GOLD STREET

TWO decades ago while meandering about  in the rain down Maiden Lane in the eastern Financial District downtown in May 2003 I came across an unmarked street issuing north. I ascertained after about a block’s march that I had stumbled on Gold Street, which, to me at the time, embodied all that they tell you about downtown Manhattan’s meandering cart paths. Though cars do use it, Gold Street is one of Manhattan’s narrowest, and therein lay my fascination.

Oddly enough for the Financial District Gold Street is not named for the commodity or the metal, but for the color. When the Dutch arrived in the early 1600s they found a field in this general area that was filled with yellow celandine flowers, which they called the gouwe and subsequently the new settlement the Gouwenberg. The British, with their penchant for taking Dutch names and re-molding them for English-speaking ears, simply re-named it Golden Hill – which became the site of a battle between the redcoats and patriots in 1770. After a period in which the street was called Rutgers Hill, for patriot and Tammany politician Henry Rutgers (who owned vast land holdings in Manhattan), it eventually reverted to simply Gold Street. Fittingly the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (lots of gold there) is a block away, at 33 Liberty Street.

For the past 20 years ago at least a portion of Gold Street has been completely hsrouded by scaffolds. In 2003, though, I wandered up the narrow route, whose ancient twists are still there, and squeezed off some images.

There’s also a Gold Street in Brooklyn near the downtown area that I keep meaning to navigate. Maybe soon.

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2/6/24