1857
Cast iron on Chambers Street
King & Kellum’s twin cast-iron fronts face Chambers and Reade, with ironwork by Daniel D. Badger — among the earliest surviving cast-iron façades in New York. A city landmark since 1982.
Cast iron, butter and eggs, and a triangle that got its name last — a wholesale district rebuilt as the city’s most expensive blocks
A warehouse quarter that emptied, was reopened to residents by two changes in the law, and then acquired both a name and a skyline. Scroll the timeline.
1875
Venetian Gothic on Thomas Street
J. Morgan Slade’s narrow High Victorian Gothic front — Venetian-influenced cast iron over granite Ionic columns. Designated a city landmark in 1978 and converted to condominiums in 2007.
1884
Butter, cheese and eggs
Thomas R. Jackson’s red-brick-and-granite exchange opens at 6 Harrison Street. By 1939 its floor moved 7.5 million cases of eggs and 3.5 million tubs of butter a year.
1893
The wholesale district
Washington Market, engraved for King’s Handbook of New York — the produce market at Washington and West Streets, and the anchor of the wholesale trade that filled these blocks.
1971
The loft amendment
The city’s loft amendment reopens the warehouses to residents, and the first tenants move onto manufacturing floors.
1975
Independence Plaza
Three concrete towers rise on Greenwich Street under the middle-income Mitchell-Lama program. Stellar Management later bought the complex and it moved to market rate.
1976
The triangle below Canal
The New York Times prints the name in April 1976, once the City Planning Commission adopts it — Tribeca, a syllabic acronym for the Triangle Below Canal.
1982
The Loft Law
The Loft Law legalizes the conversions already under way, and the cast-iron blocks fill with residents for good.
1989
De Niro’s Tribeca
Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal convert a coffee warehouse at 375 Greenwich Street into the Tribeca Film Center. The Tribeca Festival launches from it in 2002.
2017
56 Leonard
Herzog & de Meuron’s stacked glass volumes top out at 821 feet over 57 stories and 145 condominiums. Anish Kapoor’s 40-ton polished-steel sculpture was unveiled at the base in early 2023.
