Broadway at Franklin Street recalls New York in the 1850s, when Walt Whitman promenaded on the boulevard and Henry James as a boy tramped the streets with his brother William and went shopping with his aunt.

On the west side of Broadway, at no. 359, stands a handsome five-story stone building from 1852. Its “Italianate” style may indicate the influence of the A.T. Stewart Store that opened in 1846 at the southeast corner of Broadway and Reade Street. In 1853, photographer Mathew Brady opened his studio and gallery in the top three floors of 359 Broadway. A visitor to the gallery was Walt Whitman, perhaps on days when he also visited the booksellers Orson Fowler and Samuel Wells, on the site of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building. Fowler and Wells published the second edition of “Leaves of Grass” in 1856.

Brady was the city’s leading photographer. He remained at 359 Broadway until 1860.A few years ago, when the Landmarks Preservation Commission considered the building for designation, the debate for a while centered on whether this was the Brady studio where Lincoln sat for his famous portrait. It was not, for by Lincoln’s 1860 visit to New York, Brady had moved uptown, to Bleecker Street. (359 Broadway received landmark status nonetheless.)

Brady was born in upstate New York, perhaps in 1823. As a boy he developed an interest in painting, and in 1841 came to New York to study with Samuel F.B. Morse. Morse had just introduced to America the recently invented French daguerreotype photographic process, and he taught a course that Brady took. (At the time Brady worked as a salesman at A.T. Stewart.) In 1844, Brady opened his own daguerreotype gallery at Broadway and Fulton Street.

By the time he moved to Franklin Street, Brady was famous, and had made portraits of many leading Americans. Indeed, Brady made portraits of every American president from the sixth, John Quincy Adams, to the 25th, William McKinley, with the lone exception of William Henry Harrison, who died a month after taking office, before Brady could get to him. During the Franklin Street years, Brady employed other photographers, including Alexander Gardner and Timothy O’Sullivan, who would go on to renown equal to that of Brady himself. Not long after moving uptown, Brady undertook his ambitious photo documentation of the Civil War. Though the images are today very famous, the project was a financial failure for Brady, who died in 1896.

At the northwest corner of Broadway and Franklin stands a distinctive building from 1853. Six stories high, with high-arched windows wrapping around the Broadway and Franklin sides, this housed Taylor’s, a women’s-only restaurant that served some 3,000 diners on a typical weekday, making it one of the most popular restaurants in the country. Women drawn to the new dry-goods palaces of downtown felt need of a dining retreat free from the leering eyes of beer- and oyster-quaffing male patrons. Here ladies could experience what Henry James called “the enjoyment of our city as down-towny as possible.”