Tribeca , originally written as TriBeCa, is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Its name is a syllabic abbreviation from "Triangle Below Canal Street". The "triangle", or more accurately, a trapezoid, is bounded by Canal Street, West Street, Broadway, and either Chambers, Vesey, or Murray Streets.
The neighborhood began as farmland, became residential in the early 19th century, then transitioned into a mercantile one centered around produce, dry goods, and textiles, before being colonized by artists and then actors, models, entrepreneurs and other celebrities. The neighborhood is home to the Tribeca Film Festival, which was created in response to the September 11 attacks, to reinvigorate the neighborhood and downtown after the destruction caused by the terrorist attacks.
Name
Tribeca is one of a number of neighborhoods in New York City whose names are syllabic abbreviations or acronyms, including SoHo (South of Houston Street), NoHo (North of Houston Street), Nolita (North of Little Italy), NoMad (North of Madison Square), DUMBO (District Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), and BoCoCa, the last of which is actually a collection of neighborhoods (Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens).
The name was coined in the early 1970s and originally applied to the area bounded by Broadway and Canal, Lispenard, and Church Streets. which appears to be a triangle on city planning maps. Residents of this area formed the TriBeCa Artists' Co-op in filing legal documents connected to a 1973 zoning dispute. According to a local historian, the name was misconstrued by a newspaper reporter as applying to a much larger area, which is how it came to be the name of the current neighborhood.
History
The area now known as Tribeca, or TriBeCa, was farmed by Dutch settlers to New Amsterdam, and was later part of the large tract of land given to Trinity Church by Queen Anne in 1705. In 1807, the church built St. John's Chapel on Varick Street and then laid out St. John's Park, bounded by Laight Street, Varick Street, Ericsson Place, and Hudson Street. The church also built Hudson Square, a development of brick houses which surrounded the park, which would become the model for Gramercy Park. The area was among the first residential neighborhoods developed in New York City beyond the city's colonial boundaries of the city, and remained primarily residential until the 1840s.
Beginning in the 1840s and then continuing after the American Civil War, shipping in New York City â€" which then consisted only of Manhattan â€" shifted in large part from the East River and the area around South Street to the Hudson River, where the longer piers could more easily handle the larger ships which were then coming into use. In addition, the dredging of the sand bars which lay across the entrance to New York Harbor from the Atlantic Ocean made it easier for ship to navigate to the piers on the Hudson, rather than use the "back door" via the East River to the piers there. Later, the Hudson River piers also received freight via railroad cars ferried across the river from New Jersey.
The increased shipping encouraged the expansion of the Washington Market â€" a wholesale produce market which opened in 1813 as "Bear Market" â€" from the original market buildings to buildings throughout its neighborhood, taking over houses and warehouses to use for the storage of produce, including butter, cheese and eggs. In the mid-19th century, the neighborhood was the center of the dry goods and textile industries in the city, and St. John's Park was turned into a freight depot. Later, the area also featured fireworks outlets, pets stores, radios â€" which were clustered in a district which was displaced by the building of the World Trade Center â€" sporting goods, shoes, and church supplies.
Eventually, in the 20th century, after the construction of the Holland Tunnel from 1920 to 1927, and the transition of freight shipping from ships and railroads to trucks, the truck traffic generated by the market and other businesses caused considerable congestion in the area, which provoked the building between 1929 and 1951 of the Miller Highway, an elevated roadway which came to be called the West Side Highway, the purpose of which was to handle through automobile traffic, which thus did not have to deal with the truck congestion at street level. Because of a policy of "deferred maintenance", the elevated structure began to fall apart in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the highway was shut down in 1973. The roadway project planned to replace it, called Westway, was fought by neighborhood activists, and was eventually killed by environmental concerns. Instead, West Street was rebuilt to handle through traffic.
The produce market moved to Hunts Point in the Bronx in the 1960s, and the city put an urban renewal plan into effect which involved the demolition of many old buildings, with the intent of building high-rise residential towers, office buildings and schools. Some of these were constructed, including Independence Plaza in 1975 on Washington Street, the Borough of Manhattan Community College in 1980, and Washington Market Park in 1981. Some warehouse buildings were converted to residential use, and lofts began to be utilized by artists, who lived and worked in their spaces, a model which had been pioneered in nearby SoHo. In the early 1970s, a couple of years after artists in SoHo were able to legalize their live/work situation, artist and resident organizations in the area to the south, known then as "Washington Market" or the "Lower West Side", sought to gain similar zoning status for their neighborhood. One of the neighborhood groups called themselves the "Triangle Below Canal Block Association", and, as activists had done in SoHo, shortened the group’s name to the Tribeca Block Association. The Tribeca name came to be applied to the area south of Canal Street, between Broadway and West Street, extending south to â€" as variously defined â€" Chambers, Vesey, or Murray Street.
Development
Several streets in the area are named after Anthony Lispenard Bleecker and the Lispenard family. Beach Street was created in the late 18th century and was the first street on or adjacent to the farm of Anthony Lispenard Bleecker, which was just south of what is now Canal Street; the name of the street is a corruption of the name of Paul Bache, a son-in-law of Anthony Lispenard. Lispenard Street in Tribeca is named for the Lispenard family, and Bleecker Street in NoHo was named for Anthony Lispenard Bleecker.
By the mid-19th century the area transformed into a commercial center, with large numbers of store and loft buildings constructed along Broadway in the 1850s and 1860s. Development in the area was spurred by New York City Subway construction, namely the extension of the IRT Broadway â€" Seventh Avenue Line (today's 1 2 3 trains), which opened for service in 1918, and the accompanying extension of Seventh Avenue and the widening of Varick Street during subway construction in 1914, both of resulted in better access to the area for vehicles and for subway riders. The area was also served by the IRT Ninth Avenue Line, an elevated train line on Greenwich Street demolished in 1940. However, by the 1960s, Tribeca's industrial base had all but vanished, and the predominance of empty commercial space attracted many artists to the area in the 1970s. Since the 1980s, large scale conversion of the area has transformed Tribeca into an upscale residential area.
In 1996, the Tribeca Open Artist Studio Tour was founded as a non-profit, artist-run organization with the mission to empower the working artists of Tribeca while providing an educational opportunity for the public. For 15 years, the annual free walking tour through artist studios in Tribeca has allowed people to get a unique glimpse into the lives of Tribeca's best creative talent. Tribeca suffered both physically and financially after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, but government grants and incentives helped the area rebound fairly quickly. The Tribeca Film Festival was established to help contribute to the long-term recovery of lower Manhattan after 9/11. The festival also celebrates New York City as a major filmmaking center. The mission of the film festival is "to enable the international film community and the general public to experience the power of film by redefining the film festival experience." Tribeca is a popular filming location for movies and television shows.
By the early 21st century, Tribeca became one of Manhattan's most fashionable and desirable neighborhoods, well known for its celebrity residents. Its streets teem with art galleries, boutique shops, restaurants, and bars. In 2006, Forbes magazine ranked its 10013 zip code as New York City's most expensive (however, the adjacent, low-income neighborhood of Chinatown, also uses the 10013 zip code). As of 2010, Tribeca was the safest neighborhood in New York City, according to NYPD and CompStat statistics.
Demographics
As of the 2000 census, there were 10,395 people residing in Tribeca. The population density was 31,467 people per square mile (12,149/km2). The racial makeup of the neighborhood was 82.34% White, 7.96% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 4.89% African American, 0.10% Native American, 1.66% from other races, and 3.02% from two or more races. 6.34% of the population were Hispanic of any race. Of the 18.2% of the population that was foreign born, 41.3% came from Europe, 30.1% from Asia, 11.1% from Latin America, 10.2% from North America and 7.3% from other regions.
Places
Tribeca is dominated by former industrial buildings that have been converted into residential buildings and lofts, similar to those of the neighboring SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the neighborhood was a center of the textile/cotton trade.
Notable buildings in the neighborhoods include the historic neo-Renaissance Textile Building built in 1901 and designed by Henry J. Hardenbergh, the Powell Building, a designated Landmark on Hudson Street, which was designed by Carrère and Hastings and built in 1892. At 73 Worth Street there is a handsome row of neo-Renaissance White Buildings built at the end of the Civil War in 1865. Other notable buildings include the New York Telephone Company building at 140 West Street, between Vesey and Barclay, with its Mayan-inspired Art Deco motif, and the former New York Mercantile Exchange at 6 Harrison Street.
During the late 1960s and '70s, abandoned and inexpensive Tribeca lofts became hot-spot residences for young artists and their families because of the seclusion of lower Manhattan and the vast living space. Jim Stratton, a Tribeca resident since this period, wrote the 1977 nonfiction book entitled "Pioneering in the Urban Wilderness," detailing his experiences renovating lower Manhattan warehouses into residences.
- 32 Avenue of the Americas, an Art Deco building that is the former site of the AT&T Long Lines division.
- 388 Greenwich Street, an office building near the northwestern corner of Tribeca that is the headquarters of the corporate and investment banking arm of financial services corporation Citigroup.
- Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), part of the City University of New York. The college campus is located between Chambers Street and N. Moore Street, spanning four blocks. BMCC's Fiterman Hall, severely damaged in the September 11, 2001 attacks, was demolished and has been rebuilt.
- Holland Tunnel connecting New York to New Jersey has its entrances and exits in the northwest corner of Tribeca, centered around St. John's Park.
- Hook & Ladder Company No. 8, a still-in-use firehouse at North Moore Street that was the site of the filming of the Ghostbusters movies. Memorabilia from the movies are displayed inside. Another film, Hitch, with Will Smith, also filmed a short but notable scene at the firehouse.
- Hudson River Park, a waterside park on the Hudson River that extends from 59th Street south to Battery Park. It runs through the Manhattan neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan, Battery Park City, TriBeCa, Greenwich Village, Gansevoort Market (The Meatpacking District), Chelsea, Midtown West, Hudson Yards, and Hell's Kitchen (Clinton). It is a joint New York State and New York City collaboration and is a 550-acre (2.2Â km2) park, the biggest in Manhattan after Central Park. The park arose as part of the West Side Highway replacement project in the wake of the abandoned Westway plan.
- Kitchen, Montross & Wilcox Store, a landmarked building in Tribeca built in 1861.
- Metropolitan College of New York, a private, independent educational institution, located on Canal Street.
- New York Law School, a private, independent law school that was founded in 1891, has been located in several buildings in Tribeca since 1962, principally along Worth Street between Church Street and West Broadway.
- Stuyvesant High School, one of the nine specialized high schools in New York City, is located at 345 Chambers Street in nearby Battery Park City. The Tribeca Bridge was built to assure the safety of the students who need to get across West Street to get to the building.
- Verizon Building, a landmarked building in Tribeca built between 1923â€"27. It is being converted into condominiums.
- Washington Market Park, bounded by Greenwich, Chambers, and West Streets, is a 1.61-acre (6,500Â m2) park that is popular with children for its large playground. The park also has community gardens and hosts community events.
Historic districts
There are four New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission-designated historic districts within Tribeca:
- Tribeca West â€" designated May 7, 1991
- Tribeca East â€" designated December 2, 1992
- Tribeca North â€" designated December 8, 1992
- Tribeca South â€" designated December 8, 1992
- Tribeca South Extension â€" designated November 19, 2002
Notable people
Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal had high profiles in the district's revival when they co-produced the dramatic television anthology series TriBeCa in 1993 and co-founded the annual Tribeca Film Festival in 2002. De Niro also claimed ownership of all domain names incorporating the text "Tribeca" for domain names with any content related to film festivals. In particular, he had a dispute with the owner of the website tribeca.net.
In popular culture
Although Wizards of Waverly Place includes a fictional "Tribeca Prep," exterior shots were filmed at P.S. 40 on East 20th Street, between First Avenue and Second Avenue in midtown Gramercy Park. In addition, a fictional "Tribeca High School" appears in the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Granting Immunity." Local radio station WHTZ's studio is located here. In the third book of the Witches of East End series, Winds of Salem, the Oracle, an almighty god from Asgard, lives in Tribeca.
See also
- New York City portal
References
External links
Community groups and organizations
- Tribeca Film Festival
- Tribeca Trust - a community organization working on historic preservation and public spaces
Images and memories
- Tribeca in the 1970s â€" Early photos of the neighborhood
- Tribeca through history â€" Requiem For A Living City: Notes On A Home In Tribeca
Neighborhood guides
- tribeca.org â€" Neighborhood history, dining, shopping, arts and entertainments (maintained by the Tribeca Organization)
- Tribeca Family Festival
- Tribeca Neighborhood Profile â€" About.com
- Tribeca Open Artist Studio Tour (TOAST)
- Tribeca Art Night
- Tribeca Walking Tour
News and blogs
- Battery Park Blog - Covering Battery Park City, the Financial District, and Tribeca
- The Battery Park City Broadsheet - Local news throughout Battery Park City, Tribeca, South Street Seaport and the Financial District
- Downtown Express â€" Weekly, local newspaper of Lower Manhattan
- The Tribeca Citizen
- The Tribeca Trib â€" The Tribeca Trib; neighborhood newspaper in circulation since 1994