Tribeca - Robert DeNiro

The Tribeca neighborhood is one of the oldest in New York City. Before becoming into prominence with trendy shops and restaurants, the neighborhood was known as the lower Manhattan. The neighborhood became a haven for artists following the renovations, who found the loft spaces in these old buildings perfectly suited for studios, in the late 1960's and early 1970's, as young professionals sought more affordable housing in Manhattan. Residents included Mariah Carey, David Letterman, Harvey Keitel, James Gandolfini, and best known, Robert DeNiro. Today the neighborhood with its cobblestone streets is one of the more chic in Manhattan.

Robert DeNiro launched the Tribeca Film Festival in 2002 to bring visitors back to the New York neighborhood. The Festival is now one of the nation's most popular film events. The acting icon also is DeNiro Inc., a business baron who has jacked up ticket prices, unleashed his lawyers on small companies that use the name Tribeca, angered Village residents with a proposed mega-project on the Hudson River and collected millions of dollars in state subsidies. According to an October 2007, New York Daily News article, the 83-room hotel, The Greenwich, complete with a pricey new eatery, Ago opened on Greenwich Street. The article continues, the street is the epicenter of his expanding empire, on a block known as "Bobby Row," just a short stroll from two of his celebrity-packed restaurants, his gleaming new luxury condo development and his iconic Tribeca Film Festival, Tribeca Film Institute and Tribeca Film Center. David Poland, publisher of Movie City News and the Hot Blog, worries the festival has become more a vehicle for promoting DeNiro than promoting Tribeca. Robert DeNiro supported the preservation and development of the Tribeca area of Downtown Manhattan since the 1980s.

Sites like http://www.littleviews.com/ see DeNiro as an Academy Award winning actor. Saying that New Yorkers know him as a patriotic American; one who invests in his own community, provides educational resources, attracts investment capital, and generates jobs. Littleviews offers this history DeNiro and partners own property around the area of Greenwich and Hudson, bounded by Franklin and North Moore. With Jane Rosenthal , he founded Tribeca Productions in 1988. In 2001, they, along with sponsor American Express, founded the Tribeca Film Institute, which hosts the annual Tribeca Film Festival. DeNiro is also a principle in the Tribeca Grill and Nobu restaurants, founded in 1990 and 1995, respectively.

What of the Tribeca real estate DeNiro did not create or own? Tribeca streets don't always run at 90 degrees to each other. According to New York Architecture, the buildings are older brick buildings with wood floors. Most of Tribeca was the whole sale food market. Boats docked on the Hudson River, and unloaded produce at the defunct Washington Market. The whole sale markets have moved to Hunt's Point in the Bronx. Many of the old buildings like Washington Market have been torn down, and replaced with structures like Independence Plaza. The large apartment complexes, Independence Plaza, are middle-income housing, possibly the last to be built in Tribeca as the neighborhood gentrifies. The buildings stood nearly empty until federal subsidies made them rentable; now they have a long waiting list, according to New York Architecture.

At 6 Harrison St. is the former New York Mercantile Exchange (1886), a five-story gabled brick building with a handsome tower and rusticated granite pillars at the base. The tall second-story windows opened onto the trading floor. The exchange was organized in 1872 as the Butter and Cheese Exchange, for commercial objectives, and also social ones. The building has been converted to condominiums, and houses on the ground floor one of the many fancy new restaurants in Tribeca.

Built in 1888, the eight-story Roebling Building is a product of Tribeca's rich history of commerce. First a warehouse, the building was bought early in the 20th century by John A. Roebling Sons, engineer and builder of the Brooklyn Bridge. Large and solidly built, the structure housed the steel that was used to construct the famous bridge. Now a condominium, the building amenities include a 24-hour attended lobby, a full-time superintendent, dedicated basement storage, service corridor rubbish removal, and a dedicated temperature-controlled wine cellar storage and tasting room. The landmarked Warehouse is located at 169 Hudson Street in Tribeca.

The structure at 44 Laight Street is known as the Grabler Building, and is in the middle of block between Hudson and Varick Streets, a large open space that is part of the Holland Tunnel roadways in the Tribeca North Historic District. Almost all of the street's roadway is covered with cobblestones. The Grabler building has a truck loading dock platform that occupies most of its frontage and the remainder of its sidewalk is covered with cobblestones. The building is a former warehouse that was converted several years ago to 18 residential condominiums. The building has an attractive marquee and no sidewalk landscaping and the second floor apartments have arched windows. Its fourteen parking spaces were sold at $169,000 each.

This handsome building was designed in Renaissance Revival style by Clinton and Russell and erected in 1896. It was built for William J. Russell. It was named the Grabler Building after one of its early tenants that manufactured pipe fittings. It is directly across from the original St. John's Park that was acquired in 1886 by Commodore Vanderbilt for conversion to a rail depot.
Today its apartments have original brick walls, gas fireplaces, washers and dryers. The penthouse units have wood-burning fireplaces, exposures in three directions, six-burner Viking stoves, high ceilings and private terraces of more than 1,400 square feet. The building has a lobby attendant, video security, a key-locked elevator, and a mahogany and steel lobby.

Puffy's Tavern at 81 Hudson Street dates back to Prohibition and still has its old-fashioned bar and tile floor. Late at night it still draws truck drivers and local artists.

If you do the New York Architecture Walk, you may come upon a street named after John Chambers 18th century lawyer and official of Trinity Church, we have Chambers Street. Many of the streets on the lower west side are named for or have a connection to Trinity Church. At 125 Chambers Street. stands what is possibly New York's oldest existing hotel, the Hotel Bond, now renovated. It was built around 1850 when the old Hudson River railroad terminal, stood nearby on Warren St and West Broadway.

At 75 Murray Street is one of the earliest existing cast-iron fronts in the city, possibly designed by James Bogardus Italianate in style. It still retains Medusa-headed keystones over the arches on the third and fifth floors, appropriate enough in a medium (cast iron) which was used to imitate stone. (James Bogardus, Originator and Patentee of Iron Buildings May 7, 1856). The original tenants were Francis and John Hopkins, who had a glassware business.

Invitation from Tribeca: For those who have not attended a Tribeca Meet-and-Greet, there is a meeting in a different location every month - enjoy networking and have a drink with the neighbors. Just drop by and chat for a while. Some people show up for the full evening, some just drop by to say hello. The important thing is to make an appearance. David Cleaver, BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, 199 Chambers Street, New York NY, (212) 220 - 1459. http://www.tribeca.org

Work Cited:
http://condos.wirednewyork.com
http://wirednewyork.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-4021.html
http://www.filmreference.com/film/88/Robert-DE-Niro.html
http://www.littleviews.com/home/newyork/tribeca.cfm
http://www.mcnblogs.com/reeler/archives/2006/04/fifth_annual_tribeca_press_conferences_officially_underway.html
http://www.nyc-architecture.com/walks.htm
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/10/07/2007-10-07_robert_de_niro_tribeca_godfather_or_busi.html