Harrison Street Rowhouses

At the corner of Harrison and Greenwich, a bent row of Federal-style brick townhouses from the late 1700s and early 1800s stands with its backs to the towers of Independence Plaza — one of the oddest and most telling juxtapositions in lower Manhattan. Several were built by or attributed to John McComb Jr., New York's first native-born major architect, who co-designed City Hall.

The row's survival is its story. When urban renewal cleared the old Washington Market district in the 1960s and 70s, these houses were saved, and some were physically moved from a doomed block of Washington Street and re-erected here, restored, and sold as homes. Dormers, splayed lintels, and handmade brick from the republic's first decades — parked beneath 1970s residential towers. Tribeca in one street corner.