In the late 18th century, Eastern Post Road became the more important road connecting New York City to Albany and New England to its north. This section of the road which became Park Row was called Chatham Street, a name that enters into the city’s history on numerous occasions. The tobacco industry in New York City got its start in 1760, when Pierre Lorillard opened a snuff factory on Chatham Street, and in 1795, the Long Room of Abraham Martling’s Tavern on Chatham Street was one of the first headquarters used by the Tammany Society and the Democratic-Republican Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson, on election days. 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 DeWitt Clinton. In the 1780s, Chatham Street was the site of the Tea Water Pump, a privately owned company which took water from Fresh Water Pond, the city’s only supply of fresh water, and which remained purer longer than some of the other sources which drew from the pond.
In the early 19th century, most of the Manhattan portion of the street was suppressed, the Commons became City Hall Park, and the stub of a street was renamed Park Row. 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. This gave rise to Antisemitic caricatures, although many New Yorkers could not distinguish German Jews from other Germans. Chatham Street was also the site of several anti-African American incidents, as in the 1863 New York City draft riots, during which rioters were repulsed in their attempt to attack black waiters at Crook’s Restaurant on the street. 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.
During the late 19th century, Park Row was nicknamed Newspaper Row, as most of New York City’s newspapers located on the street to be close to City Hall. Among the earlier newspapers in the area were The New York Times, which in 1857 became the first New York City newspaper to be housed in a structure built specially for its use. Part of the southern section of the street, centered on the intersection with Spruce Street, was known as Printing House Square. The newspapers housed on Newspaper Row, combined, printed more than 250,000 copies per day at their peak, leading the area to be considered “America’s preeminent press center”. Other papers, such as the New York Herald and The Sun, were near Newspaper Row but not actually housed on Park Row itself. The newspapers on Chatham Street were among the first to construct early skyscrapers for their headquarters, reflecting their newfound wealth. The first of these major newspaper buildings, the New York Tribune Building, opened in 1875 as a nine-story, 260-foot (79 m) structure; the headquarters of the New-York Tribune was then the city’s second-tallest building after Trinity Church. The decline of Park Row as a newspaper hub began in 1895, when the Herald moved to Herald Square.
Ten years later, in 1905, the Times moved to its new headquarters at One Times Square. The Tribune moved uptown in 1923, while the World shuttered in 1931. The Journal of Commerce, the last remaining newspaper to publish from Park Row, moved from its headquarters in the World Building in 1953. Until 1971, Park Row continued in a relatively straight path, except for a curved portion around the Brooklyn Bridge’s ramps. Between 1971 and 1973, a pedestrian plaza was built as part of 1 Police Plaza, after which Park Row was rerouted underneath the plaza and its intersection with New Chambers Street and Duane Street was eliminated. Today, a statue of Benjamin Franklin by Ernst Plassman stands in Printing House Square, in front of the 1 Pace Plaza and 41 Park Row buildings of Pace University, holding a copy of The Pennsylvania Gazette, a reminder of what Park Row once was.
