I have been perusing my collection of ancient maps, blowing off the dust from maps I have in my closet I haven’t turned to in years; I have them collected in three milk crates, numbering about 300 in my estimation, I’m paying special attention to the NYC maps, of course and lately have focused on Hagstrom’s special, detailed Lower Manhattan financial district map. It’s so detailed with building names that, of course, it was outdated sooon after it was printed as Manhattan is an ever-evolving beast. I was reminded of an old street name I had seen in lower Manhattan but never have seen in person, and to my knowledge, no photographs exist; in the old days, tax photographers didn’t take pictures of alleys in which there were no buildings to tax. Film cost money.
In this 1910 detail, to which I have added State and Whitehall Street names, notice Cheseborough Court, a space between what was the former Battery Park Building and the Maritime Building, as well as the Cheseborough Building on the southeast corner of State and Pearl Streets. I walked the length of Pearl Street in 2016.
Because Lower Manhattan was mostly populated by shipping offices in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, both the building and the short alley may have been named for the Cheseborough, a merchant sailing shipping vessel that sunk off the coast of Japan in 1889. In turn it was named for a San Francisco merchant, Andronicus Cheseborough. On its ill-fated mission to deliver oil to Japan, it left from New York.
Moving ahead, here’s an except from that detailed lower Manhattan Hagstrom I was talking about, which Cheseborough Court and Building still intact. Of the buildings between State, Bridge and Whitehall, only the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary, now a shrine to Elizabeth Seton, the first saint born on American soil, remains.
I cannot emphasize enough the quality of these old Hagstroms, which serve now as a time machine to the past.
Though to my knowledge Cheseborough Court was never photographed, its “ghost” can be seen in this 1940 tax photo, as there is a space indicated between the Battery Park Building, left foreground, and Marotime Building, rear left background.
In the title card photo above is One Battery Park Plaza, which fills the block between Bridge, Pearl, State and Whitehall. It was constructed in 1971, Emery Roth & Sons, and likely eliminated all trace of what was Cheseborough Court. Meanwhile, the Cheseborough Building was replaced by 17 State Street, whose curved facade is prominent in the view from the Staten Island Ferry was it approaches Manhattan. It too was designed by the Emery Roth architectural firm and opened in 1989. Keith Haring’s “Two Dancing Figures” has accompanied the curved tower since its opening.
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7/3/23
7 comments
Andronicus Cheseborough is quite an epic name.
I see the old Whitehall Army induction center on the map that was bombed
by the Weatherheads.Boy,that sure helped bring an end to the war,huh?
And is it Cheesebrough or Cheeseborough?No man can say for sure and
the reason has long been lost in the shifting sands of Little Neck
As usual, Chris: well said. However, the communist terrorists you refer to as Weatherheads called themselves The Weather Underground. Their legacy is the wreckage that is urban America in the 21st century. “Sic transit gloria mundi”. Happy Independence Day, one & all.
They were called the Weathermen, and later became known as the Weather Underground. They were not Communists, but radical leftists. Why can’t people ever understand the difference? And whilst I don’t subscribe to violence, actions like protests, marches, citizen agitation to their Washington representatives, and other things, yes, including the bombings, really did help to bring an end to the war, at least our end of it. The poor South Vietnamese were abandoned and left to their own devices after that. We seem to make a habit of doing that.
One interesting angle is that Cheseborough Manufacturing (which had its headquarters at the Cheseborough Building you mention, starting in 1898) was at one time an affiliate of Standard Oil, which had its own headquarters very close by. Cheseborough, it should be remembered, manufactured petroleum by-products, like petroleum jelly and Vaseline.
YEs, Cheesbrough, the petroleum products (vaseline) company, later merged with Ponds in the 1950s, forming Cheesebrough-Ponds, Ponds was famous, from the mid-19th century, for a cold-cream product that started as a patent medicine but grew to be one of the most popular of cosmetics of women, up to very recent times. My mom slathered it on her face every night before bed, and I still remember the ads for it, which is why I recognized the name Cheesebrough.
I know that,I just like to play with words sometimes.You got
GearHeads,MetalHeads,etc.
I think that happened around 1970 or so.Wasnt really all that
impressive.Must not have been that big of a bomb.
Anyway,Happy 4th! (but you cant buy M-80s anymore)