Manhattan · New York County
59 Maiden Lane
POPS - Indoor Lobby
- Location
- 59 Maiden Lane, Financial District
- Size
- 0.06 acres
- Hours
- Open during business hours
- Type
- POPS - Indoor Lobby
59 Maiden Lane is a Privately Owned Public Space on Maiden Lane in the Financial District, providing an indoor publicly accessible lobby on one of Lower Manhattan's oldest and most evocatively named streets.
Maiden Lane's name, referencing the young women who walked along a stream to do laundry in colonial times, preserves one of the most vivid images of pre-urban Manhattan. The stream was buried centuries ago, but the street's gentle curve may follow its original course.
The building at 59 Maiden Lane is in the Insurance District, an area of the Financial District historically associated with the insurance industry. The neighborhood's commercial character has diversified in recent decades.
The POPS provides indoor public access on a street whose romantic name belies its current commercial character, connecting the colonial past to the financial present through the simple persistence of a name.
This lobby space serves the Financial District on a street named for a scene of colonial domesticity that is almost impossible to imagine amid today's office towers.