Canal Street Edge: From Bucolic to Frenetic

6:59 PM EDT on July 6, 2006

Sunday, July 30, 11:00 a.m.

CANAL STREET EDGE: FROM BUCOLIC TO FRENETIC

In 1811, the Collect Pond and its drainage canal were paved over, and the notorious Five Points grew up along the eastern end of Canal Street. On the western end stood St. John's Chapel, in an elegant park, until the upper classes moved north and Commodore Vanderbilt bough the block for his railroad terminal. Transportation infrastructure further changed the area when the Holland Tunnel was completed in 1927. We'll explore surviving buildings and street patterns from these eras, including the first department store in America and the onetime center of the textile industry in the United States. Leaders: Lynne Funk, architect, and Thor Snilsberg, urbane planner. Meet at 280 Broadway, at Chambers St.

Aaron Naparstek

AARON NAPARSTEK is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparsteks journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. Naparstek is the author of "Honku: The Zen Antidote for Road Rage" (Villard, 2003), a book of humorous haiku poetry inspired by the endless motorist sociopathy observed from his apartment window. Prior to launching Streetsblog, Naparstek worked as an interactive media producer, pioneering some of the Web's first music web sites, online communities, live webcasts and social networking services. Naparstek is currently in Cambridge with his wife and two young sons where he is enjoying a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He has a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Naparstek is a co-founder of the Park Slope Neighbors community group and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition. You can find more of his work here: http://www.naparstek.com.

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