The streets and the parks

The street plan here predates the grid, which is why nothing quite lines up and why the small triangular parks exist.

Lower Manhattan was built before the 1811 Commissioners' Plan imposed a grid on everything above Houston Street. Tribeca's streets therefore follow older logic — property lines, shorelines, and paths worn between them. Where three of those meet, you get a triangle, and several of those triangles became parks.

Duane Park

A small triangle bounded by Hudson, Duane and Staple Streets, and one of the oldest public spaces in New York — the city acquired it in the closing years of the eighteenth century, making it, by most accounts, the first plot of land purchased specifically for use as a public park.

It is tiny. It is also the best place in the neighbourhood to sit, and the buildings around it are the finest concentration in Tribeca.

This was the centre of the butter, cheese and egg trade — the wholesale dairy district — for roughly a century. The buildings around the park were built for that business, and several still carry the evidence in their ground-floor openings.

Washington Market Park

Larger, greener, and named for the enormous wholesale produce market that occupied this area until it moved to Hunts Point in the 1960s. The park was created as part of the redevelopment that followed. It has a lawn, a playground and a gazebo, and it functions as the neighbourhood's back garden.

Staple Street

A one-block alley off Duane Park, notable for the skybridge crossing it — an enclosed third-storey walkway connecting two buildings. It is one of the most photographed things in Tribeca and most people find it by accident.

Bogardus Garden and the small triangles

Several other slivers of land where streets meet at odd angles have been planted and given names. They are worth noticing as a set: they are the visible remains of a street plan that was drawn by use rather than by a commission.

Walking it

The neighbourhood is small enough to cover properly in an hour or two. A reasonable route runs from Chambers Street north through Washington Market Park, east to Duane Park and Staple Street, then north on Hudson and west towards the river.