West Broadway is a north-south street in the New York Cityborough of Manhattan, separated into two parts by Tribeca Park. The northern part begins at Tribeca Park, near the intersection of Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue), Walker Street and Beach Street in Tribeca. It runs northbound as a one-way street past Canal Street and becomes two-way at the intersection with Grand Street one block farther north. West Broadway then operates as a main north-south thoroughfare through SoHo until its northern end at Houston Street, on the border between SoHo and Greenwich Village. North of Houston Street, it is designated as LaGuardia Place, which continues until Washington Square South.
West Broadway was once two streets: Chapel Street below Canal Street, and Laurens Street above it.
In the early 1750s, Trinity Church laid down a street grid on its property, known as King's Farm, between the Hudson River and Broadway in lower Manhattan. About the same time, Trinity founded King's College, now Columbia University, and donated a plot of land bordered by Barclay, Murray, and Church Streets for its campus,[3] to which the school moved in 1760.[4] According to a 1755 map, "Chappel Street" was part of this grid, running from Barkly (Barclay) to just past Warrens (Warren) Street and ending at the palisade which protected the north end of the city.[5] In the 1760s, Trinity Church ceded its streets between Fulton and Reade Streets to the city and Anthony Rutgers' heirs, owners of the land north of Reade Street, mapped their property into streets and lots. In the 1790s, Chapel Street was graded and paved from Murray to Reade Streets and extended to Leonard Street.[6]
In 1831, the New York City Common Council renamed the two blocks of Chapel Street between Barclay and Murray Streets "College Place".[7] A decade later Chapel Street was renamed "West Broadway" with the same purpose as that behind the renaming of East Broadway, to reduce the traffic congestion on Broadway itself,[8] but both names were used for over twenty more years. An 1835 map calls Chapel Street "West Broadway"[9] but an 1850 map calls it "Chapel Street".[10][note 2] Around 1850, the two blocks from Murray to Chambers Street were renamed to be part of College Place.[11]
Origin of Laurens Street
Laurens Street belonged to a different grid. In 1788, the Bayard family, dividing their farm into blocks and lots for sale, laid down eight streets parallel to Broadway, numbered from east to west, plus seven cross streets. A few years later, the numbered streets were named, and by the turn of the century they were renamed again for Revolutionary War officers, including Henry Laurens (see map).[12][13] By the 1830s, the neighborhood was a red-light district nicknamed "Rotten Row",[14] and by the 1860s it was beset by poverty, filth, and violent crime. An 1860 proposal to widen Laurens Street and extend it north one block to Washington Square Park[15] was carried out in 1869 and 1870. In addition, a roadway was built to connect West Broadway to Fifth Avenue, introducing carriage traffic into Washington Square Park, and Laurens Street was officially renamed South Fifth Avenue in an attempt to improve its image.[16][17]
The 1860 proposal to widen Laurens Street had accompanied a proposal to widen College Place and extend it southward to Greenwich Street.[18][note 3] It was finally carried out in 1895,[19] when Laurens Street and South Fifth Avenue were both made part of West Broadway.[20]
LaGuardia Place
In 1967 the section of the street north of Houston Street was renamed "LaGuardia Place", after former mayor Fiorello La Guardia.[21] It features LaGuardia Gardens, between West 3rd and Bleecker Streets, which includes a commissioned statue of the "Little Flower", as La Guardia was nicknamed. Sculpted by Neil Estern, with a pedestal designed by architect Ruth Shapiro, the bronze statue was dedicated in 1994, and was commissioned and donated to the city by the Friends of LaGuardia Place.[22] The sculpture was commissioned as part of a project to beautify and revitalize that section of the street, whose buildings had been torn down many years before by Robert Moses to be part of the Fifth Avenue South connector to his never-built Lower Manhattan Expressway.[23]
The Sixth Avenue Elevated, formally the Metropolitan Elevated Railway, opened on June 5, 1878. It ran above College Place, West Broadway, and South Fifth Avenue from Murray Street, where it turned from Church Street, to Amity (West 3rd) Street, where it turned to Sixth Avenue.[26] The Sixth Avenue El was abandoned on December 4, 1938 and razed in 1939, being replaced by the underground IND Eighth Avenue Line.[27]
^A similar proposal had been made ten years earlier. ("Common Council". New York Herald. November 9, 1850. p. 7, col. 2, "Board of Assistant Aldermen", "Reports of Committees", paragraph 3. Committee on Streets…to non-concur in resolution to employ a surveyor to estimate the expense of extending and widening College Place from Barclay to Greenwich Streets. Adopted.)
^Koeppel, Gerard (2015). City on a Grid. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Da Capo Press. p. 11. ISBN9780306822841. …Trinity Church in the early 1750s laid out a portion of its wedge of land between Broadway and the Hudson River into a small neighborhood of rectangular blocks around its newly chartered King's College, at the town's then suburban fringe between Barclay and Murray Streets, west of Church Street. This marked the birth of both a great school (now Columbia University) and the idea of rectilinear planning on Manhattan.
^"250 Years". Columbia College Today. March 2004. Archived from the original on December 25, 2016. Retrieved February 16, 2017. 1755: Trinity Church presents King's College with a parcel of land bordered by Church Street, Barclay Street, Murray Street and the Hudson River, and intersected by Park Place.… 1760: King's College moves to a three-acre site at Park Place, overlooking the Hudson River. The campus comprises a three-story stone building, a private park and 24 rooms total for living quarters, a chapel, classrooms and dining.
^Harris, Gale; Urbanelli, Elisa; McHugh, Kevin (December 1992). Tribeca South Historic District Designation Report(PDF) (Report). New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. pp. 5 (paragraph 2) and 44 (paragraph 1).
^Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York 1784–1831. Vol. 19. New York: City of New York. 1917. p. 706 (May 9, 1831). A Petition of the Trustees of Columbia College and owners of property in the vicinity of Murray Barclay & Chaple streets praying that, that part of Chaple street lying between Murray and Barclay street may be called "College Place" was read and the prayer of the Petition granted.
^Burr, David H. (1834–36). "1835 David Burr Map of New York City". Geographicus Rare Antique Maps. Brooklyn, New York. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved March 2, 2017.
^Mitchell, Samuel Augustus. "1850 Mitchell Map of New York City". Geographicus Rare Antique Maps. Brooklyn, New York. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved March 2, 2017.
^Gilfoyle, Timothy J. (1992). City of Eros. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 47. ISBN0393311082. Along Church and Chapel Streets, continuing north of Canal Street into Laurens Street (Rotten Row, as it was nicknamed), were many expensive brothels.
^"The Board of Councilmen". The New York Times. February 21, 1860. The Street Committee was requested to report upon the utility of widening Laurens-street twenty-five feet on the westerly side, and also of extending it to Fourth street.
^"Our Ruined Squares"(PDF). The New York Times. September 29, 1871. The opening of a carriage communication between the north and south sides of this square was perhaps not to be avoided. But was it therefore necessary to destroy the square utterly?
^"The Board of Councilmen". The New York Times. February 21, 1860. [A resolution] to have College-place widened on the westerly side, from Chambers-street to Barclay, and extended to Fulton-street [was referred to the Committee on Streets].
