Catherine Street / Madison Street			(40.712011,-73.996706)
Brooks Brothers		NE corner of Catherine and Cherry Streets	(40.710077, -73.9963)
Founded April 7th, 1818, by Henry Sands Brooks, Brooks Brothers (then named H.& D.H Brooks & Company) is the oldest men's clothier in America. When Henry Sands Brooks died in 1833, Henry Jr. took over the business, his sons (the brothers) were named Elisha, Edward, Daniel and John took over the family business in 1850. After the Catherine and Cherry store, Brooks Brothers moved to their second location at 466-468 Broadway (NE corner of Grand Street) and remained from 1857 to 1869 or 1874. It had a very fancy setup with Tiffany chandeliers and gas fixtures. Brooks Brothers supplied uniforms to the Union Army and tailored special uniforms for Union Generals Ulysses S. Grant, Joseph Hooker, Phillip H. Sheridan and William Sherman. Brooks Brothers also were known to sell clothing to government war contractors and the upper classes (whom the rioters called $300 men because they could buy themselves out of serving in the Civil War for $300). All this attracted mobs of angry protesters to the original flagship store during the Irish Draft Riots (July 13th to July 16th, 1863). The rioters turned on the store lights so they could find the most expensive goods. The 1st Precinct at 29 Broad Street sent 30 policemen through the front door of Brooks Brothers. Police from the 3rd and 4th Precincts then helped drive the escaping rioters down Cherry Street. The 1st Precinct then went to tenement houses by Cherry and Market Streets where they recovered several wagon loads of stolen Brooks Brothers inventories (approximately worth $10,000). The Draft Riot mobs started their attacks at the draft offices and then moved to the Colored Orphan Asylum. Also on this first day of the riots, they besieged the house of Mayor George Opdyke (who had by federal troop protection) and other wealthy Republicans homes. On both the first and second days, rioters converged on the offices of The Tribune on Newspaper Row. The Tribune was the most outspoken Republican newspaper in NYC. Its editor Horace Greeley was one of the founding members of the Republican Party (and unsuccessfully ran for President in 1872). About 150 policemen scattered the rioters, who were smashing the lower portions of the Tribune building. Many African Americans hid in police stations to escape the savage rioters hunting for them. Unluckier blacks were beaten and left hanging by their necks from NYC trees. Black neighborhoods, such as Little Africa on Sullivan and Carmine Streets between Houston and Bleecker Streets, and Roosevelt Street east of Chatham Square, were also attacked on the second day of the Draft Riots. Rioters also trashed mansions on Fifth Avenue and Lexington Avenue and chopped down telegraph poles to sabotage police communication. By the third day, July 15th, a Wednesday, African American homes on the lower west side and off 6th Avenue were burned and looted. The mobs also were continuing to attack prominent Republican homes and Protestant missions. The exhausted police managed to protect a musket stockpile at a store on Broadway by 33rd Street, but an arms factory on 22nd Street called the Union Steam Works was captured by the mob. That evening, rioters were massing on First Avenue between 18th and 19th Streets and the police and military started firing grapeshot into the crowds. The streets were cleared, but the rioters started shooting down NYC's protectors from the surrounding buildings, and the police and military retreated. A second wave of soldiers attacked the rioters around 11 p.m., and stopped the mobs within and hour and a half. Trainloads of militia, five regiments fresh from Gettysburg, hit NYC by dawn and started battling the mob, almost 70,000 strong. By Thursday night the largest working class rebellion in NYC history was over. In 1869, Brooks Brothers moved for a few years to Union Square, then in 1874, Brooks Brothers opened their fourth location at 670 Broadway and Bond Street, their fifth at Broadway and 22nd Street in 1884. The sixth location, which became their flagship store was a ten-story building at 346 Madison Avenue off 44th Street, which opened in 1915. Besides the Madison Avenue store a second store was launched in 1931, at 111 Broadway at Wall Street. Another store opened after Word War II, at 67 Liberty Street. It then moved to One Liberty Plaza in 1976, which is still open (along with the flagship store at 346 Madison Avenue). Factoids: Lincoln was wearing a Brooks Brothers suit when he was assassinated. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Franklin Roosevelt and Clark Gable were also Brooks Brothers customers.
Catherine Market		Between Catherine, Market, Cherry and Water Streets	(40.710093, -73.995291)
The NYC-owned market that the poor favored opened in 1786 as the Catherine Market, featuring about 80 vendors; 58 covered booths and about 25 open-air vendors. Jewish, Irish and Chinese merchants offered residents of the surrounding tenements the lowest prices in NYC. The poorest folks always waited until after midnight to get the best deals for the leftovers. The Catherine Market was known for its meats, fish, clams and mostly oysters. While they eat little all week, the poor feasted on Sunday so Saturday nights and Sunday mornings were busy. Like the Oswego and Fly Markets, the Catherine Street Market had butchers and sold meat. To get fresh meat otherwise, citizens had to go beyond Chambers Street to the east side of Roosevelt Street where the municipally licensed slaughterhouses were allowed to operate. Nicholas Bayard's family ran a slaughterhouse polluting the eastern banks of the Collect Pond during the later half of the 18th century. Bayard owned property north and east of the Collect Pond and used the slaughterhouse to somehow increase his property value. Hendrick (Harman) Rutgers named Catherine Street and Catherine Slip after his wife Catherine (1711-1779), whom he married in 1732. Catherine was the daughter of NYC's 1698 Mayor Johannes De Peyster (1666–1711) and the niece of Abraham DePeyster, who donated the Wall Street land for the second City Hall. Henry Street, named after Catherine's son, Henry Rutgers, runs parallel to East Broadway (named in the 1820s) and was once called Harman Street, named after Harman Rutgers. Catherine Rutgers had seven children; four of them died young. Market Street, a former red light district, was named after the Catherine Street Market in 1813, after being known (since 1795) as George Street. About eight streets in colonial NYC had the name “George,” not for George Washington but for British monarch George III. In 1845, the oyster boats moved from where the East River ends at Coenties Slip upriver off the Catherine Market. The Catherine Market was first vested in NYC between 1686 and 1730. In the late 19th century it was a public market run by the Manhattan Borough President. Catherine Street Market became part of the Lower Monroe Street Market, which ran from Monroe and Catherine Streets to Cherry Streets, and on Oak Street from Catherine to Oliver Streets. In 1939, the site was reconstructed as a central mall space with benches.
John Hughson's Remains		Ten yards from the SE corner of Cherry and Catherine Streets	(40.710028, -73.996643)
Hughson's remains were hung for all on the East River to see at Cherry and Catherine Streets. Fronted by the Hudson River (which would be just west of Washington Street), Hughson's Tavern next to Comfort’s dock and north of Trinity Church (see 1729 Lynn Map). Comfort's Tea Water came from a spring off Greenwich between Thames and Cedar Streets. Four black slaves named Caesar, Prince, Cuffee and Quack -- gin-swilling arsonists of the Geneva Club gang -- were pawning stuff at Hughson's tavern, and that started the trail of evidence uncovering the 1741 NY Conspiracy. The Landscapes of Conspiracy map (1741) puts the tavern at Crown (Liberty) Street and the Hudson River, just east of today’s West Side Highway. Other sources place it just west of Greenwich Street by Rector Street. Before that, in 1736, the Geneva Club broke into Baker's Tavern basement and stole barrels of Holland gin with the Geneva brand name. Prince and Caesar got caught, labeled professional thieves, and whipped. Caesar (Vaarck) was the slave of baker John Vaarck before the conspiracy and the Negro revolt that led to Caesar's hanging on May 11, 1741. Several incidents of arson and theft were led to the Negro Revolt trial that lasted for months. Hughson's 16-year-old-slave Mary Burton testified that her boss and many black slaves were planning to burn NYC, kill all the white people, and take over NYC. Dozens of slaves were burned and hung just south of the Collect Pond, and so were a few whites including the Hughsons. Hughson's chain-bound remains were hung less than 10 yards away from the southeast corner of Cherry and Catherine Streets for all to see, from the East River anyway.
Knickerbocker Village		10 Monroe Street	(40.711272, -73.996112)
Robert Moses. busily clearing the Lower East Side slums in the 1930s, had Knickerbocker Village built 1933-1934. Realtor Fred F. French picked the worst block in his slum real estate holdings for this government housing project. Knickerbocker Village was built on Lung Block, named for its high tuberculosis death rate. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company worked with the government to create Knickerbocker Village's 1,573 apartments in the block between Market, Cherry, Catherine and Monroe Streets, just south of the Manhattan Bridge. It was the first federally funded apartment development in NYC and the first such housing development in the country. It was also the first project of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. (“RFC”), authorized by Congress to extend loans to private developers to build low-income housing in slum areas. African Americans were banned throughout the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s from renting in Knickerbocker Village. Many Knickerbocker Village residents were active in the social demonstrations of the time. In the center of the two Knickerbocker Village complexes, residents exclusively used a large enclosed park where social (and many socialist) tenant clubs met. This park was the meeting place for the Hadassah, the Pioneer Women, and the American Labor Party. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg lived on the 11th floor of 10 Monroe Street in Knickerbocker Village from 1942 to 1950, when they were arrested for selling atomic bomb secrets to the Soviets. The Rosenbergs were executed June 19th, 1953.
Samuel Lord's Store (before Taylor)		47 Catherine Street	(40.711719, -73.996664)
Samuel Lord's first store was located in the basement of 47 Catherine Street in 1826. The company became Lord and Taylor right before they opened their second store at 255-261 Grand Street. Lord was a native of Saddleworth, England, and George W. Taylor was from New York. They kept both stores open until the original Catherine Street store closed in 1868. For over the next 30 years immigrants making clothing represented NYC's quickest growing industry. From 1854 until March 8th, 1902, Lord & Taylor was located at 255-261 Grand Street (by Chrystie Street), its second location. It was one of the first buildings to turn their facades into arcades (early skyscraper thinking from its architect Frederick Diaper). The Grand Street store ended up holding most of Lord & Taylor's carpets and oilcloths. During the NYC draft riots (July 13th to July 16th, 1863), Lord and Taylor was surrounded by menacing crowds, but they were dispersed by the police. Overall, five Union Army regiments had to be called from Gettysburg to stop the beating, lynching and burning of NYC's blacks and their property. Between 119 and 125 blacks died in the draft riots while hundreds were badly injured and mutilated by harsh beatings. The NYC draft lottery started on July 11th, 1863, and the first anti-draft riot started on Monday, July 13th by firemen from Engine Company 33 who thought they should be exempt from the draft. When the firemen called the Black Joke realized they wouldn’t be exempt, they attacked the Ninth District Provost Marshal's office on 47th Street and Third Avenue where the draft lottery was being held. The Black Joke firemen set the building on fire, triggering angry citizens who saw the smoke to start citywide riots. Orchestrated by the poor Irish working class, the riots stemmed from their anger knowing that the rich could buy their way out of the war for $300 apiece. Irish looters attacked bars and brothels to steal the liquor, and after the booze was consumed, they headed to the Colored Orphan Asylum and lynched black children. The NW corner of Grand Street and Broadway, the third location of Lord and Taylor from 1860-1872, became Lord & Taylor’s headquarters of their wholesale trade (which closed in 1903). The next store (1906) was at 115 5th Avenue, and a later location opened on Great Jones and Lafayette Streets. The Broadway and 20th Street store opened around 1870, and Lord & Taylor's last move in 1914 took them to the current 424 5th Avenue (between 38th and 39th Streets).