CATHERINE SLIP MALLS .025 ACRE
This parkland and street is named after Catherine Rutgers (1711–1779), daughter of Mayor Johannes De Peyster (1666–1711) and wife of Hendrick Rutgers (1712–1799). In Catherine’s time, the surrounding area was home to city’s elite Dutch mercantile families and this street was a fashionable thoroughfare for shopping. In 1818 Henry Sands Brooks (1772–1833) established the first Brooks Brothers clothing store located on the northeast corner of Catherine and Cherry Streets, known then as H. and D.H. Brooks and Co. The elegant clothing store sold outfits such as “broadcloth coats, nankeen vests and cassimere pantaloons” to lawyers, doctors and ship captains who docked along the Catherine Slip. This prime location for retail goods influenced Samuel Lord (1803–1889) to open his clothing store at 47 Catherine Street in 1826. His business expanded and in 1832 Lord developed a partnership with his wife’s cousin, George Washington Taylor (1808–1879). Their store Lord & Taylor was located at 61–63 Catherine Street. A writer in 1846 described the bustling shopping scene along the main road: “And this is Catherine Street…no wonder the lady was astonished, for such a conglomeration of merchandise of every sort and description cannot be found jumbled together in the same space anywhere else … .” During the Civil War (1861–1865) Brooks Brothers supplied the uniforms for Union officers and soldiers. In the summer of 1863 the clothing store was one of many targets attacked by an angry mob for its connection to the government. The three-day uprising, known as the New York City Draft Riots,
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was linked to the Conscription Act passed by Congress several months before, which allowed wealthy citizens to buy their way out of the draft for $300 dollars, leaving the poor infuriated. Harper’s Weekly wrote, “On Monday evening a large number of marauders paid a visit to the extensive clothing store of Messrs. Brooks Brothers, at the corner of Catherine and Cherry Streets. Here they helped themselves to such articles as they wanted, after which they might be dispersing in all directions… .” By the mid-nineteenth century the neighborhood’s demographics changed and both stores relocated uptown. Absentee landowners bought properties, subdivided them and packed them with many newly arrived immigrants. In the late nineteenth century, works such as Jacob A. Riis’ How the Other Half Lives exposed the squalid tenement conditions along the Lower East Side. The resulting public outcry prompted the City to acquire and condemn many of the tenements. New residential complexes such as Knickerbocker Village (1934) replaced the clothing stores and tenement buildings. Its architect used a design that encourages a more communal sense of living with two large courtyards and a playground for children. The residential complex consists of 12 buildings that are joined together through interconnected underground passageways. Famous residents have included opera star Judith Raskin and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a couple executed in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage. The LES Young Historians from PS126/Manhattan Academy of Technology at 80 Catherine Street researched and composed this historical narrative.
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