Fun Fact: How Canal Street Got Its Name

Canal Street is an integral part of New York City. It is a huge tourist attraction and a vital thoroughfare for the city. It is the one place where tourists and natives alike flock to for imitation designer bags, perfumes, colognes, watches, I Love NY shirts, and just about every other odd trinket and object you can imagine. It is also a major thoroughfare which funnels traffic between the Manhattan Bridge and Holland Tunnel. It houses 6 different train stations and links commuters from Brooklyn to different parts of the city.

So how did this vital artery of the city get its name? Well, it turns out that Canal Street actually used to be a canal. The area formerly known as the Five Points was the home of Collect Pond, which was actually a small lake fed by an underground spring. At its prime, it was a clean freshwater source for the city. As time went on and industries began dumping into the lake however, it eventually became infested with pollution and became a source of disease by the late 1700’s.

The city decided to drain the pond and in 1808, a canal was built to drain the water from Collect Pond into the Hudson River. The pond was completely drained by 1811 and the pond subsequently filled. The canal remained but began smelling so bad that it was covered between 1820 and 1821, and was used as an underground sewer. The covering follows the canal and is what makes up present day Canal Street.

For a long time, the Five Points area and Canal Street itself was extremely poor and poverty stricken. It wasn’t until the turn of the century where things began to slowly improve. Canal Street today is a bustling and vibrant thoroughfare, which is in stark contrast to its poverty stricken and disease riddled past. Much like many other parts of the city, it is born from a side of New York that most people aren’t familiar with. Now you know that you are actually walking on top of a canal the next time you walk down Canal Street!

This post is part of the Fun Facts series which is a series that will talk about fun facts, historical facts, and random facts about New York City. It will hopefully help you learn a little more about this amazing city and the many different sides of it. Please feel free to e-mail me with any suggestions or ideas for fun facts!