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New York - Manhattan - Lower West Side Area: Battery Place on the south to Spring St. on the north; from West St. east to Trinity Place, Church St., and Broadway (Franklin to Spring St.). Though this district has a few modern skyscrapers with impressive marble façades, the character of the neighborhood is derived from produce sheds, crates, smells of fruit and fish of Washington Market, and the amazing variety of retail shops selling radios, pets, garden seeds, fireworks, sporting goods, shoes, textiles, and church supplies. There is an endless flow of traffic through the streets, whose buildings, grimy with age, reveal their pre-Civil War glory in carved lintels, arched doorways, and ornate cornices. Five streets -- Washington, Greenwich, Hudson, West Broadway, and Church -- form the main north and south thoroughfares, but the narrow, transverse streets leading to the Hudson River carry the burden of the traffic, much of which heads for New Jersey through the ferries at the end of Chambers, Barclay, Cortlandt, and Liberty Streets, or via the Holland Tunnel. Beneath the streets roar the subways and above them hurtles the Ninth Avenue el, which creates an atmosphere like Milton's "darkness made visible." Tunnels, railroads, ferryboats, subways, and road traffic have made this section one of the most important transit centers. Close to the river and harbor, it is also easily accessible to all parts of the city, making it a natural site for the largest fruit and produce market in the world. Location, too, accounts for the flourishing retail trade: New Jersey commuters returning home after a day's work in the city often find it practicable to buy their necessities here. In the vicinity of Cortlandt and Greenwich Streets, two blocks east and south of Washington Market, is the retail radio district. Seed and pet shops, largely patronized by suburban commuters, are south of Barclay Street, on West Broadway and Greenwich Street. Barclay Street has a number of ecclesiastical supply stores, originally attracted there because of the presence in the neighborhood of old St. Peter's Church. Dealers in fireworks who also stage the pyrotechnic spectacles - Niagara Falls, Flying Eagles, Pyramids of Fire, and the like -- for carnivals and celebrations throughout the country and in South America, have stores near Church Street and Park Place. Their factories are in New Jersey, and the proximity to the ferries has been a factor in the location of the business here since the 1880's. On the south side of Chambers Street between Broadway and West Broadway, are many sporting goods shops. Wholesale grocery houses line Greenwich Street near Beach Street. The tiny CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS (Greek Orthodox), at 155 Cedar Street, between Washington and West Streets, was built in 1820. Each January 6, on the Day of Epiphany, the chapel observes the colorful ceremony of the Rescue of the Cross but not as in the old days, when a small wooden crucifix was thrown into the harbor from the Battery landing to be rescued by the most agile Greek youth. The waters proving too cold, the custom was changed in 1937, and now the cross may be drawn ashore by a white ribbon attached to it. Greenwich Street, as Greenwich Road, skirted the shore of the Hudson until about the nineteenth century when the river was pushed back by dumping fill. Now heavily walled with merchandising warehouses, it is cast into shadow by the Ninth Avenue el, New York's first elevated rapid transit system. A relic of the old days, the PLANTERS, at Albany and Greenwich Streets, was established as a hotel in 1833, It closed when the Civil War broke out, but after being remodeled in 1922 was opened as a restaurant. In its heyday the hotel was patronized by Southern planters, its location being convenient to the Perth Amboy ferry, and thus to the Washington Post Road and the railroads connecting with the South. Near by, at 113 Greenwich Street, is the rear entrance to the New York Curb Exchange Building. The twin twenty-two-story structures connected by a bridge at 30 and 50 Church Street, were among the first skyscrapers. Designed by Clinton and Russell, these red tapestry-brick buildings were erected in 1908. Their name, the HUDSON TERMINAL, derives from the downtown station of the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad (the Hudson Tubes) underneath the buildings. The station is connected by way of tunnels with BMT and IRT subways. A block north, on the east side of Church Street, is the graveyard of St. Paul's Chapel, a subsidiary of Trinity Parish. The imposing FEDERAL OFFICE BUILDING, a structure of limestone, occupies the block from Church Street to West Broadway, and from Vesey to Barclay Street. Cross and Cross, and Pennington, Lewis, and Mills, associate architects, designed the heavy fifteen-story structure, a pretentious example of the "classic-without-columns" style of some recent public buildings. It houses branches of the New York Post Office, the Foreign and Domestic Commerce Bureau of the Department of Commerce, the Federal Housing Administration, and the Treasury Department. Hemmed in by modern business structures, ST. PETER'S, on the southeast corner of Barclay and Church Streets, is the oldest Roman Catholic church building in Manhattan. The edifice was erected in 1786, three years after the congregation was organized, and was rebuilt in 1838. Steps lead to the six massive columns supporting a pediment in whose center stands a figure of St. Peter holding the keys of heaven and hell. Old Columbia College, founded in 1754 as King's College, stood until 1857 between Barclay and Murray Streets, and West Broadway and Church Street. West Broadway, then Chapel Place, was a wandering lane which led from Canal Street to the college chapel. During the early eighteenth century, the vicinity of Greenwich and Warren Streets was the site of Vauxhall Garden. A reproduction of a contemporary London resort, it flourished about forty years, and was the rendezvous of most fashionable Colonials. The COSMOPOLITAN HOTEL, at Chambers Street and West Broadway, the oldest hotel in the city, was opened in 1850 as the Gerard House, drawing steady patronage from near-by steamship piers and the first Grand Central Terminal, then across the street. Among the patrons were bearded 'Frisco gold miners who staggered into the lobby after a trip around the Horn, dumped their gold-dust, went out to the barber, and came back "unrecognizably clean." The hotel survives, a ramshackle building, with stores crowding its entrance, and an incongruous neon sign flashing from its façade. Many buildings on the block between Church Street and Broadway, and Thomas and Worth Streets represent the florid architectural style of the post-Civil War period when decorative feats, structurally impossible in stone, were accomplished in cast iron. These white buildings were erected by Griffith Thomas in 1869 for the flourishing textile trade, in which many of the town's wealthiest citizens were engaged. This block was the first site ( 1773-1870) of the New York Hospital. One of the great riots in the city occurred here in 1788 when a mob stormed the hospital to attack medical students and doctors who, it was claimed, had used for dissection the cadavers of "respectable people, even young women of whom they made an indecent exposure." The militia, summoned by the governor and mayor, removed the students to a near-by jail for safekeeping, and when the crowd gathered in front of the prison, the troops fired, killing five and wounding scores. The WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH BUILDING, at 60 Hudson Street, rises twenty-four stories high in thirteen shades of brick, like a huge red rock projecting out of the city; Voorhees, Gmelin, and Walker were the architects. The LONG DISTANCE BUILDING of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, 32 Sixth Avenue, near Walker Street, designed by the same firm, is the world's largest communication center and the junction point of many important telephone trunk routes. It has direct circuits to important cities and radio telephone circuits to points in every part of the world. All private wires from New York to other cities, whether telephone, telegraph, or teletypewriter, lead through the building, which is also the main control point for the great radio broadcast series. The land west of Broadway to the river, between Fulton and Christopher Streets, was once known as the Queen's Farm. In 1705 Queen Anne granted it to Trinity Church. Since 1731 descendants and alleged descendants of Annetje Jans, an early owner of the farm, have sued Trinity, either for the return of the land or for pecuniary compensation. William Rhinelander in 1794 obtained ninety-nine-year leases of a large part of Trinity land; the Common Council in 1797 augmented these holdings by granting him all rights to the water front adjoining his property. With the rapid northward expansion of the city in the nineteenth century, the area became the site of large commercial structures and yielded millions in rent annually to the Rhinelander family. For many years Trinity land was ignored by builders because of its leasehold status, and not until the Lower East Side of Manhattan had been built up did they turn to this section. In 1803 the streets from Warren to Canal were laid out. Four years later, St. John's Church, a chapel of Trinity parish, was erected on Varick Street near Beach, and St. John's Park, named for the chapel, was set up on the block bounded by Varick, Hudson, Laight, and Beach Streets. The park was open only to residents of the houses facing it. From 1825-50 this district was the home of the city's wealthy aristocrats. When the plebeian population encroached upon it the wealthy moved northward. The park was razed in 1869 to make way for the freight terminal of the Hudson River Railroad which later was merged with the New York Central Railroad; in 1936 the terminal was moved to West Houston and West Streets. Canal Street, named for and following the course of a stream that ran from Collect Pond (the site of the present Foley Square district) to the Hudson, is the main traffic artery connecting New Jersey and Long Island by way of the Holland Tunnel and the Manhattan Bridge. The HOLLAND TUNNEL, named for its chief engineer, Clifford M. Holland, begins at Watts Street, between Hudson and Varick Streets, a block north of Canal, and bores underneath the Hudson River to Twelfth Street, Jersey City, New Jersey. A spacious and impressive plaza leads to a narrow tunnel entrance, whose dingy masonry lacks the exciting quality of the glistening interior. The tunnel is made of cast iron lined with concrete and the side walls are inset with white vitreous tiles, with markers at quarter-mile points. East- and westbound tubes are separate, each two lanes wide. Old SPRING STREET PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, founded in 1811, stands at Varick and Spring Streets. In 1834, a mob spurred by prominent politicians, almost destroyed the original frame building because Dr. Henry G. Ludlow, the pastor, was a firm advocate of abolition. Two years later, the present brick structure was erected. Manhattan Night Art Print Buy at AllPosters.com