The Financial District's Lost Neighborhood: 1900-1970. This item is unavailable.The Financial District's Lost Neighborhood: 1900-1970

Before the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, the World Trade Center, and Battery Park City, Manhattan's southern tip was home to a vibrant community of thousands of Slovakian, Irish, Syrian, Greek, and Lebanese immigrants. Living closely in five-story tenement buildings, these early New Yorkers, many of whom filled the low-wage jobs of Wall Street, built a multicultural neighborhood where the weekdays were filled with the hustle of business and the nights and weekends were filled with stickball games, dances, and worship. The Financial District's Lost Neighborhood: 1900-1970 celebrates this little-known neighborhood while highlighting some of New York City's most famous landmarks: Trinity Church, St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, Battery Park and the New York Aquarium, and the Downtown Athletic Club, home of the Heisman Memorial Trophy.

Martin Rizek, a former president of Trinity Church's St. Stephen's Guild, was born and raised on Greenwich Street and resided there with his wife, Barbara, until 1969. For thirty-eight years, they organized annual reunion dances, bringing together hundreds of former neighbors. Joanne Medvecky, writer and researcher, has lived in Battery Park City for the past fifteen years. Many of her relatives were longtime residents of the neighborhood.