Manhattan New York City 2009 PD 20091201 226

Broome Street is an east–west street in

Lower Manhattan Lower Manhattan, also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York City, is the southernmost part of the Boroughs of New York City, New York City borough of Manhattan. The neighborhood is History of New York City, the historical birthplace o ...

. It runs nearly the full width of

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

island, from Hudson Street in the west to Lewis Street in the east, near the entrance to the Williamsburg Bridge. The street is interrupted in a number of places by parks, buildings, and Allen Street's median. The street was named after

Staten Island Staten Island ( ) is the southernmost of the boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Richmond County and situated at the southernmost point of New York (state), New York. The borough is separated from the ad ...

-born John Broome, who was a Colonial merchant and politician and became a Lieutenant Governor of New York State.

History

According to a map sourced from the

New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second-largest public library in the United States behind the Library of Congress a ...

collection, the area around Broome Street was developed in the first decade of the 1800s as part of the neighborhood known at that time as 'New Delaney's Square,' although this is probably a mistake for "Delancey," as the Delancey family had owned the land for many decades and had already begun planning development in the 1760s. The street is named after John Broome, an early city alderman and

lieutenant governor of New York The lieutenant governor of New York is a Constitution of New York, constitutional office in the executive branch of the Government of the State of New York. It is the second highest-ranking official in state government. The lieutenant governo ...

in 1804. The architecture along the street is distinctive for its use of

cast iron Cast iron is a class of iron–carbon alloys with a carbon content of more than 2% and silicon content around 1–3%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloying elements determine the form in which its car ...

and is strongly influenced by Griffith Thomas, who designed several buildings along Broome Street, including the Gunther Building. The Our Lady of Vilnius Church stood in the street between 1910 and 2015. As part of an experiment, in 1948, Broome Street west of Chrystie Street was converted to a one-way westbound street. In the 1960s, as the city was going through massive urban renewal and revitalization projects, Broome Street became the proposed route for the Lower Manhattan Expressway, designed by Robert Moses. Had the construction been carried out, the ten-lane elevated highway would have completely replaced the street, along with all of the buildings on its north side, many of which are now land-marked as part of the historic cast-iron district. However, protests opposing the project led by

Jane Jacobs Jane Isabel Jacobs (''née'' Butzner; 4 May 1916 – 25 April 2006) was an American-Canadian journalist, author, theorist, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics. Her book ''The Death and Life of Great American Ci ...

gained enough momentum to stop the project from going forward. 330 Broome Street was the address of the A's art space.
Margalit Berriet, ''W.A.R.S. (Women Artists of the Rivington School) De Alors à Aujourd’hui'', Mémoire de l’Avenir, , pp.374–383

References

Notes

External links

* {{Streets of Manhattan Lower East Side SoHo, Manhattan Streets in Manhattan