
1812
A market by the river.
The Washington Market replaces the older Bear Market near the Hudson, between Fulton and Vesey Streets, just south of today’s Tribeca. Food dealers spread north into these blocks. By the early 1880s it is New York’s major wholesale and retail produce market.
1851
Dry goods and iron storefronts.
In 1851 the Hudson River Railroad opens a depot at Chambers and Hudson Streets as dry-goods merchants move in. Within twelve years, new store-and-loft buildings fill eighty percent of the lots in today’s Tribeca South Historic District, where most are five stories with cast-iron-framed storefronts.

1867
A park becomes a freight depot.
In 1867 Cornelius Vanderbilt buys St. John’s Park, the square facing Trinity Church’s St. John’s Chapel, for his Hudson River Railroad. John Butler Snook’s three-story brick freight terminal soon rises there. It is torn down in 1936, and its site becomes the Holland Tunnel exit plaza.

1885
Butter, cheese and eggs.
In 1885 the New York Mercantile Exchange, started by dairy merchants in 1872 as the Butter and Cheese Exchange, builds Thomas R. Jackson’s brick-and-granite exchange at Hudson and Harrison Streets. Its two-story trading floor is used until the Exchange moves out in 1977.

1930
A telegraph tower in brick.
Western Union announces 60 Hudson Street in May 1928, billed as the largest telegraph building in the world. Ralph Walker’s tower, built 1928-30, uses nineteen shades of brick, graded from dark at the base to light at the top. It becomes a city landmark in 1991.
1976
Triangle Below Canal Street.
After the Washington Market moves to Hunts Point in the Bronx, the City Planning Commission in 1976 proposes a mixed-use zone south of Canal Street, allowing residential lofts and light manufacturing side by side. From those planning studies comes the name TriBeCa, for Triangle Below Canal Street.

1991
Four historic districts.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates the Tribeca West Historic District on May 7, 1991, and the Tribeca East, North and South districts on December 8, 1992, protecting the warehouses and store-and-loft buildings of the old food and dry-goods trades.

2020
A tidal marsh on Pier 26.
The Hudson River Park Trust opens Pier 26, between Hubert and North Moore Streets, on September 30, 2020. OLIN’s design adds a lawn, a sports court, a walk through five native ecological zones and, at the western end, the Tide Deck, an engineered rocky tidal marsh.