Duane Park 1797; redesigned: Calvert Vaux, 1887; redesigned: Signe Nielsen, 1999 161-163 Duane Street, Babcock & Morgan, 1891-92 165-169 Duane Street, Stephen D. Hatch, 1881 173 Duane Street, Babb & Cook, 1880 168 Duane Street, Stephen D. Hatch, 1886 172 Duane Street, Jacob Weber, 1871-72 Named for James Duane, a Revolutionary War figure and mayor of New York City (1784-89), this is the city’s second oldest public park after Bowling Green. Its formal layout was redesigned by Calvert Vaux in 1887, paved over in the 1940s, and restored to evoke Vaux’s design in 1999. The buildings lining the park were originally warehouses for Washington Market, many housing dairy products. Tribeca’s iconic entrance canopies, of which there are many in this nook, were installed to protect goods from the sun. Numbers 161-163, 165-169 and 173 were designed in the Romanesque Revival style of brick, brownstone and terra-cotta. They feature intricate cornices, round arches and pilasters. The gabled corner tower on number 165-169 is particularly striking. On the south side, number 168 stands out for its Flemish-style silhouette (in 1891-92, its architect designed another Flemish-style building at 451-453 Washington Street) and number 172, whose cast-iron façade was preserved in front of a renovation in glass, evokes the Maison de Verre, an iconic 1931 Paris work by Pierre Chareau. Each site is located in the Tribeca West Historic District.

The area now known as Tribeca was originally developed in the early 19th century as a residential neighborhood close to the city’s center in Lower Manhattan. Its street grid was laid out at right angles off of Greenwich Street and on a diagonal off of Broadway, creating blocks of different lengths and irregular open spaces. The residential character of these blocks allowed for the retention of small lot sizes in future waves of development, thus creating a neighborhood with richly textured streetscapes of varying styles of architecture. After the Civil War, shipping hubs moved from the East River to the North River (later renamed the Hudson River), and South Street Seaport was traded in for steam-powered shipping on the west side via long piers. With a newly thriving industrial waterfront, the neighborhood was poised for change. Around 1812, Washington Market was established on the streets from Fulton to Vesey and Washington to West (near the current site of the World Trade Center). The market grew considerably between 1812 and the middle of the century, becoming the city’s major source for consumables. Hundreds of vendors sold all manner of imported and locally made goods and produce to store owners, restaurateurs and home cooks alike. The growth of the market was, no doubt, fueled by the shipping industry on the river nearby, facilitating the transfer of goods. The market moved to Hunts Point in The Bronx in 1967 and the World Trade Center was developed shortly thereafter. Washington Market Park, located at Greenwich Street between Duane and Chambers Streets and designed by Lee Weintraub in 1978, was named after the historic market. With the combination of a bustling industrial waterfront and thriving commerce, the Federal and Greek Revival residential buildings north of the market were transformed into food storage warehouses and over the course of the rest of the 19th and into the 20th century, the majority of these would be replaced entirely with store and loft buildings and warehouses. This architectural development, which spanned roughly 50 years from 1860 to 1910, encompasses a balance of utilitarian and decorative forms in a range of popular styles of the period, all while defining the identities of the enterprises housed within and the expression of American commercialism as a whole. These buildings still dominate the character of the neighborhood today. Originally referred to as the “Lower West Side,” there are differing accounts as to where the name “Tribeca” came from. It originated in the 1970s, after a Special Lower Manhattan Mixed Use District was adopted for the area south of Canal Street, between Broadway and West Street. A realtor, advertising real estate within the new district, referred to it as Tribeca, which stood for the Triangle Below Canal. Most likely, the realtor hoped to inspire a similar transformation to that of Soho, whose industrial buildings had been converted into artists’ lofts and trendy apartment buildings. Four historic districts were designated in 1991–92: Tribeca East, Tribeca West, Tribeca North and Tribeca South, which was extended in 2002. These are located in Tribeca’s center, while pockets around the historic districts and most of the neighborhood’s periphery remain unprotected. Community members are currently advocating for more individual landmarks and expansion of the historic district borders.