building (not counting the antenna spire). The Foster and Partners design is a distinctive cluster of four diamond-shaped spires. Of the four new WTC towers, this will likely be the last to be completed--and the one whose future is most in doubt.

Future Path of Fulton Street

WTC Transportation Hub

The Port Authority is currently constructing a permanent replacement for the PATH station destroyed in the September 11 attacks. (PATH = Port Authority Trans Hudson, the separate subway system connecting New York and New Jersey.) The design, by Santiago Calatrava, features 150-foot glass-and-steel wings that are supposed to bring natural light down to the rail platforms. The new station, which is to include a connection to the New York City subway system, is not scheduled to open before 2014 at the earliest.

(175 Greenwich): Future site of WTC Tower 3. Richard Rogers' design is for an 80-story building with 2.8 million square feet of office space. It could open as early as 2015--if developer Larry Silverstein can find a tenant willing to commit to 400,000 square feet.

Site of 4 WTC

Corner: Here was the nine-story Commodities Exchange Building, destroyed in the September 11 attacks. Like WTC 7, the replacement building is going to have the same address: WTC Tower 4, a glassy, 72-story office tower designed by Fumihiko Maki. Scheduled to open in 2013, which would make it the first of the new WTC towers to be completed. This building will house the Port Authority's new headquarters, as well as half a million square feet of NYC government offices.

C
H
U
R
C
H

S
T
R
E
E
T

East:

St. Paul's Chapel

Depending on whether you count the starting date (1764) or the date of completion (1766), this may be the oldest building in Manhattan. (The Morris-Jumel Mansion in Harlem was built in 1765.) It was and is a satellite of Trinity Church; it survived the 1776 fire that destroyed the first Trinity because its flat roof allowed rescuers to stand atop it and put out falling embers. The steeple was not added until 1796.

This was the church George Washington attended when New York was the new nation's capital; his pew here is marked, as is that of New York Gov. George Clinton. Other notables who worshipped here are King William IV (as a prince), Lord Cornwallis, the Marquis de Lafayette, and presidents Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison and the elder George Bush. The church served as a sanctuary for rescue workers after the September 11 attacks; the stump of a sycamore tree that protected the church from debris is preserved as a memorial.

FULTON ST         ===> E

Millenium Hilton

55 (block): This hotel, opened in 1992 (as the Millenium) and reopened in 2003 after heavy damage from the September 11 attacks, is designed to resemble the black monolith from 2001. The spelling variant is said to be intentional.

DEY ST         ===> E

Century 21

Block (22 Cortlandt): This is the mecca of discount shopping in New York City, where hard-core bargain-hunters elbow each other in pursuit of marked-down designer goods. Founded in Brooklyn in 1961. Currently expanding from four to seven floors at this location, where it was one of the first major businesses to reopen after the September 11 attacks.

CORTLANDT ST     ===> E

1 Liberty Plaza

165 (block): A hulk built by U.S. Steel (1971-73), designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill with a facade that shows off the owner's main product. Owned for a time by Merrill Lynch, it also served as the headquarters of NASDAQ; now houses the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

Torn down for 1 Liberty Plaza was the Singer Tower, a 1908 building by Ernest Flagg that housed the sewing machine company's headquarters. Briefly the tallest building in the world at 47 stories, it became the tallest building ever demolished when it was torn down in 1968. The handsome Second Empire structure is considered one of New York City's great architectural losses, up there with Penn Station.

West:

110: Steve's Pizza; Liberty Deli

T
R
I
N
I
T
Y

East:

Liberty Plaza

Once an uninviting "brutalist" vacancy that allowed 1 Liberty Plaza to justify its bulk--particularly after the September 11 attacks killed off all its trees--as of 2006, it's been reimagined and reclad in pink granite. A new sculpture has been added, the 70-foot high Joie de Vivre by Mark DiSuvero, whose bright red echoes the Noguchi across Broadway. Double Check, by J. Seward Johnson, a lifelike bronze of a seated stockbroker that became something of a symbol of survival after the September 11 attacks. One thing that didn't survive was the sign here marking Temple Street, which was eliminated in the 1960s.

West:

100 (Block): The High School for Economics and Finance was built in 1959 as the NYU business school's Nichols Hall; it was turned into a high school in 1990. The Skidmore, Owings & Merrill-designed structure has 10 floors, only the top three of which have windows, making it somewhat less than ideal as an educational environment.

American Stock Exchange

86: This trading institution started out as the Curbstone Exchange at the corner of Broad Street and Exchange Place. It moved indoors to this building in 2004. Generally the companies whose stocks are traded here are smaller than NYSE's or NASDAQ's, and there's an emphasis on options and funds.

T
R
I
N
I
T
Y

P
L

East:

115 (block): U.S. Realty Building, like the Trinity Building across Thames Street, is a widely admired 1906 Gothic design by Francis H. Kimball; a catwalk connects the two.

West:

90 (corner): The High School for Leadership and Public Service, like its sibling school to which it is connected by a bridge across Thames Street, was built for NYU's business school, when it was known as the Charles E. Merrill Hall. A 1975 Skidmore, Owings & Merrill effort.

74: Trinity Parish's activity rooms, connected to Trinity Church in 1987 by an 80-foot footbridge.

T
R
I
N
I
T
Y

P
L
A
C
E

East:

Trinity Churchyard

A burial ground dating back to 1681, before Trinity was built, this cemetery was decreed off limits to blacks when the church took it over, resulting in the creation of the African Burial Ground. Among the most noted residents on the north side of the church are Declaration of Independence signer Francis Lewis, Treasury Secretary and NYU founder Albert Gallatin, steamboat pioneer Robert Fulton, William Bradford, publisher of New York's first newspaper (whose headstone has a typo), and seduction victim Charlotte Stanley, who inspired a wildly popular novel. (Her grave bears the name of her fictional counterpart, Charlotte Temple.) Here is also the Martyr's Monument, dedicated to the patriots who died in British prisons during the Revolution. ''It is stated that this was erected by Trinity Corporation to prevent the city from cutting Pine Street through the graveyard, there being some law on the State's statute books to prevent the removal or injury of any public monument for purposes of highway improvement.'' -- A Historical Tour of...Broadway

Trinity Church

Established by a grant from England's King William III in 1697, after the Anglican church became the official church of New York, the church's first building lasted from 1698 until it burned down in 1776. It was replaced by 1790, but the new structure was unsound and had to be demolished in 1839. The current edifice was completed in 1846, an early Gothic revival building designed by Richard Upjohn. The bronze doors are a 1890s memorial to John Jacob Astor III and were designed by Richard Morris Hunt, with sculptural work on the central doors by Karl Bitter. The All Saints Chapel was added by 1913.

A 1705 grant from Queen Anne gave Trinity all the land west of Broadway from Fulton to what is now Christopher Street; the church continues to be a major Manhattan landowner. It also was given the right to all shipwrecks and beached whales.

Trinity Churchyard

Buried on the south side of the church are Constitution framer Alexander Hamilton, diarist George Templeton Strong and War of 1812 hero Capt. James Lawrence (''Don't give up the ship!''), et al.

West:

50 (corner): 50 Trinity Place is a three-story terra cotta building, scheduled for demolition and replacement with a 35-story Holiday Inn.

46: A brick and terra cotta structure built as a warehouse for the American Express Company c. 1880. The company's logo can still be seen in relief on the building's facade

(81 Greenwich): Built in 1900. In 1902, this was the address of Al-Hora ("The Guidance"), an Arabic-language daily.

42: The original site of Syms clothing store. In 1987, retired police officer Charles Korbel was shot by a mugger in front of this building, and the bullet was deflected by the knot of his tie, leaving him with nothing worse than powder burns on his neck.

Corner (67 Greenwich): Built in 1811, making it one of the oldest surviving buildings in Manhattan (let alone the Financial District), the last rowhouse on the block was unusually large for its day--four stories tall and four bays wide.

W <===         EDGAR ST

T
R
I
N
I
T
Y

P
L
A
C
E

East:

Corner (71 Broadway): Empire Apartments were the Empire Building, built in 1895 by Francis Kimball and serving as the headquarters of U.S. Steel from 1901-76. An earlier building of the same name housed the office of financier Russell Sage, who was almost killed by a suicide bomber on December 4, 1891; Sage threw his secretary at the dynamite-wielding assailant to protect himself. From 1809-46 this was the site of Grace Church, opened after a split in the Trinity congregation. In 1710 a Lutheran church was built here by German exiles from the Palatinate; it burned down in the fire of 1776.

(65 Broadway): This Beaux-Arts structure by Renwick Aspinwall and Tucker was the American Express Company Building, that company's headquarters from 1917 until 1975. Now the Standard & Poors Building.

Corner (61 Broadway): The Adams Building, built in 1914, is featured in Berenice Abbott's photo Canyon. The most prominent boardinghouse of the 1830s, that of ''Aunt'' Margaret Mann, was at this address.

EXCHANGE AL     ===> E

Corner (55 Broadway): Known as 1 Exchange Plaza, this was built on the site of the orchard of Hendrick Van Dyck--his murder of a Native American woman picking peaches here sparked the last major Indian attack on Manhattan, September 15, 1655, in which 50 settlers were killed. Later, as No. 57, it was the architectural offices of McKim, Mead and White, 1879-94.

(45 Broadway): Broadway Atrium was meant to be part of 1 Exchange Plaza, but the fast-food business in between refused to sell.

(39 Broadway): This building is on the site of first European habitation on Manhattan--"four small crude huts" where the crew of Capt. Adrieaen Block spent the winter of 1613-14 after their ship, the Tiger, caught fire in the bay. Later the site of the Alexander McComb Mansion, where President George Washington lived in 1790 until the capital moved from New York to Philadelphia. In 1821, the house became a hotel, Bunker's Mansion House, where former President John Quincy Adams stayed in 1844.

Corner (29 Broadway): A 31-story, 1929 Art Deco skyscraper by Sloan & Robertson.

West:

East: