That picture shows the north side wall of 109 Washington Street, which is one of the last remnants of Little Syria, the residential neighborhood at the foot of the lower west side. The neighborhood was doomed by commercial development, and was eaten away by big office buildings, the Battery garage, and the World Trade Center. The north wall faces an empty lot at 111 Washington that extends up to Carlisle Street, and that lot has a convoluted history.
The 1857 map shows a building that was probably being used as a boarding house and probably had been built as a single family house, like the Dickey house. Later in the century, a rear building was constructed on the lot, to cram more people into the space. Around 1900 – probably 1905 – 111 and 113 Washington were replaced by a big 1-story commercial building. That was demolished along with the houses to the north around 1930, and then a 7-story garage built on the larger combined lot in 1961. The garage was demolished in 2007, but the new redevelopment has been delayed several times.
As I’ve said before, a notable characteristic of lower Manhattan lots is multiple building campaigns. Whatever is finally built here will be the fourth building on the 111 Washington lot. We can also see the original house and the garage on the side of 109. The darker red brick in the right side of the photo is the area that was adjacent to the original 111. The white horizontal and vertical stripes are where the concrete structure of the garage abutted 109.
The white stripes are what originally caught my eye. The brick continues past the edges of the stripes without changes in coursing or condition, indicating that the white is simply staining or a coating…but who would coat stripes? That pattern was odd enough to make me look into what might have caused it.
