48. John Street Building No. 170--176

A.K.A.: Hickson W. Field Building; Baker, Carver & Morrell Building
Location: 170-176 John Street
Built: 1840
Architect: Attributed to Town & Davis
National Register Number: 71000546
Listed: May 13, 1971
Visited: January 14, 15, and 28, and February 2, 2008
Additional Documentation: NYCLPC Report



It is not like the others, this former warehouse. Fronted with granite, not the red brick of its fellow Greek Revival neighbors and contemporaries, and so devoid of ornamentation the windows have no lintels (and barely anything in the way of sills), there is little here to distract the eye. This doesn't mean it's ugly or boring; rather, it is curiously modern without being modernist. Unfortunately its grey repose is too easy a fit with its surroundings. Move from South Street Seaport's main drag on Fulton Street to John Street, and the character of the neighborhood drastically changes, going from tourist-quick to parking-lot-dead in under a block.

38. Federal Hall National Memorial

AKA: United States Custom House; U.S. Sub-Treasury
Location: 28 Wall Street
Built: 1833-1842
Architects: Town & Davis
National Register Number: 66000095
Listed: October 15, 1966
Visited: September 28, 2007



An exasperating landmark. I take no issue with the building qua building at all: a nonpareil Greek Revival structure with one of the city's few great rotundas. But for all its beauty, it's only an echo. Federal Hall was New York's City Hall for most of the 17th Century, then home to the young nation's Capitol before it was moved to Philadelphia, then Washington. It was where Peter Zenger was tried and acquitted for libel; where Washington took the oath of office; where Congress ratified the Bill of Rights. And then, in 1812, the building was torn down and sold for scrap. Why? Feh, who knows. The building now standing at 26 Wall Street was the first Custom House in the country, and later a Federal Reserve Bank, but today its primary function today -- other than being a pretty but vacant space -- is to commemorate what was there before. A non-period printing press, George Washington's bible, the sheet of rock from the original building: these are interesting artifacts but the way everything is presented, there is no reason (save for a sentimental attachment to a place) these things should be here as opposed to anywhere else. These things could just as easily be displayed down the block, or Brooklyn, in Baltimore, and you'd learn about as much. The Memorial is at best storehouse for artifacts rather than a new, coherent context for them the way a good museum is. It is so lacking in purpose that one room is devoted almost entirely to the National Park Service's other sites. Seriously, a Starbucks would be a less trivializing use for this building.