Who's Who In Knickerbocker Village History: Peter Dans

Peter Dans, an internist who lived in Knickerbocker for a short time in the late 1930's, wrote the companion text piece for Rebecca Lepkoff's photographs of the Lower East Side (circa 1940's). They were compiled in a highly recommended book, "There Once Was a Neighborhood" Rebecca now in her 90's also lived in Knickerbocker Village. More about Rebecca in a later post. I put together a slide show (above) for part of a presentation that Peter did at the South Street Seaport Museum in August of 2007. The slides covered the highlighted sights for his discussion and program brochure. The exhibition will be at the museum until December 7th. Here's an article that Peter wrote about his beloved neighborhood (btw my friends and I remember Mazie who is mentioned):
September 9, 2002,
Re-envisioning Lower Manhattan
Looking past what Moses wrought.
By Peter Dans
Plans to rebuild the area devastated by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center seem to envision Lower Manhattan as being only "the Financial District," a complex of high-rise office buildings and a transportation nexus for commuting workers. It wasn't always so. Once upon a time, there were neighborhoods where ordinary people lived and worked in small-scale buildings that was reminiscent of the area's seafaring and commercial past. Permit me to provide some background.
My grandparents came to America in 1905 and settled in a neighborhood nestled in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. In 1937, I joined them in their cold-water flat at 344 Water Street, a brick building dating from the early 1800s. It was razed in 1948 when Robert Moses began constructing the Alfred E. Smith housing project, a mass of banal high rises. My family was "relocated" to a tenement at 42 Madison Street, a building of similar vintage that had been enlarged and modernized in the 1920s. Two stories above a Greek café, our apartment with its bathtub in the kitchen rivaled some that command high rents on the Upper West Side today. Nonetheless, it too was demolished in 1950 to complete the project and my family was "relocated" to two separate projects, Vladeck and Dyckman. We were part of a diverse community of 1700 Italians, Spaniards, Irish, Greeks, and Jews dispossessed by Moses in his controlled diaspora.
Returning to the old neighborhood recently, I sensed the isolation that characterized Moses's low-income projects. By eliminating cross streets and with them the small businesses that dotted them, he created an enclosed enclave. Easy access to City Hall via the Municipal Building's arch was blocked when Chatham Green and One Police Plaza replaced New Chambers and Roosevelt Streets and with them Saint Joachim's Church where Mother Cabrini began her American ministry. By extending the East River Drive southward from its terminus at Grand Street to complete his dream of an automobile circumferential around Manhattan, Moses erected a barrier to the East River.
On the project's south side, spaghetti-like overpasses connecting the Drive to the bridge entrance effectively isolated residents from the Brooklyn Bridge. No longer could one cross under the magnificent Bridge on Cherry Street, as my grandmother and I would, and look up at the marker on the bridge's stanchion commemorating the site of Washington's first presidential home. Entering the once fashionable Franklin Square, one could smell the aroma from the Greek-Arabian Coffee Company. Further down Frankfort Street, there were less pleasing odors from the tanneries which served the nearby leather merchants.
Indeed, almost everything that made the neighborhood distinctive had vanished. Gone was the Third Avenue El which cast its shadow over the Bowery denizens and the Venice Theater where ticket-seller Mazie Gordon held court. So was the Chatham Square Station that bestrode the vast square, allowing me to cross safely to reach Transfiguration School on Mott Street in Chinatown. A few treasures Moses didn't destroy seemed isolated afterthoughts: The Mariner's Temple, Saint James Church, and Shearith Israel burial grounds where lies revolutionary patriot Rabbi Gershon Mendes Seixas, one of 14 clergymen who officiated at Washington's first inauguration.
What Moses did to the area south of the Brooklyn Bridge may have been worse. It's not just the loss of the old shops, but of the energy of the place. The gritty Fulton Fish Market, where my relatives worked, has been replaced by a faux seaport and a bank of stores indistinguishable from a suburban mall. Although a small part of Schermerhorn Row, a commercial building dating to 1812, remains, gone are Sloppy Louie's, immortalized by Joseph Mitchell in Up in the Old Hotel, and Sweet's Restaurant. Opened by "Abraham Sweet victualler" in 1847, it was where we celebrated my birthday with a sizzling swordfish steak and a piece of Nesselrode pie. Hearn's and Merit's Butter and Egg Stores on Fulton Street gave way to the Southwick Apartments. Playing softball on the deserted wide expanse of Burling Slip, as my uncle and I did on lazy summer Sunday afternoons in the 40s, is now the stuff of memory. What might have been, had the wrecking ball been spared, can be seen in the small rehabilitated section of Water Street from Dover to Peck Slip.
Among Moses's most egregious acts was destroying the Aquarium, housed in Castle Clinton. Built during the War of 1812, it had been the site of Castle Garden where Jenny Lind sang, and the entry point for immigrants before the opening of Ellis Island. A favorite destination for my retarded uncle and me, the Aquarium averaged a daily attendance of 7,000, peaking at 50,000. After FDR quashed Moses's plan to build a bridge from the Battery to Brooklyn, Moses closed the Aquarium, alleging that construction of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, his alternative to the bridge, would undermine Castle Clinton. Prevented from razing it immediately by the onset of World War II, he melted down the beloved dolphins at the Aquarium's entrance. Only a public outcry prevented him from demolishing the entire Fort. The Aquarium's successor at Coney Island, which took 11 million taxpayer dollars and 13 years to build, has never exceeded one-third of its predecessor's annual attendance.
The other community treasure to fall was the Washington Retail Market, which was bordered by Vesey, Greenwich, Fulton, and West Streets. This grand old market, which occupied a wonderful structure dating to 1914 and bustled with people patronizing its many stalls and gourmet stores, had its origins in the Best Market of 1812. It was part of a large complex that encompassed the produce market stretching eight blocks to Duane Street where the elevated West Side Highway began. Surrounding the Market were small businesses clustered by commercial type, selling sporting goods, fireworks, religious goods, pets, animal feed, and radio equipment. Just to its south was the "Syrian Quarter," which also housed Greeks and immigrants from other Middle Eastern countries. This helps explains why St. Nicholas Orthodox Church, destroyed in the terrorist attack, remained as a Lilliput among the Gullivers on West Street.
Now that we have reached Ground Zero, let me be clear that the purpose of these recollections is not to stroll down memory lane. Rather, it's to urge planners to look beyond what Moses wrought as they tackle the difficult job of balancing a reverence for the victims with creating a public space that demonstrates the vitality and resilience of the American spirit. To accomplish the former, planners might look to St. Louis's Gateway Arch and create a soaring monument or Tower of Light above a visitor's center honoring the victims and the rescue workers. As for the latter, what better way to demonstrate the sense of national community that the terrible events sparked than by creating a neighborhood with Saint Nicholas at its center? Along with the reopening of neighboring Governor's Island and the new South Ferry Terminal, planners have an opportunity to re-envision Lower Manhattan. My hope is that they will integrate the many existing treasures, consider rebuilding the Market and the Aquarium, and, above all, build to the original scale in a way that encourages diverse groups to live and work there.