Greenwich Street

[7] In 1824, painter Thomas Cole, who had arrived in the U.S. in 1818, maintained his residence in a garret on Greenwich Street, exhibiting his paintings in local shops.

In 1846, an angry mob, riled up by Restell's competitors and false claims of murder, descended on her Greenwich Street headquarters and attempted to evict her from the city; 40 policemen restored order.

Restell, who was wealthy from her business, was arrested a number of times, but was able to buy her way out of trouble, and eventually built a mansion at Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street.

[10] In 1867, engineer Charles T. Harvey managed to get permission from the New York State Legislature to build a short stretch of elevated track as an experiment on Greenwich Street north of Battery Place.

The half-mile single-track set-up, which had two stationary engines at each end, attached by cables to a car which the motors shuttled back and forth, was ready for testing by June 1868.

Harvey filed for personal bankruptcy on Black Friday (1869), resulting from the speculations of Jay Gould and James Fisk, but the company he set up went through several reorganizations and emerged in 1872 as the New York Elevated Railway Company, which utilized steam locomotives to pull cars on a single elevated track that ran up Greenwich and Ninth Avenue to 30th Street, where a connection could be made at the terminal of the Hudson River Railroad.

[13][14][15] It was ultimately decided to rebuild Cortlandt, Fulton, and Greenwich Streets, which had been destroyed during the original World Trade Center's construction.

Of the two roads, Greenwich Street was the shorter, more scenic and popular[16] route to the village, but often flooded[17] until the 19th century, when landfill moved the river's edge farther away.