Ode to Canal Street

If you follow TC on Instagram, you know how I’ve been admiring the ragged, unrenovated parts of Canal Street lately. They feel like New York of yore to me, and as the street changes,* its distinctiveness is disappearing. That’s progress, of course, and not unwelcome, but I’ve been making an effort to capture the street as it is now, in all its graffitied splendor. (*That post predates the news that Paris Baguette is also opening on Canal.)

371 Canal

 

5 Comments

  1. These remind me of Roy Colmer’s “Doors, NYC” from 1976, which you wrote about a couple of years ago.

    Here’s 329 Canal Street, for example: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/aea7cced-6bd8-982c-e040-e00a1806318e

  2. Love these Photos Erik… I’ve lived in this hood for 41 years. You make seem like its never changed. Thanks!

  3. When I was on the Tribeca Committee we had a public member whose business was creating side walkcafes and he kept pushing and pushing to “clean” up Canal Street so people could sit outside amid the gas fumes. We fought him at every turn hoping to keep Canal St the last frontier of old manufacturing downtown, of old artist supply stores and army and navy surplus. Now even our committee is kaput. Hopefully these photos will not be all that’s left of Canals gritty past. But we are grateful to have them! Keep shooting!

  4. Why “graffitied splendor”??

    Would you characterize it that way if the “splendor” were repeatedly applied to your front door and window?

  5. (I am all for certain aspects of “old TriBeCa”…including some of the old stores and businesses….but graffiti and decay are not what I would think of as TriBeCa in its historic prime either)

Comment: