Niblo’s Garden

A brief history of the area of Manhattan that is now called SoHo from Collect Pond in the 1700s through the present.

One way we New Yorkers define ourselves is by where we live—in what neighborhood, on what street.  We’ve repeated our own addresses an untold number of times, yet we usually do not know for whom or for what the streets that make up our neighborhood are named. As I discovered during my research for this post, the etymology of street names reveals much about the history of the areas through which those streets run.

From the 1820's until 1895, when it was demolished to make way for an office building, Niblo's Garden was one of New York City's premier "pleasure gardens," venues where wealthy New Yorkers could find diversion and amusement, both indoors and out, before the advent of public parks.