South Street Seaport

The street under your feet turns suddenly to stone. Rounded cobbles, set down long ago, press up through the soles of your shoes. The air carries the smell of river water and salt. Ahead, the masts of old ships rise against the sky. You have reached South Street Seaport, the worn old sailing edge of the city. Slow your pace here.

For two full centuries this was the place where New York met the sea. Wooden sailing ships tied up in rows along the East River, right here. Sailors, traders, and dock workers crowded the narrow piers. Goods from every part of the world were carried ashore at these very blocks, in the years before trucks, trains, and bridges drew the trade away.

Look closely at the long brick row known as Schermerhorn Row. A merchant named Peter Schermerhorn built it around 1811. These were counting houses, where traders kept their records and stored their cargo close to the water. The buildings have stood through two centuries of storms, fires, and hard change, and they lean very slightly now with their great age.

The river here was once shallow, muddy flat. To make more solid land to build on, the city filled the shallows with earth, with rubble, and even with the hulls of old worn-out ships. So part of the ground you are walking on is laid over sunken wooden vessels. Dig down beneath these streets, and you find the bones of ships.

From 1822 onward, these blocks held the Fulton Fish Market. Before dawn each day, men in rubber boots and aprons hauled wooden crates of fish under bare electric lamps. The smell was sharp, and the work was cold, wet, and fast. The market ran on this spot until 2005, when at last it moved north to a larger home in the Bronx.

Walk down to the water's edge and you meet the tall ships themselves. The largest is the Wavertree, an iron sailing ship built in 1885. Floating near it is the Ambrose, a red lightship that once anchored offshore and guided vessels safely into the harbor with its lamp. Both ships now belong to the South Street Seaport Museum behind you.

That museum began in 1967, when local people fought to save these old buildings from being knocked down for new towers. They gathered ships, signboards, ropes, and tools, and turned the blocks into a living record of the working port. It is only because of their long effort that the cobbles and the counting houses are still standing here at all.

Wander past the small printing shop the museum keeps running. Inside stand old iron presses, their trays filled with metal letters set by hand. Workers still ink the type and pull fresh prints, in the same slow and careful way printers worked when these streets were young. The smell of the ink mixes with the salt drifting in from outside.

Out on Pier 17 the mood shifts to the present day. A newer building there holds restaurants and an open rooftop where concerts are played through the summer. From up on that roof you look straight across at the Brooklyn Bridge, its cables climbing toward two great stone towers. The old port and the famous bridge share a single wide view.

Near the entrance to the cobbled streets, notice a small lighthouse standing on dry land. It honors the people lost when the ship Titanic sank in 1912. For many years it stood on the roof of a sailors' building nearby. A large ball once slid down its pole each day at noon, marking the exact time for the ships out in the harbor.

This corner has come close to vanishing more than once. Fires, falling trade, and great storms have all struck it hard over the years. In 2012 a powerful flood drove river water straight through these streets and into the shops. Each time, people returned to clean, repair, and reopen. The seaport endures because enough of them simply refuse to let it die.

Take a slow walk along the waterline and let the layers settle in your mind. Under your feet, sunken ships. Beside you, counting houses two hundred years old. Out front, iron ships still floating. And above it all, a modern bridge and a wall of glass towers. Few places in the city hold so many different centuries in one short view.

Stand at the rail as the daylight begins to fade. Water slaps against the wooden pilings below. A ship's rope creaks somewhere in the dark. Behind you the modern city climbs in glass and steel, but here at the edge it stays low, wooden, and old. Close your eyes for a moment, and the harbor sounds almost as it did two centuries ago.