The waterfront was the key to New York City's growth and prosperity.
For hundreds of years, the shorefront of Manhattan Island served as the
country's center of trade, shipping, and commerce. With its maritime
links across the oceans, along the Atlantic coast, and inland to the
Midwest and New England, Manhattan became a global city and home to the
world's busiest port. It was a world of docks, ships, tugboats, and
ferries, filled with cargo and freight, a place where millions of
immigrants entered the Promised Land.
In Waterfront Manhattan, Kurt C. Schlichting tells the story of the
Manhattan waterfront as a struggle between public and private control of
New York's priceless asset. Nature provided New York with a sheltered
harbor but presented the city with a challenge: to find the necessary
capital to build and expand the maritime infrastructure. From colonial
times until after the Civil War, the city ceded control of the
waterfront to private interests, excluding the public entirely and
sparking a battle between shipping companies, the railroads, and ferries
for access to the waterfront.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the City of New York
regained control of the waterfront, but a whirlwind of forces beyond the
control of either public or private interests--technological change in
the form of the shipping container and the jet airplane--devastated the
city's maritime world. The city slowly and painfully recovered.
Visionaries reimagined the waterfront, and today the island is almost
completely surrounded by parkland, the world of piers and longshoremen
gone, replaced by luxury housing and tourist attractions.
Waterfront Manhattan is a wide-ranging history that will dazzle anyone
who is fascinated by New York.
