The slums of dark, forbidding Duane Street

Louis Comfort Tiffany—son of Charles Tiffany, founder of Tiffany & Co, the famed jeweler then located on Prince Street and Broadway—is better known for his lovely stained glass works.

But as a young man, he studied painting, and from his rented studio at a YMCA he depicted impoverished Duane Street in 1877.

The Belgian block paving is uneven and dirty; a wood frame building appears to house a plumber, while a man out front seems to tinker with potted plants.

It’s certainly not the Duane Street in posh Tribeca we’re used to today.

An old clock hanging in there on Duane Street

Affixed to a cast-iron building at 145 Duane Street is this faded beauty. The building used to house the Nathaniel Fisher Company, wholesale shoe dealers described in an 1894 New York Times article as one of “the oldest shoe firms in America.”

A fire that year gutted the building and caused $40,000 worth of damage. The clock looks like it was damaged then too.