MARKETFIELD Street is one of the city’s few L-shaped routes, proceeding from Broad Street opposite #75 and then doglegging west and north to Beaver and New Streets. Nothing to write home to Mother much about here; Marketfield is mainly home to service entrances. I did check to see if there were some remaining window shutters on the back walls of some Beaver Street-facing structures and indeed a couple are still there.
“Marketfield” is an English transliteration of the Dutch term “marktveldt” or “field market” — it once led to the Battery Park area, which was a livestock and produce market in the Dutch days. Marketfield Street was once called “Petticoat Lane”, a name I wish had been kept (you will find discarded bras at Jeremy’s Ale House on nearby Front Street in the Seaport area).
Interestingly, Marketfield Street wasn’t always a dogleg. Owing to its former western extension to Broadway at Battery Place, the section of Marketfield facing Beaver Street was once part of New Street, as this early 20th Century map shows. See Comments for a further exploration of this.
In the title photo, Marketfield Street is more interesting for the buildings that border it on Broad Street. On the right: what does #70 Wall Street at Beaver Street, the former American Bank Note Company building, have to do with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the seer that the Beatles and other notables visited in India in 1968? Plenty, as the building in the past has been home to the Center For Leadership Performance, an institute offering instruction in Transcendental Meditation (TM), a technique professed by the Maharishi.
The building itself is a landmarked neoclassical structure built from 1907-1908 (Kirby, Petit & Green) and it did indeed at one time produce bank notes, stamps, stock certificates and other pieces of paper used for currency and backed by the US government. After outgrowing this location it expanded to other locales in NYC, including the former American Bank Note Building in Hunt’s Point. American Bank Note was associated with the building until 1988.
On the left is #74 Broad, which is unlandmarked but is interesting for its Corinthian pilasters (half columns attached to the building) in front and the French Second Empire slanted roof at the roofline. Formerly it was home to office furniture maker A. Blank (established 1899), which had a magnificent vertical neon sign in another location further south on Broad Street, as shown on this FNY page.
Presently the building is home to Mexican taqueria Tacombi and Common Ditch Social, which at first I took to be a seafood joint but is actually a barber shop.
A certain webmaster is cited in Google’s Marketfield Street page.
One and Done: Lower Manhattan Alleys
Check out the ForgottenBook, take a look at the gift shop. As always, “comment…as you see fit.” I earn a small payment when you click on any ad on the site.
7/25/25
6 comments
Google Maps considers the short leg of the L part of New Street rather than Marketfield.
DOT marks it Marketfield
Sadly, regardless of what the DOT (and current street signs) may proclaim, a few minutes of poking around in some corners of the internet seems to make it clear that this dogleg portion of the street was part of an extension to New Street southward from Beaver to Stone Streets.
Marketfield Street itself ran all the way through from Broad Street to the southern edge of Bowling Green, but apparently the construction of the expanded headquarters for the New York Produce Exchange Building in 1880 cut off Marketfield mid-block. The “back” of the Produce Exchange (with the New Street extension) was seemingly used as a loading area with a covered area spanning New St. just north of the intersection with Stone. This is generally observable by comparing maps from 1767, 1850, 1867 (Dripps) and 1885.
According to a Landmarks Preservation Commission document from 1983 regarding the Street Plan of New Amsterdam and Colonial New York, “Marketfield Street extends from New Street to Broad Street. It was in existence by c.l626; the present name dates from 1677. The present street incorporates one colonial street: Marckvelt Steegie, or Marckvelt Steegh (by 1658), later Petticoate Lane (by 1695). Marketfield originally extended to Broadway; the portion between Broadway and New Street was closed in 1880 to accommodate the construction of the Produce Exchange. Marketfield designates the location of the first Dutch livestock market in New Amsterdam. ”
So, based on this description, the present-day Marketfield is what remains of one of NYC’s oldest streets which is actually almost ready to celebrate its 400th anniversary!
(I could try to provide links to sources if I knew how to add those, but they’re not difficult to track down via historical maps for New York City and Wikipedia (for some details on the Produce Exchange and its impact on Marketfield St.)
I have added a map showing this ^ on the page
There’s still a Petticoat Lane in the Bronx, north of the Edwin L Grant Highway (which is itself an unfortunate renaming to honor a now-forgotten WW1 soldier of the former Boscobel Road).
No. You mean Featherbed Lane.