TriBeCa-- Triangle Below Canal...trendy for years now, but had to be reborn after September 11

After September 11, people in the downtown Tribeca area were somewhat dispirited by the closeness of the destruction and collapse of the World Trade Center ...their movement was restricted for months because of clean up needs. 

This effectively killed off a number of businesses and also health concerns made a lot of people want to move out.

I will get to the Tribeca film festival in another posting, because I feel it deserves one on its own, but that was part of the rebirth spearheaded by such local celebrities and Tribeca lovers such as movie star Robert de Niro.

What follows is just my introduction to the area as it is today...I remember it mostly from years ago as a commercial and light industrial area and only on rare later visits did I see the gentrification that was going on.

In fact, I was not even sure where to start. I knew I wanted to go below Canal Street--but where exactly?

Then I saw a yellow sculpture that to me was a tip off I was in the right place: which turned out to be Tribeca Park...

The whole area, as far as I can see, is indeed flourishing. The streets also have a lot of young people on them who are either residents or tourists...

The largest building you see in the East Tribeca area used to be a communications center for AT&T and I am not sure what they use it for now..you see it looming up over everything else

To the East, the view is intriguing..People keep telling me about all these cobblestonestone streets in Tribeca but I did not see much of that...I must just have been on  the wrong blocks...

I feel this is a good time to back up my story with some information from the net...well, this gets HEAVILY into the celebrities who have been in the area, I can say that--hold on to your hat again--


Tribeca (sometimes stylized as TriBeCa, pronounced /traɪˈbɛkə/) is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Its name is an acronym from "Triangle below Canal Street"; the triangle is properly bounded by Canal Street, West Street, Broadway, and Vesey Street.^[1] The neighborhood is home to the Tribeca Film Festival.

History

Textile Building (1901) in the Tribeca Historic District

The Tribeca name came to be applied to the area south of Canal Street, between Broadway and West Street, extending south to Chambers Street. The area was among the first residential neighborhoods developed in New York beyond the boundaries of the city during colonial times, with residential development beginning in the late 18th century. By the mid-19th century the area transformed into a commercial center, with large numbers of store and loft buildings constructed along Broadway in the 1850s and 1860s.

Development in the area was spurred by the extension of the IRT Broadway – Seventh Avenue Line, which opened for service in 1918, and the accompanying extension of Seventh Avenue and the widening of Varick Street during subway construction in 1914. That resulted in better access to the area both for vehicles and for travelers using public transportation. The area was also served by the IRT Ninth Avenue Line, an elevated train line on Greenwich Street demolished in 1940.
By the 1960s Tribeca's industrial base had all but vanished. The predominance of empty commercial space attracted many artists to the area in the 1970s. Since the 1980s, large scale conversion of the area has transformed Tribeca into an upscale residential area.

In 1996, the Tribeca Open Artist Studio Tour was founded as a non-profit, artist-run organization with the mission to empower the working artists of Tribeca while providing an educational opportunity for the public. For 15 years, the annual free walking tour through artist studios in Tribeca has allowed people to get a unique glimpse into the lives of Tribeca's premiere creative talent.^[2] Tribeca suffered financially after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, but government grants and incentives helped the area rebound fairly quickly.^[3] The Tribeca Film Festival was established to help contribute to the long-term recovery of lower Manhattan after 9/11. The festival also celebrates New York City as a major filmmaking center. The mission of the film festival is "to enable the international film community and the general public to experience the power of film by redefining the film festival experience." Tribeca is a popular filming location for movies and television shows.
Today, Tribeca is one of America's most fashionable and desirable neighborhoods and is known for its celebrity residents. In 2006 Forbes magazine ranked its 10013 zip code as New York City's most expensive.^[4]

Etymology

In the early 1970s, a couple of years after artists in SoHo were able to legalize their live/work situation, artist and resident organizations in the area to the south, known then as Washington Market or simply the Lower West Side, sought to gain similar zoning status for their neighborhood.
A group of Lispenard Street artist/residents living on tax block number 210, directly south of Canal Street between Church Street and Broadway, in an area now part of the landmarked Tribeca Historic District, joined the effort. Just as the members of the SoHo Artists Association called their neighborhood "SoHo" after looking at a City Planning map which marked the area as "South of Houston" (city planners had been casually using the word "SoHo" as well), these Lispenard Street residents likewise employed a City Planning map to describe their block.
Lispenard Street, a single block immediately below Canal Street, is wide on the Church Street side but is narrower at Broadway. Thus, it appears as a triangle on City maps, not like a rectangle as most city blocks are depicted. The Lispenard Street residents decided to name their group the Triangle Below Canal Block Association, and, as activists had done in SoHo, shortened the group’s name to the Tribeca Block Association.
A reporter covering the zoning story for The New York Times came across the block association’s submission to City Planning, and mistakenly assumed that the name Tribeca referred to the entire neighborhood, not just one block. Once the “newspaper of record” began referring to the neighborhood as Tribeca, it stuck. This was related by former resident and councilmember for the area, Kathryn Freed, who was involved in the 1970s Tribeca zoning effort.^{[citation needed]}

Overview

Historical populations
Census	Pop.		%±
1950	782		—
1960	382		−51.2%
1970	370		−3.1%
1980	5,949		1,507.8%
1990	8,386		41.0%
2000	10,395		24.0%
2010	17,056		64.1%

Demographics

As of the 2000 census, there were 10,395 people residing in Tribeca. The population density was 31,467 people per square mile (12,149/km²). The racial makeup of the neighborhood was 82.34% White, 7.96% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 4.89% African American, 0.10% Native American, 1.66% from other races, and 3.02% from two or more races. 6.34% of the population were Hispanic of any race. Of the 18.2% of the population that was foreign born, 41.3% came from Europe, 30.1% from Asia, 11.1% from Latin America, 10.2% from North America and 7.3% from other.

Architecture

 

 

American Thread Building

Tribeca is dominated by former industrial buildings that have been converted into residential buildings and lofts, similar to those of the neighboring SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the neighborhood was a center of the textile/cotton trade.
Notable buildings in the neighborhoods include the historic neo-Renaissance Textile Building built in 1901 and designed by Henry J. Hardenbergh, the Powell Building, a designated Landmark on Hudson Street, which was designed by Carrère and Hastings and built in 1892.^[5] At 73 Worth Street there is a handsome row of neo-Renaissance White Buildings built at the end of the Civil War in 1865. Other notable buildings include the New York Telephone Company building at 140 West Street with its Mayan-inspired Art Deco motif, and the former New York Mercantile Exchange at 6 Harrison Street.
During the late 1960s and '70s, abandoned and inexpensive Tribeca lofts became hot-spot residences for young artists and their families because of the seclusion of lower Manhattan and the vast living space. Jim Stratton, a Tribeca resident since this period, wrote the 1977 nonfiction book entitled "Pioneering in the Urban Wilderness," detailing his experiences renovating lower Manhattan warehouses into residences.

Powell Building

AT&T Long Distance Building at 32 Avenue of the Americas

388 Greenwich Street

Historic districts

The Tribeca Historic Districts are a combination of four different historic zones within the Tribeca section of the borough of Manhattan. The districts include Tribeca South & Extension, designated in 1992 and 2002; Tribeca East, designated in 1992; Tribeca West, designated in 1991; and Tribeca North, designated in 1992.

Landmark name	Date designated
Tribeca East	December 2, 1992[6]
Tribeca North	December 8, 1992[7]
Tribeca South	December 8, 1992;[8] extension: November 19, 2002[9]
Tribeca West	May 7, 1991[10]

Sites and attractions

• 32 Avenue of the Americas, an Art Deco building that is the former site of the AT&T Long Lines division.
• Holland Tunnel connecting New York to New Jersey has its entrances and exits in the northwest corner of Tribeca, centered around the intersection of Canal Street and Varick Street.
• Washington Market Park, bounded by Greenwich, Chambers, and West Streets, is a 1.61-acre (6,500 m²) park in Tribeca that is popular with children for its large playground. The park also has a community gardens and hosts many community events.
• Metropolitan College of New York, a private, independent educational institution, located on Canal Street.
• Hook & Ladder Company No.8, This still in-use firehouse was the site of the filming of the Ghostbusters movies. Memoriabilia from the movies is still displayed inside the building. Another film, Hitch, with Will Smith, also filmed a short but notable scene at the firehouse.
• New York Law School, a private, independent law school that was founded in 1891, has been located in several buildings in Tribeca since 1962, principally along Worth Street between Church Street and West Broadway.
• Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), part of the City University of New York. The college campus is located between Chambers Street and N. Moore Street, spanning four blocks. BMCC's Fiterman Hall, severely damaged in the September 11, 2001 attacks, was demolished and has been rebuilt.^[11]
• 388 Greenwich Street, an office building near the northwestern corner of Tribeca that is the headquarters of the corporate and investment banking arm of financial services corporation Citigroup.
• Hudson River Park, a waterside park on the Hudson River that extends from 59th Street south to Battery Park. It runs through the Manhattan neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan, Battery Park City, TriBeCa, Greenwich Village, Gansevoort Market (The Meatpacking District), Chelsea, Midtown West, and Hell's Kitchen (Clinton). It is a joint New York State and New York City collaboration and is a 550-acre (2.2 km²) park, the biggest in Manhattan after Central Park. The park arose as part of the West Side Highway replacement project in the wake of the abandoned Westway plan.
• Duane Park
• Tribeca Grand Hotel is located on a triangular block just south of Canal Street at Two 6th Avenue.

Notable residents

Edward Albee Laurie Anderson Bill Barrett[12] Paul Bettany Beyoncé Eric Bogosian Edward Burns Mariah Carey Jennifer Connelly Daniel Craig[13] Billy Crystal KiD CuDi Curren$y Mike D Robert De Niro Leonardo DiCaprio Elvis Duran The Edge[14] Marisol Escobar Jared Followill Kat Foster Bethenny Frankel Marian Gaborik James Gandolfini (1961-2013) Sarah Michelle Gellar[15] Heather Graham Red Grooms Don Gummer Richard Handler

Hanson Mariska Hargitay Josh Hartnett Peter Hermann Paz de la Huerta Chanel Iman Michael Imperioli Jay-Z Lindsey Henry Richard Jefferson Derek Jeter Scarlett Johansson Harvey Keitel Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy (1966–1999) John F. Kennedy, Jr. (1960–1999) Daniel Kessler Karlie Kloss Karolina Kurkova Ronnie Landfield David Letterman[16] Adriana Lima Jodi Long Adrian Lyne Chris Martin Danny Masterson Mike McCready (music entrepreneur) Shane McMahon Debra Messing

Taylor Momsen Sean Murray Petra Nemcova Gwyneth Paltrow Mizuo Peck Mike Piazza Amy Poehler Daniel Radcliffe Lou Reed Kelly Ripa Nouriel Roubini David Russell Juan Samuel Richard Serra Jake Shears M. Night Shyamalan[17] Gary Sinise Jon Stewart[18] Michael Stipe Dominique Strauss-Kahn Meryl Streep Uma Thurman Justin Timberlake Christy Turlington Mo Vaughn Lauren Weisberger Kate Winslet La Monte Young

Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal had high profiles in the district's revival when they co-produced the dramatic television anthology series TriBeCa in 1993 and co-founded the annual Tribeca Film Festival in 2002. De Niro also claimed ownership of all domain names incorporating the text "Tribeca" for domain names with any content related to film festivals. In particular, he had a dispute with the owner of the website tribeca.net.^[19][20]