Chips off an old block

"The block we study is 486 feet of a north-south street today called Greene Street between Houston and Prince Streets, on the northern edge of the SoHo neighborhood of downtown Manhattan (Figure 1), including the buildings on both sides of the street and the corners at each end. We took seriously the documentation of the block’s history. In the first two centuries after Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam, we had maps and histories that allow us to track the few individuals operating on our block (beginning in the 1640s); we will cover this section relatively briefly. Beginning in 1834 and continuing until 2013, there were city directories and/or censuses and a few specialized sources that allowed a recording of who was on the block and what was their business activity approximately every five years. The data is of course subject to some errors and omissions, but did make possible detailed description and analysis of what was happening on the block. This will constitute the bulk of the paper."

-from a fascinating paper on the development of the economy of New York City at the most micro of levels.