Obsolete Office Buildings Open a Path for Downtown Transformations

In March 1836, businessman and former New York City Mayor Philip Hone noted in his diary that he had sold his house on Broadway across from City Hall Park for $60,000 ($2.2 million in current dollars) with the buyer planning to convert it into shops and a hotel. “Almost everybody down-town is in the same predicament, for all the dwellinghouses are to be converted into stores,” Hone wrote. “We are tempted with prices so exorbitantly high that none can resist.”