“Rich, hemm’d thick all round with sailships and steamships, an island sixteen miles long, solid-founded…

The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers, well-model’d

The down-town streets, the jobbers’ houses of business, the houses of business of the ship-merchants and money-brokers, the river-streets…

City of hurried and sparkling waters! City of spires and masts!

City nestled in bays! My city!”

—Walt Whitman, “Mannahatta,” 1881