Erik Torkells, the blogger behind Tribeca Citizen, asked his readers last summer to send him old (read: 1990s or earlier) photos of the neighborhood, and boy did they deliver. Today, Torkells shared many of the photos, most of which show the neighborhood in the '70s when the elevated West Side Highway still existed and glassy waterfront condo towers were barely a thought. We borrowed a couple and paired them with more current shots of the same area to show just how radically different Tribeca today is from the Tribeca of 35 years ago. Above, the old photo shows the south side of North Moore Street between West and Greenwich Streets around 1975. The more recent photo, taken from Google Streetview, shows the Borough of Manhattan Community College in 2011.
The Federal-style houses on Harrison Street, above, have a really interesting story. The old photo shows the houses in the summer of 1970, looking rather sad and out of place with nothing else around them on a now nonexistent stretch of Washington Street. When the photo was taken, the area was in the midst of the Washington Market Urban Renewal, and several of the structures were demolished. But three of them were saved and moved to Harrison Street, where they sit today; the "Now" photo above shows these relocated houses. This post on Tribeca Citizen has a great photo (of a photo) of the houses being moved.
Click through for a lot more images and for info on how to contribute your own photos to the project.
· A Scrapbook of Old Tribeca [Tribeca Citizen]
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