HISTORY NOW!

Christopher Meets West Street

By Brian J Pape, AIA, LEED-AP

Some edifices in this 1927 photo would be familiar today. In the center, the steeple of St. Veronica Catholic Church, ca. 1890, is prominent, but not as imposing as the Archive Building on the right, aka the U.S. Appraiser’s Warehouse, ca. 1899, a red brick Romanesque Revival-style full-block behemoth. 

We see the railroad tracks along West Street, aka 10th “Death” Avenue, ca. 1846, when the Hudson River Railroad terminated at Chambers Street. The tracks were running up Christopher Street from the wharfs, piers and docks where goods were shipped to and from the island. 

On the left we see a three-story mixed-use brick building that marks the corner spot at 187 Christopher Street, aka 388 West Street, a three-story brick commercial building (1886, Michael Carr, architect) commissioned by Joseph B. Ireland, and Nos. 389 and 390 West Street, wood-framed structures that were two of the three then-surviving sections of the 1834 Greenwich (Weehawken) Market house with the low roofs, one with an Army Navy Surplus Store.

At the center is the elevated commuter railroad station at Greenwich Street, just beyond the Archive Building. Opened on February 14, 1870, it was the very first elevated railroad in NYC, running from the Battery to 29th Street.

On the far right, the “Family Hotel” was one of the many hotels built to cater to the commercial traffic. It advertises “Rooms $1.50/night” for the weary traveler. It was built as the Great Eastern Hotel in 1888. Two adjacent townhouses and other mixed-use three-story buildings fill the rest of the block.

In the early 17th century, the area now known as the Far West Village was a Lenape encampment for fishing and planting known as Sapokanican. With the founding of New Amsterdam in the “new world,” the fertile forests, streams, and riverside shores of this area were convenient for establishing new farms. During Dutch rule, the second director general of New Amsterdam, Wouter van Twiller (1633-37) “claimed” a huge area of this land. Under British rule, Sir Peter Warren amassed a vast tract of land along the Hudson during the 1740s. Christopher Street, ca. 1817, and Greenwich Street, ca. 1790, are two of the original and oldest streets in Greenwich Village. West Street, ca. 1824, soon followed as the shoreline filled in. Cholera and yellow fever epidemics in lower Manhattan between 1799 and 1822 led to an influx of settlers in the Greenwich area, with the population quadrupling between 1825 and 1840.

The four-acre site north of Christopher Street was used to construct Newgate State Prison, New York’s first prison, in 1796-97, surrounded by high stone walls. In 1829, the state sold the prison properties, except for the Weehawken Street block kept for a market. A marketplace on Christopher Street was widened for market stalls from 1819 to 1835. A market house was erected at Weehawken Street in 1834 and sold in 1844. In 1845, part of the old prison was adapted as a brewery by Nash, Beadleston & Co. 

As early as 1914, under the banner of the Greenwich Village Improvement Society and the Greenwich Village Rebuilding Corporation, an alliance of residents and businesses rallied to arrest the district’s physical deterioration. The completion of the Holland Tunnel (1919-27) and, especially, the elevated Miller Highway (1929-31) above West Street, had a great impact on the area. 

Now, a similar view of Christopher Street reveals remnants of the past. Starting at the left, Weehawken Street is now an historic district. 388 West/187 Christopher is a one-story clinker brick utilitarian structure built in 1937. Superstorm Sandy severely flooded the premises which has been vacant and sealed off ever since, though it is now on the rental market.

One section of the former market house lives on as a house that George M. Munson resided at — 6 Weehawken Street (aka 392-393 West Street). The Munsons owned the building until 1864. Next door, 8 Weehawken Street aka 391 West Street (1902, Richard Rohl), is a five-story, neo-Renaissance style tenement building. 

After 1960, with the introduction of containerized shipping, the waterfront rapidly declined, and many of the buildings associated with Manhattan’s Hudson River maritime history have been demolished. In 1974, the Miller Elevated Highway was closed. 

During the Archive’s more than 30-year lifespan as a Customs facility, the building was called the United States Appraisers’ Warehouse. However, during the Great Depression, the federal government moved its offices for the National Archives and Records Administration into the building, and renamed it the Federal Archive Building. It was designated a New York City landmark in 1966 and a national landmark in 1973. It reopened in 1988, containing 479 loft-style rental apartments with up to 20-foot ceilings.

On Sunday, June 25, 2017, the historic St. Veronica’s Catholic Church on Christopher Street hosted its last official services.

See the related article on the Bailey-Holt House, located in the building that was the Family Hotel.