New York Songlines: Barclay Street

South:

Barclay-Vesey Building

140 (block): Built from 1923-27 for New York Telephone, this 32-story brick-and-limestone structure designed by Ralph Walker is considered the first Art Deco skyscraper. Noted for its dramatic setbacks, its communication-themed murals and its Guastavino-vaulted pedestrian arcades. It was seriously damaged during the September 11 attacks but survived thanks to its solid masonry construction. It now serves as the headquarters of Verizon Communications.

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7 WTC

Block (250 Greenwich): A 52-story building clad in highly reflective glass, constructed 2002-06 to a design by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, this is the first and so far the only part of the World Trade Center complex to be rebuilt.

The former building here, also known as 7 WTC, was a red-granite by Emery Roth & Sons, who also designed the Twin Towers. Built atop a Con Ed substation, it was supposed to house Drexel Burnham Lambert, which pulled out of a $3 billion rental deal after it was rocked by a insider-trading scandal.

It did house offices for the IRS, INS, DoD and CIA--as well as the NYC Office of Emergency Management, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's bunker, which he placed here against all advice next to the city's No. 1 terrorist target. It got much more use as a lovenest for Giuliani and his mistress than as an actual emergency command center.

The building's collapse on September 11 has been central to conspiracy theories about the supposed planned demolition of the World Trade Center. To this layperson, the official conclusion that a skyscraper might fall down after burning for seven hours without any effective firefighting does not seem far-fetched.

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North:

125 (corner): This 10-story building from 1932 is the headquarters of District Council 37, the powerful coordinating body for the area's AFSCME unions, and many of its affiliated locals.

101 (corner): This Skidmore, Owings & Merrill office building was built in 1983 as the Irving Trust Operations Center, and became the Bank of New York Technology and Operations Center in 1988 when BoNY acquired Irving Trust. It straddles what used to be Washington Street with a 60-foot-wide atrium, likened by the AIA Guide to the Vertical Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral. The collapse of WTC 7 shattered most of its south-facing windows; it took until July 12, 2002, for the building to be reopened.

South:

Duane Park

Block: A triangular park that opened in 2006, at the same time as the completion of 7 WTC. Includes Jeff Koons' Balloon Flower.

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North:

Block (30 West Broadway): This was the site of Fiterman Hall, a 15-story office building constructed in 1959 and donated in 1993 to the Borough of Manhattan Community College by owner Miles Fiterman--at the time, the biggest ever donation to a U.S. community college. Damaged in the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, it was so heavily permeated by asbestos and mold that it took until 2009 to decontaminate and demolish it. A replacement building designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners is under construction.

South:

Federal Office Building

90 (block): Built 1935 in architect Louis Simon's mixture of Classical and Art Deco. The building, with more than a million square feet of space, is owned by the Postal Service, which uses it as the major mail sorting facility for Lower Manhattan. It also houses the New York City Housing Authority and the Legal Aid Society.

It suffered blast and water damage during the September 11 attacks, as well as heavy contamination from asbestos, lead dust and other toxins, but no major structural injuries.

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North:

100 (block): A 19-story glass-and-steel building from 1959, designed by Emery Roth & Sons. This building was undamaged by the September 11 attacks but was filled with dust. It reopened in the summer of 2002. In 2009, The Wall Street Journal called it "the least occupied building in the Big Apple."

South:

St. Peter's Church

22 (corner): This is the site of the oldest Catholic church in New York State, built here in 1785 on a site that was then outside of town--away from anti-Catholic mobs. Protesters still surrounded the church on December 24, 1806, outraged that parishoners were celebrating the "popish superstition" of Christmas.

In 1805, Elizabeth Ann Seton converted here to the religion that would make her its first U.S.-born saint. Pierre Toussaint, a black Haitian born into slavery who became a wealthy philanthropist in New York City, also worshipped here.

After the original church was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1835, this replacement, designed by John R. Haggerty and Thomas Thomas in the Greek Revival style, was completed in 1835.

It was hit by the landing gear of one of the planes involved in the September 11 attacks; FDNY chaplain Father Mychal Judge was laid out in front of the altar here after his death. The World Trade Center Cross was displayed here from 2006-11 before being moved to the site of the National September 11 Memorial.

6: Naturally Delicious, catering; Continental Shoe Repair

Corner (225 Broadway): The Transportation Building, a 1927 York & Sawyer building where several major railroads used to have offices. This was also for a time the home of the Pace Institute (now Pace University).

Block: This block used to be spanned by the Park Hotel--better known as the Astor House Hotel-- an ultra-fashionable hotel built in 1834 by John Jacob Astor. (Astor had previously lived on the site, in the house of Rufus King, one of New York's two original senators.) Its guests included Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, Davy Crockett, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Sam Houston, Jefferson Davis, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Jenny Lind. The psychologist William James was born in the hotel on January 11, 1842. Inventor Nikola Tesla lived there from 1889-92. The hotel was torn down in 1914.

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North:

99 (block): The building under construction here was started in 2008 and is now scheduled to be completed in 2014. It's a project of Silverstein Properties, the same company involved in the interminable World Trade Center reconstruction. The architect is Robert A.M. Stern, who did the Times Square master plan, several project for Disney and the George W. Bush library. If it's ever finished, this building will be the tallest residential building in New York City, at 912 feet and 68 stories.

The building torn down for this project housed the Moody's financial research firm, which played a major role in the inflation of the housing bubble. It was built in 1951 for Dun & Bradstreet. Over the entrance was Credit: Man's Confidence in Man, a somewhat homoerotic 1951 work of art that has been moved to Moody's new headquarters at 7 World Trade Center.

The Woolworth Tower

233 (block): This Gothic, 792-foot tower was the world's tallest building from 1913 until 1930--and is called ''possibly the most beautiful commercial building in the world'' by architecture writer Gerard Wolfe. Designed by Cass Gilbert as headquarters for the five & dime chain. Called the ''Cathedral of Commerce,'' largely because of its splendid lobby.

In On the Town, sailor Chip wants to ''see New York/ In all its spreading strength and power/From the city's highest spot,/ Atop the famous Woolworth Tower''--only to be told ''You're just a little late/We got the Empire State.'' During World War II, atom spy Klaus Fuchs worked for a Manhattan Project front company that was based here. Today the offices of Harlequin Romance are located in the tower.

The Tower was built where Philip Hone, mayor from 1826-27, had his home at No. 235.

231: The address of the Jennings Building, which burned down April 25, 1855, killing 11 firefighters.

South:

Millennium Park

A nicely landscaped traffic island.

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North:

City Hall Park

This was originally set aside in 1686 by the Dutch colonial government as The Commons, a pasture adjacent to the Collect Pond where townsfolk could take their livestock to eat and drink. It soon became the city's main park, serving as a gathering place for celebrations--and protests.

On August 11, 1766, New Yorkers angry that their Liberty Pole protest in the park had been taken down, threw bricks at British soldiers here, who retaliated with bayonets--resulting in the first (non-fatal) bloodshed of the Revolutionary era. General George Washington had the Declaration of Independence read here on July 9, 1776. In 1826, African-Americans rioted here against slave-catchers pursuing escapees from the South. Another riot here in 1837 opposed the raising of the price of flour from $6 to $15 a barrel. During the Draft Riots of 1863, rioters attacked blacks here.

When Albany in 1857 replaced the corrupt Municipal Police with a new organization known as the Metropolitan Police, the two forces clashed here in a melee that left one officer permanently crippled. Closer to the present, police rioted here in September 1992 against Mayor David Dinkins' Civilian Complaint Review Board proposals.

When author Jack London was homeless for a time, he spent his nights in City Hall Park-- a time that inspired his novel The People of the Abyss.

When the Croton Reservoir finally brought a safe and reliable water supply to New York City in 1842, this fountain fed by the reservoir was opened here to mark the accomplishment.

The southern end of City Hall Park used to be occupied by the Mullett Post Office--named for architect Alfred Mullett. The 1878 Second Empire building was considered an eyesore and demolished in 1939; it looks a lot better to modern eyes, gracing the cover of one popular New York architectural guide.