CANAL STREET NOW AND THEN

CANAL Street is among the noisiest streets in New York City because it’s a major truck route. In the 1960s, NYC traffic czar Robert Moses was thwarted in his attempt to build a Lower Manhattan Expressway connecting the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges to the Holland Tunnel. It would have involved an elevated highway running down Broome Street, not that I would have favored such a thing. (I would have favored a vehicular tunnel under Manhattan connecting the bridges and tunnel.)

With no express roadway, truck traffic employs Canal Street to get from, say, Brooklyn to New Jersey, and NYC drivers, especially truck drivers, are horn happy when they are feeling thwarted or delayed and the sharp, sudden horn noise can be maddening. Canal Street’s small retail businesses, which often involved sidewalk displays, have always attracted large crowds. Unfortunately in recent years, such small businesses have been priced out by rising rents, as Nathan Kensinger relates in a 2018 Canal Street feature in Curbed.

Canal Street sits atop a ditch, or canal, that drained Collect Pond into the Hudson River. The pond, located where today’s Foley Square courthouse neighborhood is today, had become fetid by the Revolutionary War and gave rise to the undesirable Five Points neighborhood. The ditch has been covered since 1819 and the road built over it is Canal Street, so named because “Drainage Ditch Street” is not exactly good public relations.

Above we see the triangle formed by Canal, Walker and Baxter Streets, as seen from Mulberry Street, in a Street View scene from 2023.

Here’s a look west on Canal from Mulberry from approximately the same spot from way back in June 1907, courtesy of the Facebook group Al Ponte’s Time Machine. I know many don’t like Metaworld, but it has a number of pages with vintage photos like this one.

The only major building seen in both shots is #120 Walker, which sits between the V formed by Walker and Canal. Today it’s home to a number of businesses, and Apple has leased a giant billboard seen by westbound Canal Street traffic for some years now.

Though the demographics and clothing have changed at Canal and Mulberry since 1907 (it’s now the heart of Chinatown; what did they call it before it was Chinatown?), fresh produce is still sold from wood barrels on the curbline as seen on the right, and I’ll bet you can still find furniture sold in front of several businesses, as seen on the left.

Moe Levy is seen in two major ads in the 1907 shot.  For information on Moe Levy, I’ll once again turn to the Indispensable Walter Grutchfield…

Moe Levy’s obituary in the New York Times, 19 Aug. 1939, read in part, “Moe Levy, pioneer in the low-priced retail men’s clothing field and founder of the chain of stores which bears his name, died of heart disease early yesterday morning in his home, 300 Central Park West. His age was 74. An outstanding figure among the clothing merchants of the city for many of the fifty-seven years since he started business in a tiny shop in Walker Street, Mr. Levy had been forced by his health to take a less active part in the business in recent years. His health had been failing for some time and he had been confined to bed for a week when death occurred. Mr. Levy’s first little shop was on the site of the company’s main store at 119 Walker Street. Seven other large stores scattered about the city make up the chain built up by the man who started to work at the age of 14. He was born in Suvalk, Russia, on Jan. 1, 1865, and was brought to this country when he was 3 years old. He went to work when he was graduated from grammar school and was still a boy when he went into business for himself. Despite his youth, Mr. Levy had a flair for retailing and he soon won a steady clientele. As his business increased and additional stores were opened and subsequently enlarged, Mr. Levy made a point of keeping in personal contact with his customers. Until his health failed he could be seen at his stores, always impeccably dressed and with a flower in his buttonhole…”

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Moe Levy (1865-1939) manufactured and retailed men’s clothing and specialized in low prices. From the home base of 119-125 Walker St. (which would now be considered a part of Chinatown) he opened numerous branch outlets in the city including Brooklyn, the Bronx and Jamaica, Queens. Particularly long-lived was the branch store on East 149 St. in the Bronx, first at 409 E. 149 (1921-1939), then across the street at 380 E. 149 (1940-1951).

I am unsure, but “ivories” may have referred to products made of ivory (produced from tusks of elephants and other beasts with lengthy teeth).

The street signpost in the center interests me as the base is the same as the gaslamp posts that were then being phased out in favor of electric lamps. I am wondering if they were built as signposts, or are converted gaslamps? No one alive can answer that question!

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7/29/25