Discovering Tribeca

As far as New York neighborhoods go, my first love is the West Village. As luck would have it, I stumbled upon Commerce Street on my first trip to New York. From the moment we met, I was all googly-eyed – an immediate love affair ensued, stoked with each subsequent visit. Never once have I visited New York and not taken a stroll down its stately ninety-degree corridor. It’s dripping with history, full of exceptional architecture, and has an off-Broadway theater to boot. It encapsulates everything that is excellent about New York.

Commerce Street, West Village

SoHo also captured a piece of my heart, but we have more of a concubinage. We dig each other, but neither can commit to the exclusion of another. You can read about our first date here.

But there was a neighborhood that remained a bit of a mystery – one that is known the world over but was lost on me. A large part of my hesitation in accepting this neighborhood as the bee’s knees was that my first visits were on business and always in terrible weather (rain, sleet, and snow). I’m talking about Tribeca.

Tribeca is in lower Manhattan and stands for Triangle Below Canal Street. According to the New York Times, it’s bordered by Hudson Square and SoHo to the north (above Canal Street), Broadway to the east, the Hudson River to the west, and the Financial District to the south. Though the exact location of the southern border is up for debate depending on who you ask. If there is any likelihood of increasing the value of a property, even if it sits in the shadow of the World Trade Center, you can bet it’s “Tribeca.”

Tribeca

The industrial chic vibe is undeniably charming, but I couldn’t put my finger on the “it” factor. The West Village has elegant townhomes and quirky roads; SoHo has cast iron buildings and cobblestone streets; but damned if Tribeca didn’t stump me. Again, my initial visits were spent avoiding oily ice puddles and making sure my umbrella didn't turn inside out. What was soooo cool about this part of town?

On this particular morning, I went out for my usual morning coffee in the Village. It was raining, but not enough to warrant an umbrella, so I kept walking through SoHo, enjoying the architecture and taking in the history. Before I knew it, I was crossing Canal via Varick in a real-life game of Frogger.

After surviving my brush with the Holland Tunell, I was standing in front of the Ghostbusters fire station—a mile and a half from where I started—and smack dab in the middle of Tribeca.

Hook & Ladder Company 8 “Ghostbusters” - 14 N Moore Street

I hooked a right on Moore and headed to Greenwich Street. At this point, all I was trying to do was get the hell away from traffic. Luckily, I was familiar with this part of Tribeca from previous meetings at the Citi headquarters, albeit in the worst of atmospheric conditions.

I walked past DeNiro’s Tribeca Grill and started to take in the peculiarities of the pre-Civil War buildings. I strolled up and down wide cobblestone streets flanked by ancient loading docks and warehouses with faded block letters from the companies that once occupied them. Despite the transformation of mercantile factories into galleries and the most expensive real estate in the city, there’s a comforting authenticity to it all, as if nothing will ever change, including rickety awnings and peeling paint on nineteenth-century handrails.

Tribeca, NYC

I made my way to the Mysterious Bookshop, an independent bookstore and publisher that’s been open since 1979 and holds the title of the oldest mystery specialist bookstore in America. Personally, I don’t read much fiction, but this place is flat-out cool.

The Mysterious Bookshop - 58 Warren Street

Afterwards, I visited one of the most marvelous shops in all of New York – Philip Williams Posters, which houses the world’s largest collection of vintage posters. This is one of those shops that can only exist in New York. In fact, it can only exist in a place like Tribeca, thanks to gentrification that kept pushing the store further south since opening in 1973. There are over 100,000 distinct posters in a delightfully archaic emporium. The wooden floor creaks, exposed pipes snake around in every direction, and the alabaster tin ceiling helps illuminate wall-to-wall posters exploding with color. I’m a HUGE fan of this place.

Philip Williams Posters - 122 Chambers Street

I walked down Hudson, past Morgan’s Market, where flowers of every color flowed onto the street, and took a break at Duane Park, which the city bought from Trinity Church for five dollars in 1795. Every building surrounding this little triangular park is just stunning. This was when I was starting to “get it.” By the time I checked out the Staple Street skybridge it had all came together. Tribeca was in my bloodstream.

It amazes me that in a stretch of one mile, the charm of West Village flows into the beauty of SoHo and further into the historic districts of Tribeca, creating an urban stream of early American history.

Morgans’s Market - 13 Hudson Street & Duane Park

Tribeca is distinctly unique – and I love it. In just about any other city, the buildings in Tribeca would’ve been razed and replaced with nondescript glass towers with uniform balconies and concrete sidewalks that blind the eyes on a sunny day. I’m not knocking modern architecture, though I could do without postmodern (with the exception of César Pelli and Frank Gehry), but what would we be missing if unimaginative corporate architects, fugacious developers, and spineless politicians got their wiry little hands on these irreplaceable treasures?

We owe a lot to people like Jane Jacobs for her tireless work to save Greenwich Village and for having the guts to go against the all-powerful Robert Moses. And there’s Chester Rapkin, who came up with the term “SoHo,” and Margot Gayle, who collectively saved the neighborhood from being demolished. And finally, the folks who created the Triangle Below Canal Block Association in the 1970s deserve a round of applause too. If not for these courageous preservationists, lower Manhattan would be unrecognizable and utterly terrible.

I walked back to the Village through SoHo, and as I passed dozens of galleries in cast iron buildings, I took in that fleeting feeling of gratitude for the opportunity to spend the morning exploring New York…and discovering the allure of Tribeca.

SoHo & 39/41 Commerce St - “Twin Sisters” in West Village