I still have grand dreams and ambitions. Publish a book and own my own place? Done years ago. Marriage? Make millions? Let’s not get crazy. However, it popped into my head recently that I haven’t listed every street in Manhattan that runs for one and only one block. My criteria for this project were simple. The one-block street should intersect only the two streets where it begins and ends (or one street, if it’s a crescent and begins and ends at the same street) and shouldn’t be a section of an interrupted numbered street. And, they can’t be honorific street names slapped onto already existing streets.
Seen above, Tiny York St. is the only street in Manhattan named for its original British namesake, James, then Duke of York, the second son of King Charles I, who was in the royal family when Britain took control of New Netherland in 1664 and renamed it New York. (York Ave. on the east side was named for World War I hero Alvin C. York.) Until 1823, York St. was the eastern extension of Hubert St., and until 1928 it extended through to W. Broadway. The southern extension of 6th Ave. for the new IND subway that year cost York St. about 40 feet now occupied by the 6th Ave. roadbed. York St., between 6th Ave. and St. John’s La. north of Beach St., is only 103 feet long, making it Manhattan’s second-shortest “one and done,” second only to Edgar St. further downtown.
I think it was 1992 when I first spotted Renwick St.. In the summer of that year I was freelancing at a type shop named ModKomp, entered from a loading dock on Greenwich near Vandam. This was still the era when you pulled long galleys of print, cut them and pasted them on boards; there was a lot more dexterity involved in the print business then. At lunch I’d take long walks in the neighborhood. Real estate barons hadn’t yet dubbed the area Hudson Square, so this was a part of western Soho or even the West Village and it was wholly industrial, with the exception of a couple of bars here and there like the Ear Inn on Spring. And, there it was, emanating north from the honking cacophony of Canal and a couple blocks from the earsplitting madness of West… tiny Renwick St.. It’s one of an odd trio of one-or two-block streets that run north-south parallelling Hudson and Greenwich.
By some accounts “Weehawken” is derived from a Lenape Indian phrase meaning “rocks that look like trees.” Weehawken St., which runs between Christopher and W. 10th Sts. just east of West St., stands on what, in the colonial era, was on the grounds of the Newgate State Prison. Nearby Charles La. is a Belgian-blocked alley that used to run along the prison’s north wall. #6 Weehawken, seen here, also fronts on West St. and is also known as #392-392 West St.. By many accounts it’s the only building left over from the old Weehawken Market and one of the few wood-frame buildings left in Manhattan. It had been in a row of similar buildings that had all been demolished by 1937.
The first of a pair, along with Cornelia St., of one-block Greenwich Village streets between Bleecker and W. 4th St. west of 6th Ave., Jones St. was named for Dr. Gardiner Jones, on whose land the city constructed the street in the early-1800s. Great Jones Street, running between Broadway and the Bowery in the place of E. 3rd St., and the intersecting privatized Jones Alley were named for his brother-in-law, a renowned lawyer, Samuel Jones. (The “Great” in Great Jones Street refers to its relative substantial width in comparison to the usual in the 1800s, not lawyer Jones’ fame.)
In older Northeast cities, or the oldest parts of those cities, the street system may follow a rough grid, but there are plenty of diagonals and meanderings. There’s also a wealth of small alleys and dead-ends, used to enter the back doors of businesses, but also home to out-of-the-way dwellings. Unusually, NYC never developed many of these alleys, especially in Manhattan.
There are exceptions such as Stuyvesant St., between E. 9th and 10th Sts. and 2nd and 3rd Aves., which used to be the driveway to the Stuyvesant family farmhouse when the area was completely rural, and Asser Levy Place on E. 23rd St.—a cut-off former section of Ave. A. And then, there’s Broadway Alley, between E. 26th and 27th Sts. immediately west of 3rd Ave. Broadway Alley, by some accounts, was laid out as early as the 1830s as a break between surrounding buildings.
By 1909, mapmakers began showing the name “Broadway Alley” even though it’s five blocks east of the actual Broadway, which is the longest street in Manhattan and the Bronx. There’s speculation that along the way, it acquired the name because local property owners wanted to impart a gay (in the “upbeat” sense of the word) theatrical aura to the place. However, as you might expect, in its almost two-century history, it has been home to prostitution and crime. It was once lined on its east side with stables and tenement houses. A story holds that the Barnum and Bailey Circus had kept their elephants in the alley at one time. My chief attraction to Broadway alley is the antique Type G wall lamp on E. 26th St.
I was under the impression that Cherokee Pl., between E. 77th and 78th Sts. near the FDR Drive, was built through when the Drive was constructed here in the early-1940s, but the short alley has been here since 1912. It was named for the Cherokee Club, an E. 79th St. headquarters of the powerful Democratic Party organization, Tammany Hall. The Cherokee Club is still there, now an apartment building. But what dominates Cherokee Pl., and has since 1912, is the former Shively Sanitary Tenements (now Cherokee Apartments) with its distinctive balconies facing the river. Before today’s tuberculosis treatments, it was thought that the best way to treat “consumption” was with plenty of light and air. The Shively Tenements were conceived with that thought in mind by Dr. Henry Shively, a leading physician in the treatment of tuberculosis at Presbyterian Hospital. Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt sponsored the project, which was built by architect Henry Atterbury Smith from 1909 to 1912. Every apartment in the building had a balcony, accessed by floor-to-ceiling windows, and each apartment could also be accessed from staircases, built with seats so those afflicted with TB could rest on their way up, in the inner courtyard. The apartments were filled with fresh air and sunlight in an era when most housing featured shadowy, dark rooms. The Shively Tenements were six stories high, making the top floors an uncomfortable climb for anyone of a certain age, let alone TB patients.
Cherokee Pl. wasn’t always “one and done.” Formerly two blocks, the southernmost block, between E. 76th and 77th, became a public walkway adjacent to John Jay Park.
“Pumpkin House,” Chittenden Ave.
The shortest north-south “Avenue” in Manhattan runs for one short block between W. 186th and 187th Sts. one block west of Cabrini Boulevard. It could better be classified as a “Place” but it’s been an Avenue for several decades now.
There is, to me, a mystery about this street but not regarding its name. The avenue is built atop a high cliff overlooking the Hudson River and the New Jersey Palisades beyond. In the colonial era, Manhattan was settled from south to north and upper Manhattan remained relatively rural until almost the 20th century. What’s now Washington Heights was parceled into several large estates, one of which was owned by an individual named Lucius Chittenden, whose 130 acres ran from Kingsbridge Rd. (today’s Broadway) to the river and from where W. 185th to Dyckman Sts. would be now. By the early-1900s, these estates were sold off and streets were cut through to as strict a grid as was possible given the hilly terrain.
#16 Chittenden Ave. is colloquially known as the Pumpkin House although the window arrangement that gives it its name can’t be seen from Chittenden Ave. itself. Instead, you have to make your way down to the pedestrian/bike path that runs along the southbound lane of the Henry Hudson Parkway to see what “Pumpkin House” is all about. Though obscured by vegetation much of the year, the house is constructed on 40-foot high iron girders. Construction was under way in 1925 and finished within the year. However, one more change to the building brought it to its current aspect.
The original owner of #16 Chittenden was Cleveland Walcutt, a partner in partner in Walcutt Bros. Company, a printing and lithography firm that produced decorative embossing that was used to decorate walls. Newspaper magnate James Gordon Bennett, Jr. of the New York Herald sold the property to Walcutt, who built on the river side, which meant the building needed plenty of support on the steeply dropping cliff, necessitating the iron pylons.
Walcutt’s company went bankrupt and he was forced to sell the house after only a couple of years. The buyer was Charles Schwartz, secretary-treasurer of Universal Liquidators, Inc. Because he didn’t like the unfinished aspect of the iron stilts, they were cladded in thick concrete, bringing the building to its current appearance. But Schwartz didn’t have long to enjoy the dwelling, either. He died by carbon monoxide poisoning (whether it was a suicide is unclear) at 44 in 1935. When it was last sold in 2016, it went for over $6 million.
—Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013)