Harrison Street Houses

Though the massive yet quite mundane Independence Plaza now dominates the old Washington Market area, there’s a break in the action at Greenwich and Harrison Streets, where you will find a smattering of tiny Federal-style townhouses, six facing Harrison Street. These houses were all built from between 1790 and 1820 and have been conferred designation by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Yet, three are not in their original locations: they were once about a block away, on Washington Street. (Two, 27 and 27A Harrison, were built by Jonas McComb, one of the designers of City Hall).

NYC Municipal Archives

After the Landmarks designation in the early 1970s the three, 331, 329, 327 Washington, were jacked up and towed by truck to their present location on Harrison Street, west of Greenwich. The three remaining Harrison Street houses, 29, 31 and 33, have always been there. The first floors of most of these buildings had been given over to commercial establishments, but all the houses were given complete restorations by the Herbert Oppenheimer architectural firm, restoring their old Federal fronts and new interiors after a couple of centuries of wear and tear.

The same buildings today, renumbered, are on a short slice of Washington Street that is a dead end running south from Harrison Street. During the Washington Market era the buildings were thoroughly commercialized, but now they have been returned to their residential origins and have kept a piece of their original street as well.

Now dominating the area is the architecturally vapid Independence Plaza.

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)