Edgar Street Greenstreet

Edgar Street Greenstreet. . , This triangular greenstreet – a landscaped traffic island – stands at the southern juncture of Trinity Place and Greenwich Street a few blocks southwest of Trinity Church in lower Manhattan. It takes its name from the adjacent street to the north, Edgar Street, reputedly the shortest street in Manhattan. With the upheaval of the construction of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, when the Trinity Place exit was completed in 1953, Edgar Street was pushed 30 feet north and widened from about 18 to 65 feet. The original footprint of the street now lies beneath this island., Well before it was codified on the city map, Edgar Street served as a passageway between the Hudson River shoreline and Trinity Place. Its gentle downward slope, also visible in the surrounding east/west streets, is the vestige of a ridge or bluff that ran parallel with the shoreline and crested at about Broadway, where Trinity Church is sited. It was a narrow street in its early days, no more than eighteen feet wide, called “Tuyn Paat” or “Golden Alley” in the Dutch period (1624-1664). When the British took command of the colony in 1664, the street name was changed with characteristic indifference to Tin Pot Alley., The City acquired the street in 1795, at which time the current street name was affixed. Edgar likely refers to the family of William Edgar (1736-1820), a merchant from Detroit who came to New York circa 1780 and established a successful shipping business, with links to India and China. For a time, the street served as a thoroughfare or driveway leading to the Edgar family household located nearby. Until the western shoreline was filled in, this street ran to or very near the water’s edge., The line of Greenwich Street was the approximate original coastline of Manhattan island. After the Revolutionary War (1775-1783), in 1787, the Common Council, a local legislature and the progeny of the City Council, acted on a pre-war proposal to expand the shoreline sixty feet to the Hudson River. Then began the construction of Greenwich Street, which soon hosted a row of Federal-style townhouses, of which the Dickey residence (1809-10) directly north of this greenstreet at 67 Greenwich Street is a remnant. Washington Street followed in approximately 1808 and West Street by 1830. The drop in grade from Broadway to Greenwich Street abruptly evens out where the landfill begins., In 2013 the Washington Street Historical Society adopted this greenstreet in support of Parks reconstruction efforts following Hurricane Sandy of 2012. Inspired by the rich history of the local area, members of the society, including Americans of Lebanese and Syrian descent, also dedicated bench plaques inscribed with the names of Arab-American individuals and groups from ‘Little Syria’, a thriving community of the late 19th and early 20th centuries., With sculptural junipers surrounding the benches, a small piazza surrounds a central planting area with oak leaf hydrangeas, viburnums and river birch trees. Hints of an earlier landscape and the people who settled here can be found in the streets encircling this greenstreet., City of New York Parks and Recreation , www.nyc.gov/parks , October 2013