Brian J. Godfrey. “Waterfronts of New York State.” New York State Encyclopedia, ed.

Peter Eisenstadt and Laura-Eve Moss, Syracuse University Press, 2005, 1670-1672

WATERFRONTS. As dynamic zones of contact for maritime functions and urban

communities, waterfront districts and port growth along New York State’s waterways led
to the early development of the state’s major cities and several smaller ones. Over time
waterfronts have evolved from port and industrial areas to commercial, residential, and
recreational districts, reflecting the post-industrial transformation of historic maritime
cities. Ongoing efforts to revitalize, renovate, and provide public access to the state’s
waterfronts continue to raise important issues in urban and regional planning.

Waterfronts and Urban Settlement

Europeans settled New York State largely along navigable waterways. Dutch and
British colonization began during periods of mercantile long-distance trade, which made
strategic port locations important geographic factors in eras of slow overland
transportation. The state’s favorable physical geography of maritime and inland
waterways facilitated an extensive navigation system during the colonial and early
national periods. New York Harbor’s incomparable series of sheltered bays, river
outlets, straits, and sounds afforded deepwater anchorage for ocean-going vessels,
while the Hudson and other rivers provided continental access. Encouraged initially by
superior waterborne connections—subsequently enhanced by the construction of
canals and railroads—New York State outdistanced major eastern rivals in the race for
economic dominance early in the early 19th century. From their bustling waterfronts,
seaports and inland river ports gave rise to the commercial, industrial, and financial
prowess of the Empire State.

Nowhere has the urban landscape experienced more constant and dramatic
alteration than the water’s edge. For reasons ranging from convenient dumping ground
to technological innovation, waterways have been deepened, widened, and sometimes
created from scratch. The emergence of shipping and other maritime functions
prompted the construction of permanent piers and ferry slips; early public structures
included the municipal docks, public markets, and customs house. Many nearby
businesses provisioned the ships and provided lodging, food, drink, and recreation in
“sailor’s town.” On the waterfront diverse social worlds overlapped in the service of
shipping and commerce: laborers unloaded merchandise, often repackaging it for
further transport or processing it further in local mills; financial transactions involved
factors, brokers, and insurance companies; urban trades provided the wide variety of
tasks necessary in such a cosmopolitan milieu. With the proliferation of taverns catering
to footloose migrant populations, reformers identified waterfronts as places of
questionable morals and sent Protestant missions. Given the waterfront’s common
association with unsavory sailors, dockworkers, and vice districts, the middle and upper
classes sought to avoid the industrial waterfront.

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 By the mid-19th century, as vessels evolved from sailing ships to steamships, the
major ports began to exhibit functionally separate docking, warehouse, industrial,
financial, commercial, housing, and entertainment districtsan evolution evidenced by
the history of New York State’s major cities. Most notably, New Amsterdam [now New
York City] grew as a mercantile town at one of the world’s greatest natural deepwater
ports. After the English assumed control in 1664, the city remained thoroughly
commercial, dominated by its bustling East River port on lower Manhattan Island. The
piers, warehouses, counting houses and insurance offices, stores, and other
commercial venues concentrated along South Street and constituted the heart of the
New York waterfront until the late 19th century. By 1812, a roughly two-mile stretch
known as the “Street of Ships” encompassed more than 50 numbered piers, filled with
docked ships from distant locations, along the East River of Lower Manhattan. Taverns
sprang up here to serve high and low sectors of society, while coffee houses often
served as mercantile meeting places. The Tontine Coffee House, at Wall and Water
Streets, was the epicenter of the city’s financial activity when an association of brokers,
traders, underwriters, and other commercial interests began trading upstairs in 1796;
this group evolved into the New York Stock Exchange, formally founded in 1817.
Outside on the street, other brokers formed the “curb exchange,” forerunner of the
American Stock Exchange.

Completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, which permitted navigation to the Great
Lakes and beyond, promoted New York City’s national commercial preeminence. As
railroads developed subsequently, the city established its dominance in an integrated
national economy. By 1900 the focus of New York City’s shipping had relocated from
Manhattan’s Lower East Side to the Hudson River and Brooklyn waterfronts, where
modernized shipping facilities, deep-water anchorages, and connecting railways
permitted larger steamships. For example, the Chelsea Piers included nine large docks
between 12th and 22nd streets. The Transatlantic Steamship Terminal (Piers 88, 90, 92),
which opened between 48th and 52nd streets in 1936, received such ocean liners as the
Normandie and Queen Mary. South Street remained a center for sailing vessels through
the 19th century, but subsequently sank into decay, although some waterfront activities,
like the Fulton Fish Market, remained on the East Side.

The development of Brooklyn’s waterfront gave rise to New York City’s most
populous borough. The success of the Atlantic Docks, built in the 1850s for
transshipment of cargo from the Erie Canal and the Atlantic trade, preceded
development of the Erie Basin complex in Red Hook. By the late 19th century,
Brooklyn’s wharves and piers carried considerably more cargo than did those of
Manhattan. In addition, the New York Naval Ship Yard, popularly known as the Brooklyn
Navy Yard, manufactured many of the country’s most famous warships after its creation
in 1801. Activity at the Brooklyn Navy Yards peaked in 1944, when over 71,000
employees built much of the U.S. wartime fleet. After World War II shipbuilding activity
and employment gradually declined until finally the Yard was closed in 1966. New York
City purchased 265 acres of the Yard as an industrial park. Waterfront areas of
Williamsburg, Red Hook, and the Gowanus Canal also grew up as manufacturing and
warehouse areas, only to face postwar industrial decline and abandonment.
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 Upstate cities accompanied the explosive 19th century growth of New York City.
Such Hudson Valley cities as Poughkeepsie (Dutchess County), Kingston (Ulster
County), Hudson (Columbia County), Newburgh (Orange County), and Troy
(Rensselaer County) grew from river ports with inland seaport functions, stimulated by
the growth of steamboat traffic. Albany benefited from its strategic location at a
convenient portage on the west side of the Hudson River, which facilitated land
communication with the interior. The Erie Canal encouraged the growth of trade,
industry, and population throughout the region—most notably in important upstate cities
such as Schenectady, Utica, Rome, Syracuse, and Rochester. With the arrival of
railroads after 1850, however, these inland waterfronts often declined as active shipping
centers and evolved primarily into industrial and commercial centers.

Major ports of call also emerged on the state’s portions of the Great Lakes,
initially stimulated by important transportation and commercial linkages with the Erie
Canal. Buffalo, located on the eastern end of Lake Erie at a natural east-west
transportation juncture, emerged on the Niagara frontier in the early 1800s. Subsequent
development of railroads and industries in the late 19th century made Buffalo a major
metropolis and the leading grain-handling port of the United States. Buffalo’s waterfront
became a vibrant zone of docks, grain elevators, factories, and transportation facilities.
On Lake Ontario, the Port of Oswego grew as in the completion of the Oswego Canal in
1828. Ogdensburg on the St. Lawrence River grew as an important port of entry for the
Great Lakes.

Industrial and Post-Industrial Waterfront Adaptations

As railroads developed and increasingly absorbed the shipment of passengers

and freight, waterfront sites often became less significant than locations along railroad
lines; small Hudson Valley cities, for example, generally suffered a decline in their
status as river ports. In contrast, as the shipping of bulk freight and passengers
continued to grow in major ports such as New York City and Buffalo, major urban
waterfronts became more functionally specialized in adjacent areas dedicated to cargo,
warehouses, industry, transportation, commerce, and worker housing. The laying of
railroad tracks behind the piers during the late 19th century and and construction of
elevated roadways after World War II, however, often impeded access to the water’s
edge and further isolated the waterfront. In addition, transportation congestion and
outmoded docks remained major problems. The Port Authority of New York and New
Jersey, a bi-state agency formed in 1921, subsequently dedicated itself largely to
improving metropolitan transportation links and modernizing shipping facilities.

The 1954 film “On the Waterfront,” directed by Elia Kazan and featuring actor
Marlon Brando, depicted the New York-New Jersey urban waterfront—set in Hoboken,
New Jersey—as it began a postwar decline, beset by labor conflicts, organized crime,
corruption, and human pathos. The rise of the automobile and trucking further altered
waterfronts as many industries moved away from urban locations to take advantage of
cheaper suburban land. Technological changes in shipping also changed the waterfront.
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Starting in the 1960s, the advent of container shipping required larger loading areas,
modernized facilities, and improved transportation access. Shipping abandoned many
central areas, leaving behind waterfront districts of rotting piers, empty warehouses, and
largely vacant factories. Container shipping in New York City is now restricted to
facilties at the Brooklyn Marine Terminal and Red Hook, and at Howland Hook in Staten
Island; port functions have moved largely to state-of-the-art container facilities in
outlying Jersey City, Port Newark and Elizabeth, New Jersey.

As once vibrant port districts in central areas fell into disuse during the late 20th
century, New York State’s major cities lost factory jobs and blue-collar positions in
trucking, warehousing, wholesale, and shipping. While port and industrial functions
decentralized, cities attempted to attract leading service-sector and financial operations
to sustain their economies. As part of this economic restructuring, urban renewal
projects attempted to convert waterfront districts to highways, housing, and recreational
and commercial activities. In recent years the once-gritty central urban waterfronts,
previously among the least salubrious areas in town, have been gentrified by affluent
residents and fashionable businesses.

Emergence of the post-industrial waterfront is nowhere more evident than on

New York City, where large-scale redevelopment along 578 miles of coastline has
become the subject of public controversy. Contemporary renovation of the deteriorated
Manhattan waterfront began in the late 1960s. Against a background of widespread
urban renewal in massive modernist office and apartment complexes, the incorporation
of the South Street Seaport Museum in 1967 signaled an alternative approach with an
emphasis on the arose as historical preservation, rehabilitated tall ships, and
commercial ventures in restored buildings along the East River. On the other hand, the
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey completed the twin 110-story World Trade
Center towers and an adjacent plaza by the mid-1970s. In the 1980s Battery Park City
added a complex of high-rise office buildings and mid-rise residential blocks for affluent
residents on the Hudson River, adjacent to the financial district, along with boat marinas
and public parks on a riverfront esplanade. Plans to redevelop more of the Hudson
River waterfront in large-scale residential and commercial projects were derailed in
1982 and 1985, when environmental lawsuits filed by local activists blocked the federal
government’s proposed Westway, an ambitious 4.2-mi (6.8-km) six-lane roadway on
about 180 acres (73 ha) of landfill along the Hudson River.

Defeat of the Westway project opened the way for renovation of the existing piers
along the Hudson River, starting with the completion of the Chelsea Piers complex in
1995. Where ocean liners used to dock, the Chelsea Piers created a vast athletic center
with an outdoor golf range, a sports fitness center, Olympic-size pools and skating rinks,
and restaurants. In 1998 state legislation mandated a 550-acre (223-ha) Hudson River
Park along a 5-mi (8-km) stretch of lower Manhattan, scheduled for completion in
approximately 2005, featuring a redesigned roadway, areas of recreational space, and
more than a dozen renovated piers for public use. The first of the Hudson River Park’s
planned six segments opened in 2003 along the Greenwich Village waterfront; work is
underway on other segments of the $400 million project, tentatively scheduled for
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completion in 2005, depending on the availability of funds. On the East River,
Stuyvesant Cove Park—a narrow, two-acre swath of land along the East River between
23rd and 18th Streets—opened in 2002.

Similar plans for park, commercial, and residential development are afoot as
other boroughs of New York City also rediscover the allure of the water’s edge. In
Brooklyn, waterfront projects include the redevelopment of 1.3 miles around the
Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges, revitalization of the 1.6 mile industrial waterfront of
Williamsburg, and creation of a Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway between Red Hook and
Brooklyn Bridge Park. A remarkable cleanup of the Gowanus Canal in South Brooklyn
followed the reactivation of the Gowanus Flushing Tunnel and Pump Station in 1999.
Other projects include renovation of the waterfront near Yankee Stadium and the Bronx
River, adaptive re-use of the former Homeport Navy site in Staten Island, and several
projects in Queens, including the Queens West residential towers and proposals to
improve public access to the waterfronts in Jamaica Bay and the Flushing River.

Formation of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, a network of concerned

governmental, civic, educational, business, environmental, labor and media group in the
Greater New York region, signaled new and widespread interest in waterfront issues,
beginning in 1999. This active non-governmental organization focused on creating
public access to the water’s edge, reconnecting waterfront communities with waterborne
transportation, cleaning up polluted areas, and revitalizing waterfront communities. The
importance of these efforts to integrate the waterfront in contemporary redevelopment
projects became tragically clear with the destruction of the World Trade Center’s “Twin
Towers” in terrorist attacks on 11 Sept 2001, which prompted the evacuation of nearly
500,000 people from Lower Manhattan by a flotilla of more than 100 boats, many of
them crewed by volunteers. This dramatic episode, reminiscent of the impromptu
evacuation of some 300,000 allied troops from Dunkirk in 1940, heightened awareness
of the importance of ensuring waterfront access and regular waterborne transportation
service into the redevelopment of the Greater New York metropolitan area. In recent
years new marine transfer stations and ferry terminals have joined the Staten Island
Ferry to reconnect Manhattan, Brooklyn, New Jersey, and other areas by water.

Although on a scale smaller than New York City, similar waterfront

redevelopment projects have been planned across upstate New York, generally with an
emphasis on historical preservation, recreational facilities, boating marinas, housing,
and retail-restaurant development. Most notably, Buffalo’s decline in importance as a
rail and canal link to the Great Lakes after completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway in
1959 prompted subsequent large-scale waterfront redevelopment. By the mid-1990s
this multi-phase project had resulted in construction of the Marine Midland (now HSBC)
Center, several large office buildings, a 500-room hotel, and a Waterfront Village with
marinas, restaurants, and townhouses. Buffalo’s waterfront also boasts a small flotilla of
retired warships -- a cruiser, a destroyer, and a submarine. Currently the Buffalo
Waterfront Corridor Initiative focuses on economic redevelopment, neighborhood
revitalization, improvement of direct access from Riverside to South Buffalo, and on the
creation of an International Gateway at and around the Peace Bridge.
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 Contemporary waterfront redevelopment along the Erie Canal has emphasized
pleasure boating, fishing, and cycling along the former towpaths where mules once
trod. For example, North Tonawanda, between Buffalo and Niagara, which emerged as
a transportation port with completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, became a popular
recreational area with boathouses and pleasure craft after World War II; contemporary
development plans call for museums, retail outlets, restaurants, new docks, and
historical ships.

The Hudson River Valley Greenway Act of 1991 created a framework for
voluntary regional cooperation among communities to promote the creation of riverside
parks and the Greenway Trail System with linkages to local natural and cultural
resources. For example, Poughkeepsie is one of 191 Greenway Communities (2003),
often with comparable waterfront projects, in 13 counties in the Hudson River Valley.
Poughkeepsie’s Waterfront Advisory Committee encouraged the redevelopment of a
public promenade along the city’s 2.5 mile waterfront with enhanced amenities at
Waryas Park, riverfront restaurants, parking facilities, boating facilities, and permanent
open space for Kaal Rock.

Continually evolving, waterfronts have accompanied the historic phases of town

founding, development, deterioration, and renewal in many cities in New York State.
Current waterfront planning focuses on issues of economic redevelopment, public
access, historical preservation, and environmental conservation. In the future, as in the
past, waterfronts promise to remain important elements of the state’s ever-changing
urban scene.

Brian J. Godfrey

References

Bone, Kevin, Mary Beth Betts, and Stanley Greenberg, eds. The New York Waterfront:
Evolution and Building Culture of the Port and Harbor (New York: Monacelli Press,
1997)

Buttenwieser, Ann L. Manhattan Water-Bound: Planning and Developing Manhattan’s

Waterfront from the Seventeen Century to the Present (New York: New York University
Press, 1987)

Gastil, Raymond W. Beyond the Edge: New York’s New Waterfront (New York:
Princeton Architectural Press, 2002).

Hudson River Park Conservancy. Hudson River Park: Concept and Financial Plan (New
York: Hudson River Park Conservancy, 1995)