74th Street (Manhattan)

In 1639, Colony's Sawmill stood at the corner of East 74th Street and Second Avenue, in the Dutch village of New Amsterdam, at which enslaved African laborers cut lumber.

English colonial Governor of the Province of New York Richard Nicolls made 74th Street, beginning at the East River, the southern border patent line (which was called the "Harlem Line") of the village of Nieuw Haarlem (later, the village of Harlem); the British also renamed the village "Lancaster".

[3][4] That year Jan van Bonnel built a sawmill on East 74th Street and the East River, where a 13.71-kilometer-long (8.52 mi) creek or stream, which began in the north of today's Central Park and became known as Saw Kill or Saw Kill Creek, emptied into the river.

[5][6] George Elphinstone and Abraham Shotwell, later owners of the property, replaced the sawmill with a leather mill in 1677.

[8] Frederick Ambrose Clark developed a good portion of West 74th Street in 1902–04.