DOWNTOWN MANHATTAN
From West Street between Rector and Morris Streets
AUGUST 12, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 159

Downtown Manhattan 1930-33 (CGLI)

On the same day she photographed 38 Greenwich Street, Abbott stood a block west and slightly north to photograph Downtown Manhattan. Like Construction Old and New, this photograph contrasts new office buildings in the background with older structures in the foreground. The blocks of Washington Street between Rector Street and Battery Place formed the Syrian district, settled in the 1880s by Syrian and Lebanese immigrants. Abbott's photograph shows 67 to 55 Washington Street, from left to right: the Armenian Importing Company; George Shalhoub & Son, oriental confectioners; Anthony Coulapides, manufacturer of Egyptian cigarettes; Sahadi Brothers, importers of oriental groceries and brassware, and manufacturers of sesame oil, halvah, and bulghur; Maxloom's Employment Agency; St. Josephs Roman Catholic Church; and the office of the Arabic newspaper Al Hada.

A West Street parking lot allowed Abbott to view this row from afar. Between 1930 and 1933, she photographed this view, standing across West Street and using a wide-angle lens to create a sweeping horizontal composition. In 1936, a new diner and service station framed the foreground of a compressed, vertical composition. The neighborhood was torn down in 1946 to make way for the entrance to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel.

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