Two Bridges Historic District

Two Bridges is a nine-block neighborhood on Manhattan's Lower East Side, named for its position between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge. It contains 170 contributing buildings, 29 noncontributing ones, and an early Jewish graveyard that marks the start of its historic period in the late eighteenth century. Building types include small Federal and Greek Revival houses, mid-century churches in the Greek Revival temple form, and many five- and six-story tenements. Their facades show Italianate, Queen Anne, Neo-Grec, Italian Renaissance Revival and Beaux-Arts influences, often mixed together. Tenement laws of 1867, 1879 and 1901 shaped building plans, producing features such as dumbbell layouts and fire escapes on the facades. The district was laid out from Rutgers and Roosevelt family land in the mid-1700s. It was listed because its continuous blocks of historic buildings, surrounded by large modern developments, preserve a distinct sense of place and illustrate the area's changing residential character.