Before They Called It Tribeca: A Video Picture History, Through the Centuries

Near Reade and Hudson Streets, after a February, 1920 snowstorm. Photo: Library of Congress

As the city’s history goes, the neighborhood that calls itself Tribeca is young, beginning in the 1970s with its transition from manufacturing and warehousing district to residential enclave. The area’s evolution before that, centuries long, is the subject of this video slideshow.

Many of the images, compiled from the archives of The Tribeca Trib, appeared in our historical articles over the years, written by Oliver Allen. As Allen wrote in the introduction to his book, “Tribeca: A Pictorial History,” the speed at which the neighborhood of today emerged in the last decades “might tend to obscure the complex history that actually formed the neighborhood from the time its early settlers put down roots in the 1630s.” Here, in six minutes, is our visual take on that history.