WEST STREET, ROW I
178-183 West Street between Warren and Chambers Street
APRIL 8, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 98

On the same day she photographed West Street between Warren and Murray Streets, Abbott focused on an isolated row of commercial buildings one block north. This was the first of four West Street Row compositions taken over the next two years.

West Street's businesses, including hotels, restaurants, and auto repair shops, provided secondary services to the produce wholesalers and their customers. The proximity of the financial district is scarcely apparent, with the tip of the Woolworth Building's spire (1913) visible in the photograph (center) and the towers of the Singer Tower (1908) and Bank of Manhattan Company (1929) in the distance to the south (right).

Demolished under the 1962 Washington Market Urban Renewal Project, this block is still undeveloped. As manufacturers abandoned the neighborhood in the 1960s and 1970s, artists and professionals found its warehouses congenial for residences and studios. Known as Tribeca (Triangle-Below-Canal Street), the neighborhood has organized to oppose the encroachment of the financial district. The block between Chambers and Warren Streets lays fallow, with a single tenement holdout at 179 West Street. In 1970, its tenant won a court judgment to remain in the decrepit structure until plans for development are completed.

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