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Marketfield Street

Marketfield Street is a short one-way, one-block-long alleyway in the Financial DistrictofManhattan, New York City. The street begins as a southern branch of Beaver Street, then veers east and north, ending at Broad Street. Alternative past names include Exchange Street, Field Street, Fieldmarket Street, Oblique Road, and Petticoat Lane.^[1]

The name Marketfield Street is a translation from the Dutch.^[2][3] The street originally ran to the Dutch livestock market, Marcktveldt, located near where Battery Park is now, which was then outside the walls of the city.^[1][4] The market operated from 1638 to 1647. In 1641, the Governor-GeneralofNew Netherland, Willem Kieft, opened the colony's first cattle market there.^[1][5]

By 1680, mainly poor people were living on Marketfield Street.^[6] In 1688, the city's first French Huguenot church was built there.^[7][8]

In September 1776, Marketfield Street was part of the area devastated by the Great Fire of New York, which engulfed the southwestern tip of Manhattan.^[9] In 1821, a hurricane hit the East Coast, destroying the street's dock.^[10] In 1821, Marketfield Street, which overlooked the Hudson River, had a single name throughout its length,^[11] but by the 1830s, the street was renamed "Battery Place" from Bowling Green to the Hudson River.^[1] The 1882 construction of the New York City Produce Exchange demolished the block of the street that contained the French church.^[1]

The American Bank Note Company Building at 70 Broad Street, between Marketfield and Beaver Street, was erected in 1908 as the headquarters of the American Bank Note Company.^[12]

Notes

Bibliography

• Burrows, Edwin G. and Wallace, Mike (1999). Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-195-11634-8.

• Media related to Marketfield Street at Wikimedia Commons