Stone Street Historic District

Stone Street Historic District occupies a small enclave of narrow, winding streets in lower Manhattan's Financial District, laid out originally by Dutch colonists. After the Great Fire of 1835 leveled much of the area south of Wall Street, the neighborhood was rebuilt with four- and five-story store and loft buildings for drygoods merchants and importers. Many survive, with austere Greek Revival shopfronts of granite piers and lintels beneath plain brick upper walls. The district also contains the brownstone Anglo-Italianate Hanover Bank Building, later India House, built in 1851-54. In the early twentieth century, real estate operator Amos F. Eno commissioned architect C.P.H. Gilbert to rework buildings on South William Street in the neo-Dutch Renaissance style, and other revival-style offices and a club followed. The district counts thirteen contributing buildings, one non-contributing building and one non-contributing plaza. Its low scale contrasts with surrounding skyscrapers, and the streets carry a Dutch, English and Jewish commercial and residential history.