The Feb. 11-18, 2013 issue of the New Yorker has a charming excerpt from a soon-to-be published memoir of Joseph Mitchell, former writer for the New Yorker. He obviously loved Tribeca. Here is a quote that illustrates: ”I can shut my eyes and visualize in a swarm of detail what is happening on scores of streets, some well known and some obscure, from one end of the city to the other…or on North Moore Street, down on the lower West Side of Manhattan, which used to be lined with spice Warehouses and spice-grinding mills and still has enough of them left on it to make it the most aromatic street in the city (on ordinary days, it is so aromatic it is mildly and tantalizingly and elusively exciting; on windy days, particularly on warm, damp, windy days, it is so aromatic it is exhilarating…”. We have one spice warehouse left, the humble building on the NW corner of Leonard and West Broadway, right next to Square Diner. The smell here is also intoxicating. Here is a picture of the last spice warehouse.
Purchase “Tribeca and Its Architecture”
