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 It’s so detailed with building names that, of course, it was outdated sooon after it was printed as Manhattan is an ever-evolving beast.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