ABSTRACT
S oon after the sometime industrial area just south ofHouston Street became known as SoHo, the neighborhood southwest of it became known at Tribeca, its name a compression of Triangle Below Canal Street, with Broadway to the East, the Hudson River to the West, and Chambers Street on its south. Though Tribeca superficially resembles SoHo as a residentially renovated industrial neighborhood, it is actually a different community open not just to artists but nonartists as well. If the buildings of SoHo housed printing and garment manufacturing, the principal historic business of the Tribeca buildings, particularly in its western precincts, was food, such as my relatives’ olive oil importing business at the corner of Franklin and Hudson Streets.
