Tribeca West Historic District

The largest of four historic districts designated within the larger Tribeca (the Triangle Below Canal Street) area, Tribeca West is comprised of 220 commercial buildings constructed over a 50-year period, between 1860 and 1910. Initially developed as a residential neighborhood, by the mid-nineteenth century the area was transformed into a mercantile center, becoming the main district for food wholesaling in New York City from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century.

The development of Manhattan's west side waterfront into a major hub for commercial trade, and the resulting increase in traffic, facilitated the development of markets for perishable goods as well as other food businesses in the area. The Washington Market, originally built in 1812 to the southwest, gradually expanded into this district. By the early 1880s, the Market had become New York's primary wholesale and retail produce outlet, offering a wide variety of foods such as imported cheeses, quail, squab, wild duck, swordfish, frogs' legs, venison, and bear steaks. The warehouses and other commercial building that were erected to store this bounty are the focal point of the Tribeca West Historic District.

The commercial vitality of the district is recalled by the buildings that form its dominant architectural character. These functional yet decorative stores and lofts include utilitarian structures derived from vernacular building traditions, while others are more consciously imitative of the popular period styles, such as Italianate, neo-Grec, Romanesque Revival, and Renaissance Revival. The later, high style warehouses reflect their architects' interest in creating a particularly American building type. The buildings are unified by scale, building material, and ground-floor treatment: cast-iron piers and canopies rise above stepped vaults and loading platforms. Folding iron shutters, massive wooden doors, granite-slab sidewalks, and Belgian block street pavers enhance the district's unique architectural flavor.©2014