South East & South West Corners of Greenwich & Franklin Streets, 1861

In addition to the Five Points, black New Yorkers settled in and around Greenwich Street from the 1820s on. Much like the Five Points, the area was overcrowded and highly unsanitary. In the 1850s, Peter Guignon could be found on Greenwich Street where he maintained his home and a barber shop several blocks south of Franklin Street. If he wanted to visit his former classmate, James McCune Smith, Peter could simply walk north past Franklin Street to Smith's residence on North Moore Street right off of Greenwich Street.

Sarony, Major & Knapp

Valentine's Manual

1861

Collection of author

Old Houses in Chatham Street, opposite the park, 1857

Frankfort Street ended at Chatham Street, a couple of blocks west of Philip White's drugstore, so Philip would have been quite familiar with this street.

In the 1850s, southerner William Bobo visited the city and remarked that although Chatham Street was only a quarter of a mile long, "there is more to see in that quarter of a mile, than in twice the distance on any other street of the city of New-York." He described the street in some detail. "On the right-hand it seems that every house is a ready-made clothing establishment. . . . On the left are silver-smith and jewellry stores--shirts, boots, shoes, and hats--and all kinds of other commodities, from pea-nuts to double barrel shot guns. The variety does not so much astonish you, as the little space it is all crowded into." Bobo looked askance at these establishments, referring to them as "barefaced swindling shops."

A. Weingartner's Lithography

Valentine's Manual

1857

Collection of author

View of William Street, looking up from Frankfort St, 1859

Philip White must have walked William Street countless numbers of times. It lay a mere block west of his drugstore located at the corner of Frankfort and Gold Streets.

A. Weingartner's Lithography

Valentine's Manual

1859

Collection of author

Peter Ray

The father of Cornelia and Peter Williams Ray, Peter Ray was one of the black community’s most respected members. Born in 1800, he began working in Peter and George Lorillard’s tobacco company as an errand boy in 1811. When he died in 1882, he was one of the general superintendents in the company’s new factory in Jersey City. The Lorillards valued him as a worker, recognizing his skill as a "judge of leaf tobacco, and which will do best for snuff and which for cutting, for smoking and chewing tobacco," and rewarded accordingly.

Ray was also an important leader in the black community. He was active in the affairs of St. Philip’s since its inception, serving as the vestry’s senior warden for all but two years between 1843 and 1862. He also worked tirelessly on behalf of black education, cajoling the city's public school system into hiring black teachers.

NYPL ID number: 1800761
George Arents Collection

Manuscript Receipt Book. ca. 1825-ca. 1843/ Receipts, chiefly for curing tobacco and preparing snuff

circa 1842

The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

Pierre Toussaint

Pierre Toussaint was one of the slaves that the Berards, a former grand blanc slaveholding family from St. Domingue, brought with them to New York when they fled the Haitian revolution. Emancipated in 1807, Toussaint became a hairdresser, built a thriving business, and bought property. He invested his profits in several of the city’s fire insurance companies and, when the great fire of 1835 struck, he lost ninety-five percent of his net worth, as much as $900,000 in today’s money. He slowly and patiently rebuilt all he had lost.

Toussaint was successful because he was a beneficiary of considerable white largesse. Despite the fact that he had been their slave, Toussaint remained loyal to the Berards and their circle of friends. In turn, they introduced him to many of the city's prominent families and he converted these relationships into a veritable money-making machine. Although Toussaint did work out of the salon in his home, the most lucrative part of his work came from home visits to elite families where he cut and styled their hair. As contract clients, they paid him a fixed annual sum for weekly visits. In his waning years, it’s possible that Toussaint wanted to pass on some of his specialized knowledge to a younger man like Peter Guignon.

Anthony Meucci

circa 1825

The New-York Historical Society