on the waterfront

new york's waterfront

Standing on the corner of Worth and Church Streets in Tribeca, you can see a hundred and fifty years of change brought about by transportation and communication technology. During the evening rush hour, hundreds of New Jersey bound busses pass by on their way to the Holland Tunnel. Below you, the IND subway speeds north and south to the far ends of the city. Above you towers a 45 story windowless building, where miles of circuitry and microwave antennas beam Lower Manhattan’s phone traffic up to satellites in space. All these things take place, though, in a neighborhood full of old loft buildings and warehouses, built over a century ago because of the waterfront.
Technological change greatly affected New York's waterfront between 1850 to 1950. In 1850, deep water piers on the Hudson River serviced newly invented steam-powered boats, which were unable to dock at older East River wharves. One industry that moved from the East River to the new waterfront was the garment industry. The demand for ready-to-wear clothing after the Civil War prompted clothing and fabric manufacturers to expand along Worth Street. This location was closer to the ships carrying fabrics from New England mills. The businesses congregated along both sides of the street were combination showrooms, factories and warehouses. They all worked as an integrated market, arranging sales, filling orders, and shipping products to the rest of the country.
The other major industry utilizing the west side piers was the wholesale fruit and produce industry. The Washington Market that filled the blocks adjacent to the piers, first gained importance after the Erie Canal opened in 1825. Nearly everything cooked, prepared and eaten in New York from the 1840’s to the 1950’s passed through this area. In the 1840’s, railroads constructed along the waterfront expanded the ways of transporting goods out of the area. This diversified trade made New York the busiest and most important port on the continent. By the 1860’s, horsecars, drays, pushcarts and pedestrians filled much of the area with congestion. The city realized it needed new ways of transportation to move goods and people around.
In the late 19th century, immigration into New York was fueling waves of population growth. Most of these newcomers found work in the factories, warehouses and piers of the waterfront. Housing for these workers was needed desperately, but little land was available within walking distance. In 1868, Charles Harvey’s experimental elevated railway along Greenwich Street suggested a new alternative. Above the streets and powered by machines, elevated railways could relieve traffic congestion and the housing shortage. Soon, residential areas sprang up along the elevated lines, as far away as East Harlem and the South Bronx, yet all within 45 minutes travel time of Lower Manhattan.
By the 1880’s, advances with electric motors made subways possible. With speeds up to 30 miles per hour underground, one could live a distance from Manhattan, but still commute into work in a reasonable amount of time. New York’s first subway line opened in 1904, to high acclaim and great profits. Another population explosion in the early 1900’s led city leaders to believe that New York would continue to grow, possibly nearing 19 million people by 1950. By the 1930’s, subway lines extended as far away as Queens and the northern Bronx to accommodate the growth.
19 million people packed into one city didn’t turn out to be, however, as the automobile and highway construction allowed people to settle farther than anyone could have imagined using mass transit. After World War II, the rising use of automobiles enabled residential suburbs to develop, as people clamored to escape the congested city. New federal policies dedicated more public money towards interstate highway construction, as well as favorable mortgage guarantees and housing loans. Suddenly, New Jersey, Westchester and even the far reaches of Long Island were just as accessible to the city as Brooklyn and the Bronx were.
With more efficient highway connections and a growing worker pool, many companies found being in the suburbs preferable to the congestion and high costs of the city. Factories, distribution centers and warehouses left the city in droves by the 1960’s. Manufacturing and commercial operations using mass assembly techniques and phone communications did not need to be within their markets. Orders and payments could take place over wires rather than in person. Goods could go directly by truck to stores across the country from suburban factories. Even overseas locations became comparable in cost. The integration of production and distribution activities once furnished by Worth Street and Washington Market were no longer advantages.
Parallel changes in shipping technology also greatly affected the city’s commercial and manufacturing base located near the waterfront. Containerization made shipping goods faster and cheaper than the old breakbulk method using manpower. Containers could now be mechanically off-loaded huge ships directly onto trucks or railroad cars. Ports with direct highway and railroad access, therefore, were necessary, as well as large amounts of open land for stacking and sorting containers. The New York waterfront, hemmed in by 19th century buildings and continued traffic congestion, could not provide these things. The Port Authority decided in the late 1960’s to move all of its major container shipping operations to Port Elizabeth in New Jersey, where ready access to rail, highway and even air connections were available. The result was a once mighty waterfront reduced to miles of aging and abandoned piers, and old warehouse and manufacturing districts falling into disrepair.
In the past ten years, encouraging signs of new use are changing some parts of the waterfront. New residential and commercial developments sit on old pierheads, while new promenades and waterside parks create recreation opportunities along the shore. Most surprisingly, communication advances have made the old lofts and warehouses desirable again for electronic media and computer businesses. This trend follows the wholesale conversion of many of these buildings into residential lofts and apartments. New technologies have always reshaped the city’s waterfront. Yet, there is something captivating about the meeting of land and water that makes it continuously desirable to be near. We have lost a waterfront responsible for much of the city’s history. Our task is to make sure it is just as valuable to the city’s future as well.
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december 1999