39-41 Commerce Street, February 2, 1937.

The L-shaped Commerce Street, which runs between 7th Avenue South and Barrow Street, has a number of, likely apocryphal, stories about its name origins. Some say that it was called Commerce after an early 19th Century smallpox breakout prompted business from downtown to move to this area of the Village. Another suggests that it was named as part of a series of streets named after French revolutionary virtues, including Art, Science, and Reason. This theory though has been thoroughly debunked by Don Rogerson, author of Manhattan Street Names Past and Present.

Commerce was truncated in the 1910s when Seventh Avenue South was extended to Varick Street and nos. 1-8 were demolished for the construction of the new Avenue. Nos. 39 and 41, seen here, were constructed in 1832 by Peter Huyler of New Jersey. The original homes were two-and-a-half stories high, with dormers in a peaked roof (the mansards were added by Peter's heirs in 1873). A unique feature of the homes is the shared garden space between them (a large enough space to have been occupied by an additional home). While the entrances to the homes were once on the Commerce Street facades, by 1932 they had been moved into the garden-facing walls . By the time this photograph was taken in 1937 the homes had been long sold away from the Huyler family and had been divided into four apartments in each home.