New York Songlines: Church Street

West:

Canal Street Station

Block (350 Canal): This terra-cotta post office dates to 1939.

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Corner (342 Canal): Pro Audio

327: Church Street Surplus

325: Space Surplus Metal, est. 1979, is a shop that sells metal--steel, copper, brass, zinc, etc.

323: Westside Coffee Shop

321 (corner): Sea World Restaurant. An odd name-- like they're going to serve killer whale or something.

West:

AT&T Headquarters

After selling its glitzy Madison Avenue HQ to Sony, AT&T moved its main offices here, a massive 1918 Art Deco skyscraper designed by Ralph Walker to hold Ma Bell's long lines.

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Corner: Michelangelo's Pizza Coffee Shop

315: Kingsland Buildings, 1867

313: Lo Scalco

Corner: Was Burrito Bar

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Tribeca Grand

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301 (corner): Bread Tribeca, Ligurian

291: apexart, thinky arts group founded 1994. As part of an exhibition here, artist Maureen Connor created a detailed history of this building, an 1877 design by John Butler Snook. Fading sign on building says "D. Rich Co.," a business here in 1949-51 that was possibly related to the building's first occupant, the Emma Rich Restaurant, where Herman Melville once ate. The previous building on the spot was condemned in 1875 by anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock, having served since 1845 as a bordello run by Naomi Vreeland, great-grandmother of Diana Vreeland.

Corner: Was the Baby Doll Lounge, divey topless bar that opened in 1975-- forced out of business by Giuliani. Featured in the film In the Cut and in the Jay McInerney novel Model Behavior.

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281 (corner): Arqua, Tuscan named for the owner's hometown, Arqua Petrarca. Opened c. 1985.

Collective: Unconscious

279: A refugee from the gentrification of the Lower East Side, the Off-Off-Broadway company is in the space that was until 1999 Harmony Burlesque Theater, a Felliniesque lapdancing establishment.

277: B-flat, bar launched by the former manager of the East Village hideaway Angel's Share; used to be i Restaurant & Lounge?

273: South's, friendly bar

Corner (90 Franklin): Franklin Tower, a 1929 Art Deco building where Mariah Carey and Ben Stiller have lived.

West:

250 (block): Human Resources Administration: General Support Services, Office of Revenue and Investigation.



On the southeast corner is Auction Sale Pick-Up.

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257: Process Studio Theatre

253: La Lumia clothing; Kori, Korean with an East-meets-West flair

251: Darlene Restaurant, American-Spanish-Mexican

Corner (65 Leonard): Isobel's Kitchen

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240 (corner): This was the site of the Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the first African-American church in New York City. A major founder was Peter Williams, who had become a wealthy tobacco grower after purchasing his freedom from the John Street Methodist Episcopal Church, which had bought Williams to be its enslaved sexton. It was here that Sojourner Truth renounced her slave name. Anti-abolitionist rioters attacked the church on July 9, 1834. Here now is the library for New York Law School.

236: The first African-American newspaper, Freedom's Journal, was founded here in 1827, the year slavery was abolished in New York State. The co-editor was John Russwurm, the first African-American college graduate.

New York Law School

Corner (59 Worth): The main building of an institution founded in 1891 by Columbia Law faculty and students protesting interference by university trustees. Among its early lecturers were Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes, and it counts among its graduates Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, Sen. Robert Wagner and poet Wallace Stevens.

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Corner: Worthy Eyes, optician

220 (corner): Buckle My Shoe Nursery School

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Block: AT&T Long Lines Building was built in 1974 to hose long-distance switching equipment--a giant tower inhabited mainly by electronics. Designed to function even after a nuclear war.

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200 (corner): Sunny's Deli; Hedy's; French Grill (aka M.C. Choi's Grill)

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199 (block): State Insurance Fund Building. Houses a non-profit organization established in 1914 to provide low-cost workers' compensation insurance to businesses.

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178: Taco House

176: Pakistan Tea House is a favorite of taxi drivers.

Corner: Mike's Papaya

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193 (corner): Gold Corner Jewelry

191: Down Town Shoes

189: Burrito Mariachi

185: Paradise Fashion

183: New Shezan Restaurant, Bengali

179: Goodluck Candy & Tobacco II

177: Barua Gift Shop

Corner (78 Reade): Mocca Espresso Lounge

West:

Block (105-107 Chambers): The Cary Building is a cast-iron landmark from 1857, designed by John Kellum, primary architect of the Tweed Courthouse. The north and south facades are lovely, but the east wall, exposed by the widening of Church Street in the 1920s for subway construction, looks pretty awful.

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165 (block): Businesses in this building include SP's Nut and Candy ("We Are Nuts About Nuts"), Faraj Falafel & Shawerma, Quisqueyana Cigars, Fortune Burger and Corner Jewelry.

West:

Corner: Imperial Coffee House

148: The oddly named Motown Gift Shop

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149 (block): Businesses in this building include Downtown News, India Bazaar and Taste of Tandoor.

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Corner: Janovic Paints

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125 (corner): Downtown Florist

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This block was, from 1760 until 1857, the original campus of King's College, which was renamed Columbia University in 1784. John Jay (class of 1764), Gouverneur Morris ('68) and Robert R. Livingston ('64) and DeWitt Clinton ('90) all graduated from here; Alexander Hamilton attended from 1773 to 1776, when the school was shut down for the Revolution; he was given an honorary degree in 1788 and became a trustee.

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Corner: Famous Pizza

113: In Style Boutique

111: Bangal Curry

107: Downtown Deli

105: Key West Locksmith

Corner (27 Park Pl): Above Park Place Jewelry is Club Remix--formerly known as B-52.

West:

100 (block): This building was undamaged by the September 11 attacks but was filled with dust. It reopened in the summer of 2002.

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Moody's Investor Services

99 (block): This building houses the financial research company, best known for its bond ratings. It was founded in 1900 by John Moody. Over the entrance is Credit: Man's Confidence in Man, a somewhat homoerotic 1951 work of art.

West:

Federal Office Building

90 (block): Built 1935 in a mixture of Classical and Art Deco. The building, with more than a million square feet of space, is owned by the Postal Service, which uses it as the major mail sorting facility for Lower Manhattan. It also houses the New York City Housing Authority and the Legal Aid Society.

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St. Peter's Church

Corner: This is the site of the oldest Catholic church in New York State, built here in 1785 but destroyed by the Great Fire of 1835. This replacement, completed in 1838, was designed by Isaiah Rogers in the Greek Revival style.

85: The address of painter John Wesley Jarvis, where his friend Thomas Paine stayed in 1806.

West:

Ground Zero

Site of 5 WTC

Was the nine-story Dean Witter Building, destroyed in the September 11 attacks. Future site of WTC Tower 2, scheduled to be completed in 2012.

Future site of the WTC Transportation Hub

(175 Greenwich): Future site of WTC Tower 3 (2012)

Site of 6 WTC

The nine-story Commodities Exchange Building, destroyed in the September 11 attacks. Future site of WTC Tower 4 (2012).

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St. Paul's Chapel

Depending on whether you count the starting date (1764) or the date of completion (1766), this may be the oldest building in Manhattan. (The Morris-Jumel Mansion in Harlem was built in 1765.) It was and is a satellite of Trinity Church; it survived the 1776 fire that destroyed the first Trinity because its flat roof allowed rescuers to stand atop it and put out falling embers. The tower was not added until 1796.

This was the church George Washington attended when New York was the new nation's capital; his pew here is marked, as is that of New York Gov. George Clinton. Other notables who worshipped here are King William IV (as a prince), Lord Cornwallis, the Marquis de Lafayette, and presidents Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison and the elder George Bush. The church served as a sanctuary for rescue workers after the September 11 attacks.

FULTON ST         ===> E

Millenium Hilton

55 (block): This hotel, opened in 1992 (as the Millenium) and reopened in 2003 after heavy damage from the September 11 attacks, is designed to resemble the black monolith from 2001. The spelling variant is said to be intentional.

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CORTLANDT ST     ===> E

1 Liberty Plaza

165 (block): A hulk built by U.S. Steel (1971-73), designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill to show off the client's product--the facade is mainly steel. in 1971 for U.S. Steel. Owned for a time by Merrill Lynch, it also served as the headquarters of NASDAQ; now houses the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

Torn down for 1 Liberty Plaza was the Singer Tower, a 1908 building by Ernest Flagg that housed the sewing machine company's headquarters. Briefly the tallest building in the world at 47 stories, it became the tallest building ever demolished when it was torn down in 1968. The handsome Second Empire structure is considered one of New York City's great architectural losses, up there with Penn Station.

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110: Steve's Pizza; Liberty Deli

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Liberty Plaza

An uninviting vacancy that allowed 1 Liberty Plaza to justify its bulk. It's home to the statue Double Check, by J. Seward Johnson, a lifelike bronze of a seated stockbroker that became something of a symbol of survival after the September 11 attacks. One thing that didn't survive was the sign here marking Temple Street, which was eliminated in the 1960s.

West:

100 (Block): The High School for Economics and Finance was built in 1959 as the NYU business school's Nichols Hall; it was turned into a high school in 1990. The Skidmore, Owings & Merrill-designed structure has 10 floors, only the top three of which have windows, making it somewhat less than ideal as an educational environment.

American Stock Exchange

86: This trading institution started out as the Curbstone Exchange at the corner of Broad Street and Exchange Place. It moved indoors to this building in 2004. Generally the companies whose stocks are traded here are smaller than NYSE's or NASDAQ's, and there's an emphasis on options and funds.

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115 (block): U.S. Realty Building, like the Trinity Building across Thames Street, is a widely admired 1906 Gothic design by Francis H. Kimball; a catwalk connects the two.

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90 (corner): The High School for Leadership and Public Service, like its sibling school to which it is connected by a bridge across Thames Street, was built for NYU's business school, when it was known as the Charles E. Merrill Hall. A 1975 Skidmore, Owings & Merrill effort.

74: Trinity Parish's activity rooms, connected to Trinity Church in 1987 by an 80-foot footbridge.

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Trinity Churchyard

A burial ground dating back to 1681, before Trinity was built, this cemetery was decreed off limits to blacks when the church took it over, resulting in the creation of the African Burial Ground. Among the most noted residents on the north side of the church are Declaration of Independence signer Francis Lewis, Treasury Secretary and NYU founder Albert Gallatin, steamboat pioneer Robert Fulton, William Bradford, publisher of New York's first newspaper (whose headstone has a typo), and seduction victim Charlotte Stanley, who inspired a wildly popular novel. (Her grave bears the name of her fictional counterpart, Charlotte Temple.) Here is also the Martyr's Monument, dedicated to the patriots who died in British prisons during the Revolution. ''It is stated that this was erected by Trinity Corporation to prevent the city from cutting Pine Street through the graveyard, there being some law on the State's statute books to prevent the removal or injury of any public monument for purposes of highway improvement.'' -- A Historical Tour of...Broadway

Trinity Church

Established by a grant from England's King William III in 1697, after the Anglican church became the official church of New York, the church's first building lasted from 1698 until it burned down in 1776. It was replaced by 1790, but the new structure was unsound and had to be demolished in 1839. The current edifice was completed in 1846, an early Gothic revival building designed by Richard Upjohn. The bronze doors are a 1890s memorial to John Jacob Astor III and were designed by Richard Morris Hunt, with sculptural work on the central doors by Karl Bitter. The All Saints Chapel was added by 1913.

A 1705 grant from Queen Anne gave Trinity all the land west of Broadway from Fulton to what is now Christopher Street; the church continues to be a major Manhattan landowner. It also was given the right to all shipwrecks and beached whales.

Trinity Churchyard

Buried on the south side of the church are Constitution framer Alexander Hamilton, diarist George Templeton Strong and War of 1812 hero Capt. James Lawrence (''Don't give up the ship!''), et al.

West:

50 (corner): 50 Trinity Place is a three-story terra cotta building, scheduled for demolition and replacement with a 35-story Holiday Inn.

46: A brick and terra cotta structure built as a warehouse for the American Express Company c. 1880. The company's logo can still be seen in relief on the building's facade

(81 Greenwich): Built in 1900. In 1902, this was the address of Al-Hora ("The Guidance"), an Arabic-language daily.

42: The original site of Syms clothing store. In 1987, retired police officer Charles Korbel was shot by a mugger in front of this building, and the bullet was deflected by the knot of his tie, leaving him with nothing worse than powder burns on his neck.

Corner (67 Greenwich): Built in 1811, making it one of the oldest surviving buildings in Manhattan (let alone the Financial District), the last rowhouse on the block was unusually large for its day--four stories tall and four bays wide.

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Corner (71 Broadway): Empire Apartments were the Empire Building, built in 1895 by Francis Kimball and serving as the headquarters of U.S. Steel from 1901-76. An earlier building of the same name housed the office of financier Russell Sage, who was almost killed by a suicide bomber on December 4, 1891; Sage threw his secretary at the dynamite-wielding assailant to protect himself. From 1809-46 this was the site of Grace Church, opened after a split in the Trinity congregation. In 1710 a Lutheran church was built here by German exiles from the Palatinate; it burned down in the fire of 1776.

(65 Broadway): This Beaux-Arts structure by Renwick Aspinwall and Tucker was the American Express Company Building, that company's headquarters from 1917 until 1975. Now the Standard & Poors Building.

Corner (61 Broadway): The Adams Building, built in 1914, is featured in Berenice Abbott's photo Canyon. The most prominent boardinghouse of the 1830s, that of ''Aunt'' Margaret Mann, was at this address.

EXCHANGE AL     ===> E

Corner (55 Broadway): Known as 1 Exchange Plaza, this was built on the site of the orchard of Hendrick Van Dyck--his murder of a Native American woman picking peaches here sparked the last major Indian attack on Manhattan, September 15, 1655, in which 50 settlers were killed. Later, as No. 57, it was the architectural offices of McKim, Mead and White, 1879-94.

(45 Broadway): Broadway Atrium was meant to be part of 1 Exchange Plaza, but the fast-food business in between refused to sell.

(39 Broadway): This building is on the site of first European habitation on Manhattan--"four small crude huts" where the crew of Capt. Adrieaen Block spent the winter of 1613-14 after their ship, the Tiger, caught fire in the bay. Later the site of the Alexander McComb Mansion, where President George Washington lived in 1790 until the capital moved from New York to Philadelphia. In 1821, the house became a hotel, Bunker's Mansion House, where former President John Quincy Adams stayed in 1844.

Corner (29 Broadway): A 31-story, 1929 Art Deco skyscraper by Sloan & Robertson.

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