Park Row is a street located in the Financial District, Civic Center, and Chinatown neighborhoods of the New York City borough of Manhattan.

This section of the road which became Park Row was called Chatham Street,[1] a name that enters into the city's history on numerous occasions.

Those who gathered there became known as "Martling Men", "Tammanyites" or "Bucktails", especially during the time that Tammany was attempting to wrest control of the party away from governor De Witt Clinton.

In 1798, Marc Isambard Brunel designed the 2,000-seat Park Theater on Chatham Street, intended to attract the upper classes of the city.

In the early 1800s, more taverns, theaters and small hotels on the street started to offer free entertain to attract customers to drink.

These were called "free and easies", "varieties" or "vaudeville" and offered numerous different kinds of performances: comedy, dance, dramatic skits, magic, music, ventriloquism, and tellers of tall tales.

[7] By the mid-19th century, the street had a bazaar-like atmosphere from the many used clothing shops and pawnbrokerages open by recently immigrated Jews from Germany and central Europe.

[9] Poverty was also commonplace; in 1890, Jacob Riis revealed in How the Other Half Lives that over 9,000 homeless men lodged nightly on Chatham Street and the Bowery, between City Hall and Cooper Union.

[18] The next major structure to open was a new headquarters for The New York Times at 41 Park Row, which was completed in 1889 and stood 13 stories tall.

[23][24] The Revolution, a newspaper established by women's rights activists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was also headquartered on Park Row, at 27 Chatham Street.

The segment of Park Row between Frankfort Street and Chatham Square is open only to MTA buses and government and emergency vehicles and has been closed to civilian traffic since the September 11, 2001, attacks.

[42] In 2007, the NYPD stated that it would not be moving despite the numerous complaints from residents, explaining that they had tried to alleviate the impact of the security measures by forbidding officers from parking in nearby public spaces and by reopening a stairway that skirts the headquarters' south side and leads down to street level near the Brooklyn Bridge.

The department also planned to redesign its guard booths and security barriers to make them more attractive, and was involved in efforts to convert two lanes of Park Row into a cycling and pedestrian greenway,[38] which opened in June 2018.

[43] In the 2020s, the section of Park Row north of Chatham Square remained closed to most traffic, and residents of Chinatown were advocating for it to be reopened.