January 9/10, 2021 – Ships have sailed in our harbor since the days of Verizzano and Hudson
258th Edition
January 9-10, 2021
Scandals of the Upper West Side
Tuesday, January 12,
7 PM
RIHS Lecture
The Roosevelt Island Historical Society and the New York Public Library are proud to host Beth Goffe and her presentation “Scandals of the Upper West Side.” Beth Goffe is a licensed New York City tour guide. An Upper West Side resident for over three decades, she is enamored with the city’s history and has amassed quite a few entertaining stories over the years.
To register: https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2020/01/12/scandals-upper-west-side
NEW YORK HARBOR
Stephen Blank
We live on an island, moored by time and tram to another island (and by bridge, to a third, of course). So let’s talk about where all of this water goes, down to New York Harbor and the Port of New York. New York Harbor is one of the largest natural harbors in the world. It’s what caught the eye and imagination of Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524 and, in 1609, Henry Hudson. The magnificent harbor drew the Dutch here in 1624 for its commercial possibilities – and then the British who took it away in 1644.
The Dutch settlement faced the East River and that’s where the port grew. The first pier was built in 1647 at Pearl and Broad Streets. The Great Dock, at Corlear’s Hook, was working a few decades later and a shipbuilding industry emerged once New York started exporting flour. New Yorkers soon used landfill (excrement, dead animals, ships deliberately sunk in place, ship ballast, muck dredged from the river and more) to transform lower Manhattan’s geography and by 1700, the East River bank had been “wharfed-out” up to around Whitehall Street. By 1815, Water, Front, and South Streets were added to the map and extended well past Manhattan’s original shoreline along Pearl Street.
City’s maritime activity. But it would not be enough to sustain that growth. The key issue in the early 19th century was to access the growing production of the American West (what we now call the Midwest) choked into the endless and expensive voyage down the Mississippi and through the Gulf of Mexico.
The opening of the 425-mile Erie Canal in 1825 connected the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River, and produce and goods from this heartland poured into the harbor. Goods were transported at one-tenth the previous fees in less than half the previous time. The port was booming, and South Street became the “Street of Ships.” China clippers, trans-Atlantic packets, coastal and Caribbean schooners, grain barges, fishing smacks, and Long Island Sound steamboats crowded the teeming wharves. Shipbuilding businesses, auction houses, and residences for seamen could be found in the brick buildings that appeared along John, Fulton, and Beekman streets.
In this booming era, the port became the key to American trade. Cotton, for example, was transshipped from southern ports to New York to be exported across the Atlantic (which intensified the South’s sense of victimization). South Street became the busiest port in America to receive goods from across America, Europe, and Asia. The advent of the ocean liner, ships that would cross the Atlantic on fixed schedules created a new business and companies such as the Black Ball Line, Red Star, and Blue Swallowtail began to sail between New York and Liverpool on set days. The Seaport became even busier with the introduction of clipper ships – lighter, faster ships that carried large amounts of cargo became a necessity for the success of import companies. Shipbuilders rushed to build the biggest, fastest clippers to meet the demands of international trade, and New York soon developed a reputation for building beautiful, stalwart ships that could withstand the rough waters of long oceanic voyages. By about 1840, more passengers and a greater tonnage of cargo came through the port of New York than all other major harbors in the country combined and by 1900 it was one of the great international ports.
After the 1860s, the maritime industry shifted from sail to steam, and deep-water piers drew ships across town to the Hudson River. By the mid-twentieth century, New York port’s activity had crossed to the west side, to Brooklyn and New Jersey. Only the Fulton Fish Market and a few lingering cargo lines continued to use South Street’s deteriorating piers.
Expanding commercial activity brought more financial activity to the City, as New York institutions grew to meet rising international needs. By the early 20th century, many of America’s new industrial giants – from Singer and Woolworth to Standard Oil – sited their headquarters here and pushed the limits on new skyscraper construction.
For many of us, this is the era of the Port that we recall – two images: Great ocean liners stacked up on the Hudson piers (memory – I traveled by the original Queen Mary to Liverpool in February 1959!) and longshore men (think On the Waterfront). (The dirt and noise of the port was why Manhattanites didn’t live close to the water, and why so many of the early public housing projects were built there.)
Not just noise and dirt, but in the mid-20th century, organized crime. The bi-state Waterfront Commission was set up in 1953 (a year before the movie On the Waterfront), to combat labor racketeering. The Gambino crime family was said to control the New York waterfront and the Genovese crime family the New Jersey side. In 1984 the Teamsters local was put under Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) trusteeship, and in 2005 a similar suit was brought against the International Longshoremen’s Association local.
Big changes took place in the port in the late 20th century
No longer would we see ocean liners moored up on Hudson. Easy and rapid airplane travel changed patterns of transportation and many of the great liners were removed from service. New York was not a major center for new Cruise Industry although its cruise traffic has grown over the past few years – until that is, the current Covid crisis.
And maritime commercial activity in the old New York City ports declined precipitately. In 1921, the commercial activity of the port of New York City, including the waterfronts of the five boroughs and nearby cities in New Jersey was formalized under a single bi-state Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the old ports became just one part of a much larger picture. The breakbulk system (cargo on pallets and in bales, hauled in and out of ships by tough guys with hooks and nets) vanished as more cargo traveled in new containers – and soon, the old general purpose steamer was a thing of the past, facing larger and larger ships purpose built to carry more and more containers. Longshoremen were gone, too, replaced by a much smaller number of highly trained specialists who operated larger and larger cranes, onloading and offloading containers. And, given more and more containers and the need to move them quickly by truck or rail, space became a premium – far more than the old New York City ports could provide. And, in any case, New Yorkers discovered the joy of living on the water, in quieter and cleaner former port areas.
Our port contains four container facilities, but, since the 1950s, the New York and Brooklyn commercial port has been almost completely eclipsed by the container ship facility at nearby Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal in Newark Bay, which is the largest such port on the Eastern Seaboard making New York the second or third largest container port in the nation (after Los Angeles and Long Beach).
WEEKEND PHOTO
SEND IN YOUR SUBMISSION
ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
WIN A TRINKET FROM THE KIOSK SHOP
FRIDAY PHOTOS OF THE DAY
Central Nurses Residence
Nancy Brown got it right!!
From a Reader
Hi Judy–hank you for your Editorial today.
It registered viscerally with me as I had just seen you Wed, afternoon at Coler.
I also went home to see the horrible mobs outside storming & then running amok inside the Capitol Building.
I too have been just rolling my eyes at the too little, too late rats jumping ship.
“Where were these people to stop the chaos that started on January 20, 2017?”…….INDEED!
All the best
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c)
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS
CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Copyright © 2020 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.
Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com
Leave a comment