1 Growth, Decline, and Rebirth
1 Ted Steinberg, Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of Greater New York (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), appendix F, 365.
2 Robert Albion, Square-Riggers on Schedule: The New York Sailing Packets to England, France, and the Cotton Ports (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1938).
3 William Cronin, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991).
4 Joseph Goldstein, “Along New York Harbor ‘On the Waterfront’ Endures,” New York Times, January 8, 2017.
2 Water-Lots and the Extension of the Manhattan Shoreline
1 See Jill Lepore, Encounters in the New World: A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Douglas Egerton, Alison Games, Jane G. Landers, Kris Lane, and Donald R. Wright, The Atlantic World: A History, 1400–1888 (New York: Wiley Blackwell, 2007).
2 Matthew Fontaine Maury, Explorations and Sailing Directions to Accompany the Wind and Current Charts (Washington, DC: C. Alexander, 1851), 254–255.
3 Albion, Square-Riggers, appendix 2, 276–277.
4 Robert Albion, The Rise of New York Port, 1815–1860 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939), 16.
5 There are numerous books that chronicle the building of the Erie Canal and its importance in both American history and the history of the rise of New York City. See, for example, Peter Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005); Ralph Andrist, The Erie Canal (Rockville, MD: American Heritage, 2016); Gerard Koeppel, Bond of Union: Building the Erie Canal and the American Empire (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2009); Evan Cornog, The Birth of Empire: DeWitt Clinton and the American Experience, 1769–1828 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
6 Albion, Rise of New York Port, 29.
7 Richard MacKay, South Street: A Maritime History of New York (New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1934).
8 US Bureau of the Census, “Population in the Colonial and Continental Period,” chap. 1 in A Century of Population Growth, from the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth, 1790 to 1900 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1909), 11.
9 Albion, Rise of New York Port, 117.
10 Hendrik Hartog, Public Property and Private Power: The Corporation of the City of New York in American Law, 1730–1870 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983).
11 Charter of the City of New York, Internet archive, https://archive.org/details/charterofcityofn00newy/ [accessed August 14, 2015].
12 Ibid.
13 Hartog, Public Property and Private Power, 14.
14 Corporation of the City of New York, Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, vol. 4, January 24, 1730 to September 19, 1740 (New York: Dodd Mead, 1905), 101–105.
15 Ibid., November 18, 1731, 104.
16 Ibid., 105.
17 Ibid., 102.
18 Ibid.
19 George William Edwards, New York as an Eighteenth-Century Municipality, vol. 2, 1731–1776 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1917), 51–52, Internet archive, https://archive.org/details/newyorkaseightee00edwaiala/ [accessed May 2015].
20 Hartog, Public Property and Private Power, 34.
21 Edwards, New York, 158.
22 Ibid.
23 M#31, Carlyle Street, 1799, New York Municipal Archives [hereafter NYMA].
24 Sidney Hoag Jr., “The Dock Department and the New York Docks,” paper no. 16, presented March 22, 1905, Municipal Engineers of the City of New York, Proceedings for 1905, 38.
25 M#30, water grants, 1730, Department of Ports and Trade [Department of Docks], folder 30, NYMA.
26 Steinberg, Gotham Unbound, 57.
27 Ann Buttenwieser, Manhattan Water-Bound: Manhattan’s Waterfront from the Seventeenth Century to the Present (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999), 43.
28 “Welcome to New York, 1609,” Welikia: Beyond Mannahatta, https://welikia.org/explore/mannahatta-map/ [accessed March 2015].
29 M#82, 15th to 23rd Streets, 10–12, 1825, NYMA.
30 Hartog references criticism of the water-lot grants that had appeared in an early newspaper, the Independent Reflector, in 1753. See Milton Klein, ed., The Independent Reflector; or, Weekly Essays on Sundry Important Subjects; More Particularly Adapted to the Province of New-York (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), 118–127.
31 See New York Commissioners of the Sinking Fund, The Wharves, Piers, and Slips, Belonging to the Corporation of the City of New York, 1868, vol. 1 (New York: New York Printing, 1868), 9.
3 The Ascendency of the Port of New York
1 State of New York, Report of Commissioners Relative to Encroachments in the Harbor of New York, Senate, No. 3 (Albany: C. Van Benthuysen, 1857), 5.
2 Buttenwieser, Manhattan Water-Bound, 129.
3 John H. Morrison, History of the New York Shipyards (New York: W. F. Sametz, 1909), 92–93.
4 See David Scott, Leviathan: The Rise of Britain as a World Power (London: Harper Press, 2013).
5 Albion, Square-Riggers, 6. Albion’s exhaustive research with the New York and Liverpool shipping records provides data not available from any other source.
6 Ibid., title page.
7 Ibid., 15.
8 Gazette and Commercial Advertiser, November 15, 1816, n.p.
9 Cathy D. Matson, Merchants and Empire: Colonial New York (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), appendix A, 320–321.
10 David Davis, “James Crooper and the British Anti-Slavery Movement, 1821–1823,” Journal of Negro History, vol. 45, no. 4 (October 1960), 244–247.
11 Albion, Square-Riggers, appendix 14, 322.
12 “Liverpool Customs Bill of Entry No. 2009,” July 16, 1825, Merseyside Maritime Museum, Archives, and Library, Liverpool, England [hereafter Merseyside Museum].
13 Eugene R. Dattel, Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Costs of Economic Power (Lanham, MD: Bowman & Littlefield, 2009), x.
14 Ibid., 29.
15 Albion, Square-Riggers, 20.
16 Between 1818 and 1856, just over a hundred different packet ships provided service between New York and Liverpool: fifty to London and fifty-one to Le Havre, France. See Albion, Square-Riggers, appendix 2, 275–286.
17 State of New York, Encroachments, 14.
18 US Department of Commerce, Statistical Record of the Progress of the United States, 1800–1914, and Monetary, Commercial, and Financial Statistics of Principal Countries (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1914).
19 Albion, Square-Riggers, 83–87.
20 Ibid., appendix 17, 326.
21 Morrison, New York Shipyards, 54.
22 Albion, Square-Riggers, appendix 19, 330.
23 US Bureau of the Census, “New York City, Ward 1,” in Population Schedules of the 7th Census of the United States, 1850 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1852), 130–168.
24 “1850 United States Federal Census, New York Ward 1, Eastern Division,” 168, www.ancestry.com [accessed February 2015]. The 1850 census does not include building addresses, but its records contain data for each of the “dwelling houses numbered in the order of visitation” and a second number for “families numbered in order of visitation.” A family included all individuals living together. A residential building or tenement starts with a dwelling number, and then the separate families/households in the building or tenement each have a separate “family” number.
25 New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, American Seamen’s Friend Society Sailors’ Home and Institute, LP-2080, November 28, 2000, 2.
26 “Sailors on Shore,” Sailor’s Magazine, vol. 10, no. 3 (November 1837), 78.
27 “Fatal Fracas in a Bar-Room,” New York Times, August 13, 1861, 5.
28 “1860 United States Federal Census, New York, Ward 4, District 1,” www.ancestry.com [accessed July 29, 2016]. The 1860 census does not include addresses, just the ward and district in New York.
29 “Found Drowned,” New York Times, August 13, 1861, 5.
30 “Murder of a Sailor,” New York Times, December 11, 1860, 5.
31 “Are Sailors More Depraved Than Formerly?,” Sailor’s Magazine, vol. 31, no. 1 (September 1858), 11.
32 “Shameful Case of Kidnapping,” New York Times, December 1, 1857, 5.
33 Ibid.
34 “No Advance Wages,” New York Times, July 24, 1857, 5.
35 Joseph Conrad, The Nigger of the “Narcissus”: A Tale of the Sea (New York: Doubleday, 1914), 191.
36 Albion, Square-Riggers, 49.
37 Ibid., appendix 2, 286–294.
38 Ibid., 51.
39 Sven Beckert, “The Rise of a Global Commodity,” chap. 1 in Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Knopf, 2014), 3–28.
40 David Cohn, The Life and Times of King Cotton (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973), 88, quoted in Dattel, Cotton and Race, 30.
41 Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 31.
42 US Bureau of the Census, “Statistics of Slaves,” in A Century of Population Growth from the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth, 1790–1900 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1909), 131.
43 Johnson, River of Dark Dreams, 41.
44 James Watkins, King Cotton: A Historical & Statistical Review, 1790 to 1908 (New York: J. L. Watkins & Sons, 1908).
45 The English industrial revolution destroyed the cottage-industry production of thread and the weaving of cloth in northwestern England. The weavers and their families had no choice but to leave their rural cottages, move to Birmingham and Manchester, and work in the new mechanized textile mills. The entire family had to work from dawn to dusk to survive; they had no choice.
46 US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Statistical Record, 1800–1914, table 370.
47 Dattel, Cotton and Race, 86, 85.
48 John Killick, “Risk, Specialization, and Profit in the Mercantile Sector of the Nineteenth-Century Cotton Trade: Alexander Brown and Sons, 1820–80,” Business History, vol. 16, no. 1 (1974), 2.
49 “Ledger A, 1825–1829,” Brown Brothers & Company Papers, Manuscript Division, New York Public Library [hereafter NYPL].
50 Beckert, Empire of Cotton, 204.
51 Ibid.
52 “New Orleans Office,” vol. 124, 10, Brown Brothers & Co. Papers, NYPL.
53 Ibid., 40.
54 “Gold Account 33,” General Ledger, 118–121, Brown Brothers & Co. Papers, NYPL.
55 E. J. Donnell, Chronological and Statistical History of Cotton (New York: James Sutton, 1872).
56 Albion, Square-Riggers, appendix 8, 307.
57 “Liverpool Customs Bills of Entry,” September 1828 and September 1855, Merseyside Museum. This is also the source for the information in the table below.
58 Henry Smithers, Liverpool, Its Commerce, Statistics, and Institutions: With a History of the Cotton Trade (Liverpool, UK: Thos. Kay, 1825), 174.
59 Ibid., 171–172.
4 New York’s Waterway Empires
1 See Glenn Knoblock, The American Clipper Ship, 1845–1920 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014); Richard McKay, Donald McKay and His Famous Sailing Ships (New York: Dover, 1995).
2 See Tom Lewis, Hudson: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).
3 New York Evening Post, October 1, 1807.
4 Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824).
5 John H. Morrison, History of American Steam Navigation (New York: W. F. Sametz, 1903).
6 See Frances Dunwell, “The Foundry at Cold Spring,” chap. 5 in The Hudson River Highlands (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981).
7 J. H. French, ed., Gazetteer of the State of New York (Syracuse, NY: R. P. Smith, 1860), 57.
8 Ibid., appendix F.
9 Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 654.
10 Morrison, History of American Steam Navigation.
11 See Jon Sterngass, First Resorts: Pursuing Pleasure at Saratoga Springs, Newport, and Coney Island (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
12 Ibid.
13 US Bureau of the Census, Manufactures of the United States in 1860: Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1865), xxi.
14 Roger McAdam, Old Fall River Line: Being a Chronicle of the World-Renowned Steamship Line, with Tales of Romantic Events and Personages during Its Ninety Years of Daily Service and Accounts of the Last Voyages by the Famous Sound Steamers (Brattleboro, VT: Stephen Daye Press, 1937).
15 See Brian Cudahy, Over and Back: The History of Ferryboats in New York Harbor (New York: Fordham University Press, 1990).
16 Kenneth Jackson, ed., The Encyclopedia of New York City (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 398–400.
17 Ibid., 397–401.
18 Board of Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police, Annual Report, 1866 (New York: Bergen & Tripp, 1867), 61–64.
19 Ibid.
20 See David McCullough, The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972).
21 Jackson, Encyclopedia of New York City, 149.
22 See David Hammack, “Urbanization Policy: The Creation of Greater New York,” chap. 7 in Power and Society: Greater New York at the Turn of the Century (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1982). Another reason for consolidation involved efforts by the Republicans to weaken the power of Tammany Hall, Manhattan’s Democratic political machine. See Terry Golway, Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014).
23 French, Gazetteer of the State, 213–223.
24 US Department of Homeland Security, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2012 (Washington, DC: US Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics, 2013).
25 See John Kelly, The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People (New York: Henry Holt, 2012). The literature of Irish immigration to America, both popular and academic, is voluminous.
26 “Famine Irish Passenger Record Data File,” in the series “Records for Passengers Who Arrived at the Port of New York during the Irish Famine, Created 1977–1989, Documenting the Period 1/12/1846 to 12/31/1851,” National Archives and Records Administration [hereafter Famine Irish database, NARA], https://aad.archives.gov/aad/fielded-search.jsp?dt=180&tf=F&cat=all&bc=sl/ [accessed November 2014].
27 See Tyler Anbinder, Five Points: The Nineteenth-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum (New York: Basic Books, 2001).
28 Albion, Square-Riggers, 276.
29 Herman Melville, Redburn: His First Voyage; Being the Sailor-Boy Confessions and Reminiscences of the Son-of-a-Gentleman, in the Merchant Service (New York: Penguin, 1976).
30 The seventy-six ships arrived on twenty-six different days in July.
31 Famine Irish database, NARA.
32 Ibid.
33 British Customs, Liverpool, “Bills of Entry,” September 1855, Merseyside Museum; “New York Passenger List,” Oct.–Nov. 1855, www.ancestry.com [accessed February 2015]. These are also the sources for the information in the table below.
34 For an analysis of the costs for passengers in the nineteenth century, see Raymond Cohn, “The Transition from Sail to Steam in Immigration to the United States,” Journal of Economic History, vol. 65, no. 2 (June 2005), 469–494.
35 Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, viii–ix.
36 US Bureau of the Census, Report on the Manufactures of the United States at the Tenth Census (June 1, 1880) (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1883), xxvi; US Bureau of the Census, Census Reports, Twelfth Census of the United States, Taken in the Year 1900: Manufactures (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1902).
37 US Bureau of the Census, Report on the Manufactures . . . 1880, xxvi.
38 Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 659.
39 Jackson, Encyclopedia of New York City, 855.
5 The Social Construction of the Waterfront
1 Charles Barnes, The Longshoremen (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1914), 169–170.
2 Ibid., 168–169.
3 Ibid., viii.
4 Jackson, Encyclopedia of New York City, 184–185.
5 Barnes, Longshoremen, 5.
6 See Stanley Nadel, Little Germany: Ethnicity, Religion, and Class in New York City, 1845–1880 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990).
7 For the source of all 1880 census data, see “NAPP 1880 US Census, 100% Enumeration,” Steven Ruggles, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Josiah Grover, and Matthew Sobek, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 6.0 [database] (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2015), North Atlantic Population Project, https://www.nappdata.org/napp/.
8 See Kurt Schlichting, “ ‘Kleindeutschland,’ the Lower East Side in New York City at Tompkins Square in the 1880s: Exploring Immigration Patterns at the Street and Building Level,” in Ian Gregory, Don DeBats, and Dan Lafreniere, Routledge Handbook of Spatial History (London: Routledge, 2017).
9 Ibid. This is also the source for the information in the table below.
10 Burroughs and Wallace, Gotham, 745.
11 US Bureau of the Census, “New York, Table II—Population by Subdivisions of Counties,” Seventh Census of the United States, 1850 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1853), 102.
12 Norman Hapgood and Henry Moskowitz, Up from the City Streets: Alfred E. Smith; A Biographical Study in Contemporary Politics (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927), 5.
13 Ibid., 3–5.
14 Ibid., 5.
15 Citizens’ Association, Council of Hygiene and Public Health, Sanitary Condition of the City (New York: D. Appleton, 1865).
16 Citizens’ Association, “Report of the Fourth Sanitary District,” in Sanitary Condition of the City, 45.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid., 47.
19 Richard Plunz, A History of Housing in New York City (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 8.
20 Citizens’ Association, “Report of the Fourth Sanitary District,” in Sanitary Condition of the City, 52.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., 58.
23 Ibid.
24 See Plunz, “Government Intervention,” chap. 7 in History of Housing.
25 “Tenement Life in New York,” Harper’s Weekly Magazine, March 29, 1879, 246.
26 “NAPP 1880 US Census, 100% Enumeration.”
27 Jacob Riis, The Battle with the Slum (New York: Macmillan, 1902).
28 Citizens’ Association, “Report of the Fourth Sanitary District,” in Sanitary Condition of the City, 47.
29 Jacob Riis, “The Down Town Back-Alleys,” chap. 4 in How the Other Half Lives (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1890).
30 Riis, Battle with the Slum, 19.
31 Ibid., 17.
32 James Fisher, On the Irish Waterfront: The Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul of the Port of New York (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 3.
33 “NAPP 1880 US Census, 100% Enumeration.” Also see the table in endnote 8.
34 Stuart Waldman, Maritime Mile: The Story of the Greenwich Village Waterfront (New York: Makaya Press, 2002), 42.
35 Citizens’ Association, “Report of the Fourth Sanitary District,” in Sanitary Condition of the City, section B, 71.
36 Ibid., 119.
37 “NAPP 1880 US Census, 100% Enumeration”; for the 1900–1930 US census data, the NAPP took either a 5 percent or 10 percent sample of all records from each census. These are also the sources for the information in the table below.
38 New York Public Library, Map Warper, http://maps.nypl.org/warper/.
39 Citizens’ Association, “Report of the Twentieth Sanitary District,” in Sanitary Condition of the City, 238.
40 Ibid., 239.
41 Citizens’ Association, “Report of the Seventieth Sanitary District,” in Sanitary Condition of the City, 197.
42 Ibid., 198.
43 See “London Terrace,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Terrace/ [accessed November 13, 2015].
44 Fisher, On the Irish Waterfront.
6 The Port Prospers, the Railroads Arrive, and Congestion Ensues
1 Albion, Rise of New York Port, appendix 7, 398.
2 Albion cautions that the data for coastal shipping—drawn from customs-data shipping publications, such as the Shipping and Commercial List, and local newspapers—is incomplete. Many small coastal ships did not register with US Customs or were not reported in the newspapers.
3 “Marine Intelligence,” New York Times, June 23, 1852, 8.
4 The ships came from Virginia, with wood; Philadelphia, with coal, as well as fish and fish oil for the Fulton Fish Market; Salem, Massachusetts, with general merchandise; Machias, Maine, with lumber; and Portland, Connecticut, with tons of stone from the Brainerd Quarry Company, used to construct New York City’s signature brownstone buildings.
5 See T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2009).
6 Laws of the State of New York . . . 1831, chapters 263, 323.
7 “Detail of the Real Estate Owned in the City of New York as of Dec. 31, 1854,” New York & Hudson River Railroad Papers, box 74, Manuscript Division, NYPL. The New York & Harlem Railroad acquired land at 42nd Street in the 1840s and 1850s for a rail yard to service their steam locomotives. At that time, 42nd Street was out in the country, 2 miles to the north of New York City, whose northern boundary was around Canal Street. Eventually the New York & Harlem owned all of the land from 42nd to 58th Streets, between Lexington and Madison Avenues.
8 In the 1840s, the northern boundary of the city was Canal Street. Above it were large farms owned by descendants of the early Dutch settlers, such as the Stuyvesant family. There were also many farms farther up Manhattan Island. The city of New York owned a great deal of property, including much of the land where Central Park would be constructed. First, though, the city had to evict squatters on the Central Park land, including African Americans and Irish living in what was known as Seneca Village.
9 Albion, Rise of New York Port, 314.
10 See Charles Henning, International Finance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1958), for a general discussion on the history of documents used in foreign trade.
11 Morrison, History of American Steam Navigation.
12 Ibid., 413.
13 Jacob Abbott, “The Novelty Works, with Some Description of the Machinery and the Processes Employed in the Construction of Marine Steam-Engines of the Largest Class,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, vol. 2, no. 12 (May 1851), 721–734.
14 “The Loss of the Arctic,” editorial, New York Times, October 12, 1854, 4.
15 See Thomas Kettel, “Banking,” chap. 4 in Southern Wealth and Northern Profits (New York: George W. & John A. Wood, 1860).
16 US House of Representatives, Causes of the Reduction of American Tonnage and the Decline of Navigation Interests, 41st Cong., 2d Sess., 1869–1870 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1870), appendix 23, 272–273.
17 Knots are the maritime measure of speed through the water: 1 knot equals 1.15 miles per hour. The Britannia’s average speed of 8.5 knots equaled 9.8 miles per hour.
18 See John Maxtone-Graham, The Only Way to Cross: The Golden Era of the Great Atlantic Express Liners—from the Mauretania to the France and the Queen Elizabeth 2 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1997); Philip Dawson, The Liner: Retrospective and Renaissance (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006).
19 “Destroying the Commerce and the Harbor of New York,” editorial, New York Times, April 17, 1857, 4.
20 Ibid.
21 William O. Stoddard, “New York Harbor Police,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, vol. 45, no. 269 (October 1872), 672–683.
22 See Goldstein, “Along New York Harbor.”
23 “Destroying the Commerce,” 4.
24 State of New York, in Senate, January 29, 1857, Report of Commissioners Relative to Encroachments in the Harbor of New York, No. 40 (Albany: C. Van Benthuysen, 1857), 3.
25 Ibid., 30.
26 Ibid., 22.
27 Ibid., 261.
28 Ibid., 187.
29 Ibid., 190.
30 State of New York, in Senate, February 5, 1862, Report of the Select Committee Appointed by the Last Senate to Examine into the Affairs and Investigate the Charges of Malfeasance in Office, of the Harbor Masters of New York, No. 100.
31 State of New York, in Senate, January 8, 1856, Report of Commissioners Relative to Encroachments in the Harbor of New York, No. 3 (Albany: C. Van Benthuysen, 1856), 6.
32 State of New York, Encroachments, No. 40, 21.
33 Ibid., 27.
34 New York City Commissioners of the Sinking Fund, The Wharves, Piers and Slips, Belonging to the Corporation of the City of New York, 1868, vol. 1, East River (New York: New York Printing, 1868), 1.
35 Ibid., 15.
36 “City Budget for 1867,” New York Times, February 28, 1867, 2.
7 The Public and Control of the Waterfront
1 Laws of the State of New York . . . 1870, chapter 137.
2 Hoag, “Dock Department,” 44–47.
3 Department of Docks, First Annual Report of the Department of Docks for the Year Ending April 30, 1871 (New York: Douglas Taylor, 1872).
4 Hoag, “Dock Department,” 40.
5 Department of Docks, Thirty-Fifth Annual Report of the Department of Docks and Ferries . . . 1905, 208.
6 Department of Docks, “Record of Wharf Property Acquired,” Thirty-Third Annual Report of the Department of Docks and Ferries . . . 1903, 165.
7 Department of Docks, Thirty-Fifth Annual Report, 86, 205.
8 New York City Department of Finance, “Individual Property Assessment Roll Data,” using the “Your Property Information” web page, http://nycprop.nyc.gov/nycproperty/nynav/jsp/selectbbl.jsp [accessed April–May 2015].
9 Department of Docks, “Report of the Engineer-in-Chief,” Fifth Annual Report of the Department of Docks . . . 1875, 45–47.
10 Hoag, “Dock Department,” 142.
11 Department of Docks, Thirty-Fifth Annual Report, 98–99.
12 Hoag, “Dock Department,” 141.
13 Fisher, On the Irish Waterfront, 7.
14 Department of Docks, “List of Those Employed by the Board, April 30, 1887,” Seventeenth Annual Report of the Department of Docks . . .1887, 9.
15 “Old Dock Board Politics: Other Things Being Equal,” New York Times, October 29, 1895, 7.
16 Mazet Committee, Investigation of Offices and Departments of the City of New York by a Special Committee of the [New York State] Assembly, Report of Counsel, December 22, 1899.
17 “Mazet Committee’s Work: Treasurer Murphy Tells of Docks Department,” New York Times, August 3, 1899, 3.
18 Ibid.
19 New York Chamber of Commerce, Thirty-Ninth Annual Report, May 7, 1896, 4.
20 Ibid., 6–7.
21 Ibid., 4–7.
22 See Hoag, “Dock Department.”
23 Department of Docks, “Report of the Engineer-in-Chief,” Tenth Annual Report of the Department of Docks . . .1880, 114–117.
24 Department of Docks, “Record of Wharf Property Acquired by Department since Its Organization to December 31, 1905,” Thirty-Fifth Annual Report, 199–200.
25 Department of Docks, “Rent-Roll of Leases and Permits,” Thirty-Fifth Annual Report, 110–111.
26 “Cry for More Dock Room,” New York Times, December 14, 1908, 12.
27 “A New and Great Work for New York City,” New York Times, Sunday magazine, December 27, 1908, SM3.
28 “New Chelsea Piers to Open Tomorrow,” New York Times, February 20, 1908, C6.
29 Department of Docks, Forty-Eighth Annual Report of the Department of Docks . . . 1919.
30 New York New Jersey Port and Harbor Development Commission, Joint Report, with Comprehensive Plans and Recommendations (Albany: J. B. Lyon, 1920), 177.
31 Albion, Rise of New York Port, appendix 7, 398.
32 Port and Harbor Development Commission, Joint Report, 140.
33 William Wilgus, “A Suggestion for an Interstate Metropolitan District,” 15–16, box 48, William J. Wilgus Papers, Manuscript Division, NYPL.
34 See William J. Wilgus, “Milestones in the Life of a Civil Engineer,” unpublished manuscript, 1948 Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology, University of Missouri–Kansas City.
35 William J. Wilgus, Transporting the A.E.F. in Western Europe, 1917–1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), 211.
36 Committee on the Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs, Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Wm. F. Fell, 1929).
37 Port and Harbor Development Commission, Joint Report, 4.
38 Jameson Doig, Empire on the Hudson: Entrepreneurial Vision and Political Power at the Port of New York Authority (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), appendix, 403.
39 Ibid.
40 John Griffin, The Port of New York (New York: City College Press, 1959), 76.
8 Crime, Corruption, and the Death of the Manhattan Waterfront
1 US Bureau of the Census, Quarterly Summary of Foreign Commerce of the United States, 1960, no. 1198 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1961), 895.
2 Port and Harbor Development Commission, Joint Report, 128–130.
3 Ira Place, chief counsel of the New York Central Railroad, in Report of the Commission to Investigate the Surface Railroad Situation in the City of New York, on the West Side (Albany: J. B. Lyon, 1918), 202–204.
4 Ibid., 26.
5 Port and Harbor Development Commission, Joint Report, 151.
6 Department of Docks and Ferries, “Rent Role of Leases and Permits,” Thirty-Eighth Annual Report of the Department of Docks and Ferries . . . 1909, 80–81.
7 William J. Wilgus, “Plan for a Proposed New Railroad System for the Transportation and Distribution of Freight by Improved Methods,” box 45, folder 12, William J. Wilgus Papers, Manuscript Division, NYPL.
8 Francis Lane, “A Proposed Subway Belt Line for Lower New York,” Engineering News [New York], vol. 60, no. 16 (October 5, 1908), 419; “Gigantic Plan to Reduce Street Congestion,” New York Times, Sunday magazine, October 4, 1908, SM10.
9 “Belt Line Plan Recommended for the Port of New York,” Engineering News-Record, vol. 86 (February 10, 1921), 271–272.
10 Carl Condit, The Port of New York, vol. 2, A History of the Rail and Terminal System from the Grand Central Electrification to the Present (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 221.
11 Stoddard, “New York Harbor Police.”
12 Fisher, On the Irish Waterfront, 43.
13 Commission on Industrial Relations, Industrial Relations: Final Report and Testimony Submitted to Congress by the Commission on Industrial Relations Created by the Act of August 23, 1912, 11 vols., US Senate, 64th Cong. (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1916), 3:2054.
14 Ibid., 2055.
15 Ibid., 2059.
16 Malcolm Johnson, On the Waterfront: The Pulitzer Prize–Winning Articles That Inspired the Classic Movie and Transformed the Harbor of New York (New York: Chamberlain Bros., 2005), 152.
17 Nathan Ward, Dark Harbor: The War for the New York Waterfront (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010), 60.
18 Johnson, On the Waterfront, 118.
19 Ward, Dark Harbor, 116.
20 Johnson, On the Waterfront, 146.
21 A. H. Weiler, “Review of ‘On the Waterfront’: Brando Stars in Film Directed by Kazan,” New York Times, July 29, 1954.
22 See Robert Coles, Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1987); Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of Dorothy Day (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981).
23 See Pope Leo XIII, “Rerum Novorum” [On the Rights of Capital and Labor], May 15, 1891; Pope Pius XI, “Quadragisimo Anno” [On Reconstruction of the Social Order], May 15, 1931, both in Papal Encyclicals Online, www.papalencyclicals.net [accessed January 2016].
24 Fisher, On the Irish Waterfront, 108.
25 In 1952, Kazan’s anti-Communist testimony as a witness in Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee helped end some Hollywood careers.
26 “Priest Advocates for Union Revolt,” New York Times, January 12, 1953, K51.
27 James Fisher, “John M. Corridan, S.J., and the Battle for the Soul of the Waterfront, 1948–1954,” US Catholic Historian, vol. 16, no. 4 (Fall 1998), 71–87; 80.
28 Ibid., 81.
29 Fisher, On the Irish Waterfront, 288.
30 Johnson, On the Waterfront, 307.
31 Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1960), 170–209.
32 Ibid., 207–208.
33 “Filmsite Movie Review, ‘On the Waterfront’ (1954),” AMC Filmsite, www.filmsite.org/onth.html [accessed November 18, 2015].
34 “Joseph Ryan Quiet Curses,” New York Daily News, June 3, 1999.
35 Fisher, On the Irish Waterfront, 236.
36 Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, Annual Report, FY 2012–2013, 2, www.wcnyh.gov [accessed January 2016]. Also see Goldstein, “Along New York Harbor.”
37 Benjamin Chinitz, “A Century of Slowing Down,” chap. 2 in Freight and the Metropolis: The Impact of America’s Transport Revolutions on the New York Region (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 18–48.
38 Ibid., table 2, 21.
39 Peter Kihss, “Pier Growth Here Far behind Rivals,” New York Times, August 13, 1953, 28.
40 Ibid.
41 Department of Marine and Aviation, City of New York, A Progress Report to Mayor Robert F. Wagner on Rebuilding New York City’s Waterfront (New York: Department of Marine and Aviation, September 5, 1956).
42 Chinitz, Freight and the Metropolis, 132.
43 Matthew Drennan, “The Decline and Rise of the New York Economy,” in John Mollenkopf and Manuel Castells, eds., Dual City: Restructuring New York (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1991), 32.
44 “Tankers to Carry 2-Way Pay Loads,” New York Times, April 27, 1956, 39.
45 Marc Levinson, “Container Shipping and the Decline of New York, 1955–1972,” Business History Review, vol. 80 (Spring 2006), 49.
46 Charles Zerner, “Big Port Terminal Near Completion,” New York Times, January 31, 1954, S8.
47 Department of Marine and Aviation, Rebuilding New York’s Waterfront, 11.
48 “New York’s Docks Lose as Jersey’s Gain in 4 Years,” New York Times, May 12, 1963, S14.
49 Tania Long, “Decline of Port Has Halted Lindsay Tells Propeller Club,” New York Times, February 24, 1967, 70.
50 Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 72.
51 Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, Annual Report, FY 2012–2013, 9.
52 Werner Bamberger, “Chelsea Dock Workers Irked by Decline in Jobs,” New York Times, June 4, 1967, 88.
53 Werner Bamberger, “Dockers Demand Waterfront Aid,” New York Times, June 28, 1967, 89.
54 Port and Harbor Development Commission, Joint Report, 186.
55 Ibid., 188.
56 Author’s interview with Dan Pastore, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, May 2016.
57 Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, “Bayonne Bridge Navigational Clearance Project,” www.panynj.gov/bridges-tunnels/bayonne-navigational-clearance-project.html.
58 See Isabel Wilkinson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York: Vintage, 2010).
59 Lee Dembart, “Carter Takes a ‘Sobering’ Trip to South Bronx: Carter Finds Hope Amid Blight,” New York Times, October 6, 1977.
60 Ralph Blumenthal, “Recalling New York at the Brink of Bankruptcy,” New York Times, December 5, 2002.
61 Frank Van Riper, “Ford to City: Drop Dead,” New York Daily News, October 30, 1975, 1.
9 Rebirth of the Waterfront
1 Alan G. Hevesi, Public Authority Reform: Reining in New York’s Secret Government (Albany: New York State, Office of State Comptroller, 2004), 6, 54.
2 See Robert Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York: Knopf, 1974).
3 See Doig, Empire on the Hudson.
4 See the New Urbanism website, www.newurbanism.org.
5 Aaron Shkuda, “Housing the ‘Front Office to the World’: Urban Planning for the Service Economy in Battery Park City in New York,” Journal of City Planning, vol. 13, no. 3 (2013), 235.
6 “Battery Park City Apartments for Rent,” StreetEasy, http://streeteasy.com/for-rent/battery-park-city/beds:2?sort_by=price_desc/ [accessed March 2, 2016].
7 US Bureau of the Census, “2014 American Community Survey (ACS),” American FactFinder, https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/searchresults.xhtml?refresh=t/ [accessed March 10, 2016].
8 Department of City Planning, City of New York, New York City Comprehensive Waterfront Plan: Reclaiming the City’s Edge (New York: Department of City Planning, 1992), i.
9 Ibid.
10 See William Buzbee, Fighting Westway: Environmental Law, Citizen Activism, and the Regulatory War That Transformed New York City (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014); Buttenwieser, Manhattan Water-Bound, 207–214.
11 Tom Robbins, “Westway, the Highway That Tried to Eat New York, Defeated 25 Years Ago This Week,” Village Voice, October 1, 2010.
12 “Manhattan Waterfront Greenway Bike Map,” NYC Bike Maps, www.nycbikemaps.com/maps/manhattan-waterfront-greenway-bike-map/.
13 Teresa Agovino, “Hudson River Park Is Still Sinking Financially,” Crain’s New York Business, June 27, 2013.
14 Laws of the State of New York . . . 1998, chapter 592 (S. 7845).
15 Charles Bagli, “Possible Deal May Bring Money to Repair Pier 40 in Manhattan,” New York Times, May 15, 2014.
16 “About Us,” Atlas Capital Group, www.atlas-cap.com/about-us.php [accessed March 6, 2016].
17 See Annik LaFarge and Rick Darke, On the High Line: Exploring America’s Most Original Urban Park (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2014).
18 Patrick McGeehan, “The High Line Isn’t Just a Sight to See: It’s Also an Economic Dynamo,” New York Times, June 6, 2011, A19.
19 Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961).
20 Author’s analysis of US Bureau of the Census data for the 1970 decennial census and its “2014 American Community Survey.”
21 “A Potential Win-Win for the West Side,” editorial, New York Times, December 14, 2015.
22 See Laura Kusisto, “A ‘Poor Door’ on a Planned New York Apartment Tower with Affordable Housing Gets a Makeover,” Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2014.
23 Charles V. Bagli and Robin Pogrebin, “With Bold Park Plan, Mogul Hopes to Leave Mark on New York’s West Side,” New York Times, November 17, 2014, A1.
24 David Callahan, “The Billionaires’ Park,” editorial, New York Times, November 24, 2014, A27.
25 Charles Bagli, “Billionaire Diller’s Plan for Elaborate Pier in the Hudson is Dead,” New York Times, Sept. 13, 2017, A1.
26 Editorial: “How New Yorkers Sank a Floating Park,” New York Times, Sept. 15, 2017, A18.
27 Lois Weiss, “100 Wall St.’s $275M Pricetag a Downtown Record,” New York Post, May 19, 2015.
28 Department of City Planning, City of New York, Vision 2020, New York City Comprehensive Waterfront Plan (New York: Department of City Planning, March 2011), 2.
29 Ibid.
30 Kia Gregory and Marc Santora, “Bloomberg Outlines $20 Billion Storm Protection Plan,” New York Times, June 11, 2013.
31 Department of City Planning, City of New York, A Stronger, More Resilient New York (New York: Department of City Planning, June 2013).
32 Ibid., 41.
33 Ibid., 54.