Bank Street (Manhattan)

40°44′11.6″N 74°0′20.28″W / 40.736556°N 74.0056333°W / 40.736556; -74.0056333 Map

Turning from Bleecker to Bank Street

Bank Street is a primarily residential street in the West Village part of Greenwich Village in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It runs for a total length of about 725 metres (2,379 ft) from West Street, crossing Washington Street and Greenwich Street, to Hudson Street and Bleecker Street where it is interrupted by the Bleecker Playground, north of which is Abingdon Square; it then continues to Greenwich Avenue, crossing West 4th Street and Waverly Place. Vehicular traffic runs west-east along this one-way street. As with several other east-west streets in the Far West Village, the three blocks west of Hudson Street are paved with setts.

Bank Street is named for the Bank of New York, which bought eight lots on the street in 1798 and established a branch there. A clerk in the bank's main office on Wall Street had contracted yellow fever, leading the bank to buy land in Greenwich Village in order to have a branch office away from Wall Street where it could conduct business in the event of future emergencies.[1][2][3]

  1. ^ Feirstein, Sanna (2001). Naming New York: Manhattan Places & How They Got Their Names. New York: New York University Press. p. 89. ISBN 978-0-8147-2712-6.
  2. ^ "Bank Street", New York Songlines
  3. ^ Moscow, Henry (1978). The Street Book: An Encyclopedia of Manhattan's Street Names and Their Origins. New York: Hagstrom Company. ISBN 978-0-8232-1275-0. p. 25