Test Your Knowledge of NYC's Waterfront Heritage

 

As early as 1625 the Dutch West India Company established a trading post at the foot of Manhattan Island, where its waterfront and canal providing inland access were key to its success. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the City constructed fortifications to protect its shores, and important waterfront communities and industries were established.

 

The Street Plan of New Amsterdam and Colonial New York, which was created by Crijn Fredericksz under assignment from the Dutch West India Company, provides virtually the only above-ground physical evidence in Manhattan of the Dutch presence in New York during the 17th century.

 

Dictated by local geography and the need for defense, the plan also grew up around the settlement’s primary function as a commercial center for trading. As a result, the town’s most extensive innovation and planning went into its dock areas, with the streets serving as secondary to its water access. Broad Street, which extends in the designation from Wall Street to Pearl Street, was originally an inlet from the East River that the Dutch adapted to a canal. The Dutch enlarged the inlet into a canal and extended streets on both sides by 1664. As a result of its origins as a waterway, Broad Street was unusually wide, or broad, for a colonial street. The canal was filled to create a street, which was paved in 1676. The present name of the street dates to 1692. The Street Plan of New Amsterdam and Colonial New York was designated a New York City landmark in 1983.

 

Since the sixteenth century, New York Harbor has been recognized for its strategic importance, and as the city grew to prominence, its defense became increasingly important to New York and the nation. What island is home to a New York City historic district that was fortified ca. 1776 and served as a military installation from the early 19th century until 1997?

 

Governors Island has served a wide variety of purposes, including as pasture, a game preserve, and a summer resort, but it is most associated with its time as a military base. The island was first fortified in ca. 1776. It served as an Army post from 1821 until 1966 and a Coast Guard facility until 1997. Now a New York City and National Park, the Governors Island historic district, and its historic fortifications are tangible reminders of the city's once powerful harbor defense system.

 

With a prime waterfront location on a manmade island in New York Harbor, which New York City landmark was built to defend the harbor against the British in the War of 1812 and went on to become the United States’ first immigration station, where almost 8 million people arrived in the United States between 1855 and 1890?

 

As tensions with the British rose in advance of the War of 1812, four forts were built to protect New York Harbor from potential incursion: Castle Williams on Governor's Island, Fort Wood on Bedloe's Island (now Liberty Island; the fort’s stone walls became the base of the Statue of Liberty); Fort Gibson on Ellis Island; and Southwest Battery on Manhattan Island, now known as Castle Clinton in Battery Park. Castle Williams and Castle Clinton are designated New York City landmarks, while the remnants of Fort Wood and the site and ruins of Fort Gibson are incorporated into the Statue of Liberty National Monument and the Ellis Island Historic District, respectively.

 

Built from 1808 to 1811, Castle Clinton has gone on to serve multiple functions. After its cession to the City in 1823, it became an amusement area known as Castle Garden. After it was covered with a roof in 1845, it became New York City's principal opera and concert hall, and Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind (1820-87) made her North American debut there in 1850. In 1855, it became the first United States immigration station—predating Ellis Island’s storied use for that purpose—and approximately 7,500,000 immigrants passed through its doors. The fort was converted to an aquarium in 1896 by McKim, Mead & White and retained that use until 1941, when it was slated to be razed to make room for the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel approaches. The fort was saved in 1946, when it was renamed Castle Clinton and became a National Monument under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service.

 

Which collection of Greek Revival- and Italianate-style buildings opened in 1831 as a home for “aged, decrepit and worn-out sailors,” an early charitable organization that required only that residents had served five years as mariners for the United States or 10 years under a foreign flag?

 

Sailors’ Snug Harbor was established by an 1801 bequest by Robert Richard Randall of Manhattan, who had made his fortune in the maritime trade. With land values in Manhattan rising, the trustees purchased farmland on the north side of Staten Island and opened the home in 1831. The designated buildings of the complex, now the Sailors’ Snug Harbor Cultural Center, are the five Main Buildings designed by Minard Lafever and Richard P. Smyth between 1831-33 and 1879-81; the Chapel designed by James Solomon, 1854-56; the fence by Frederick Diaper, 1841-45; and North Gatehouse by Richard P. Smyth in 1873. The interiors of the Chapel and Administration building are designated as well.

 

Which Brooklyn historic district was first settled by the Dutch in the 17th century and grew into the commercial and industrial heart of Brooklyn with the arrival of improved water transportation in the 19th century?

 

The city of Brooklyn grew out of the early Dutch settlement at the Fulton Ferry landing, where the first ferry service began between Peck Slip Manhattan and Brooklyn in 1642. In 1704 a road, now Fulton Street, was officially laid out between the ferry and Jamaica, and in 1816 the settlement was incorporated as the Village of Brooklyn. With the advent of steam ferries, Fulton Ferry became the commercial and industrial heart of Brooklyn with warehouses, banks, and insurance companies whose presence is represented in the historic district’s buildings.

 

Fun fact: Following the Battle of Long Island (or Battle of Brooklyn), Washington’s army retreated to Manhattan from the “Brookland Ferry” landing, as it was then known.

 

What Manhattan historic district is the last surviving remnant of a once-thriving waterfront community that grew from a cluster of wharves in the 18th century to an important part of the leading port of the nation in the mid-19th century, and reflects the rise of New York City as an international center of commerce?

 

The East River waterfront of Manhattan was the port and trading center of New Amsterdam. The Dutch West India Company established their operations in the vicinity as early as 1625, and by the mid-19th century, South Street Seaport was a bustling commercial center. In the early 19th century, there was sufficient landfill to expand the street grid, and South Street was added. An 1835 fire destroyed much of Lower Manhattan, and during the twentieth century, high-rise buildings overtook most of the area surrounding the Seaport. South Street Seaport retains its 19th century character, and is now home to a maritime museum and historic tall ships moored at the pier.

 

New York City established itself as a major port in the first half of the nineteenth century, with shipbuilding facilities, cargo terminals, and piers serving the harbor. New York Harbor and the Hudson and East Rivers were critical navigation routes, which spurred the creation of important maritime infrastructure and industry along their shorelines.

 

Built in 1840-51 to chief engineer William J. McAlpine’s design, Dry Dock No. 1 in the Brooklyn Navy Yard was the first permanent dry dock in the New York City area and one of the great feats of nineteenth-century American engineering. Dry Dock No. 1 allows for which important nautical function?

 

Dry docks are great chambers that allow the repair and construction of ships below the water level of an adjoining body of water. A ship can be brought in to the dry dock once the chamber has been filled with water. The chamber is then drained, allowing the ship to rest on wooden blocks so that work on the ship may proceed. After the work is completed, the chamber is flooded to the outside water level and the ship can depart.

 

The monumental, granite-walled Dry Dock No. 1 has served many ocean-going vessels, including the Monitor and the USS Niagara, which laid the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable in 1857-58. Great difficulties with the site were overcome to make the creation of Dry Dock No. 1 possible, and its sturdiness of construction and ingenious design are part of the reason it remains in service over a century and a half after its completion. Of the six dry docks in the Navy Yard, Dry Dock No. 1 is one of three that are currently active.

 

Since New York’s early days, lighthouses have served as critical navigational aids for boats entering the city’s waterways. Three of LPC’s five designated lighthouses are in the borough of Staten Island: the New Dorp Light, the Staten Island Lighthouse, and Prince’s Bay Lighthouse. These lighthouses were built as part of the federal government’s lighthouse service in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a time when New York Harbor was the nation’s leading port and Staten Island was the center of a thriving coastal economy.

 

Built in 1864, the Prince’s Bay Lighthouse overlooks Raritan Bay on Staten Island’s southern edge, an area known for abundant, high-quality seafood. In the late 19th century, the lighthouse guided boats seeking which saltwater product that employed generations of Staten Island residents?

 

The Raritan Bay and nearby tributaries were known for abundant, high-quality shellfish and especially oysters. Oyster farming was among Staten Island’s main occupations, particularly along the south shore in Pleasant Plains (Prince’s Bay) and Tottenville, from the 17th century to the early 1900s. A 1911 map indicates that the waters off the shore of Prince’s Bay had two “Water Grants” given to Bernard Reilly and James E. Dougherty in the 1880s. The grants likely gave them right to farm the rich oyster beds that were common off of Staten Island.

 

The oyster industry was quite successful on Staten Island, and some of those who pursued it became wealthy, while others were able to support their families in a comfortable manner for many years. Many successful oyster captains hired free African-Americans from Maryland to prepare the beds and plant the oysters. Starting in the 1830s and 1840s, these free African-Americans and their families began to settle in in Staten Island, creating the small community of Sandy Ground.

 

By the nineteenth century, the supply of fresh drinking water to Manhattan was inadequate and inconsistent. The Croton Aqueduct was planned in order to address this shortage, but faced the challenge of traversing a river in order to provide water supply to Manhattan. Construction of a lower bridge began in 1838, but was halted by the courts in 1839 because of its potential to block Harlem River traffic. Construction of the Roman aqueduct-influenced High Bridge commenced later that year. In 1923, stone piers were replaced by a steel arch to increase navigability beneath the bridge.

 

From the 1850s to 1950s, the New York City region was the dominant manufacturing center in the United States. New York City's waterfronts were industrial powerhouses, largely due to their location on a natural deep-water harbor and connections to the Erie Canal, which provided a navigable water route to the Great Lakes.

 

Located along the East River waterfront in Brooklyn, which historic district is one of New York City’s most significant extant industrial waterfront neighborhoods?

 

Hint: The Manhattan Bridge creates a very impressive and popular backdrop for photographs in this historic district.

 

The DUMBO Historic District, located along the northwestern waterfront of Brooklyn, was home to some of the largest and most important manufacturing businesses in Brooklyn and New York City during much of the 19th and 20th centuries.

 

Brooklyn was a major American industrial center during this time. By 1880, it was the fourth largest manufacturing center in the country, and much of this industry was located along the East River waterfront, where transportation of raw materials and finished goods was especially convenient. Among the manufacturing businesses that were especially prominent in Brooklyn were those producing machinery, paint, sugar, coffee, packaged groceries, paper boxes, and shoes. The land that now comprises DUMBO was among the earliest in Brooklyn developed for residential use but by the 1830s the character of the neighborhood began to change as residential structures were replaced by commercial buildings and multi-story factories and warehouses. The owners of these structures were attracted to the area because of its proximity to the East River and the presence of ferry lines providing convenient connections to Manhattan.

 

DUMBO, an acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, was designated a historic district in 2007 and includes approximately 91 buildings that reflect important trends in the development of industrial architecture in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries, and embody an important era of Brooklyn and New York City history.

 

New York City’s deep waterways were crucial in the development of industry and commerce along its shores, and the East River waterfront of Williamsburg developed in the late 19th and early 20th century as an important industrial center. One of its most impressive buildings, the Havemeyers & Elder Filter, Pan & Finishing House, is a prominent reminder of the dominance of which industry reliant on shipments of raw materials from the American South and Caribbean?

 

While all the industries listed as options were important in Brooklyn’s history, the Havemeyers & Elder Filter Pan & Finishing House, more commonly known as the former Domino sugar refinery, represents the importance of the sugar refining industry along Brooklyn’s East River waterfront. Consisting of three conjoined brick structures, it was commissioned by Havemeyer & Elder in 1881-84 following a disastrous fire. With massive brick facades executed in the American Round Arch style, an American variant of the German Rundbogenstil, the Filter, Pan & Finishing House were designed to give the appearance of a single, monumental structure. The refinery remained in operation until 2004 and was designated an individual landmark in 2007.

 

The original high-water mark ran just west of Tenth Avenue and nearly all of the land within the West Chelsea Historic District was once under water. Landfill extended the shoreline in the mid- and late-19th century. The Hudson River waterfront was initially developed during the late 1840s and 1850s when Manhattan was becoming the country’s largest manufacturing center. The availability of cheap, unencumbered land recently reclaimed from the Hudson River lured many industrial tenants to the area, and commerce shifted from the shallow East River to the deeper shores along the western edge of the island. The presence of convenient transportation connections, including the water and railroad, also helped the neighborhood's industrial development.

 

The Terminal Warehouse Company’s Central Stores was the first large-scale, purpose-built warehouse in the historic district. Designed in 1890-91 by architect George B. Mallory in the American Round Arch style, the steel frame and brick building at 261 Eleventh Avenue occupies the entire block between West 27th and West 28th streets on the Hudson River. Tracks for the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad entered the warehouse complex through the massive round arch in the building’s eastern façade. The West Chelsea Historic District was designated in 2008 and includes approximately 30 structures dating from 1885 to 1930.

 

When it opened in 1904 to power the city’s new subway system, the Interborough Rapid Transit Company Powerhouse was the largest electrical generating station in the world. Which of the following New York City waterways was vital to its operations?

 

Occupying almost the entire block bounded by Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues and 58th and 59th Streets, the mammoth IRT Powerhouse contained bunkers capable of holding 30 million pounds of coal delivered by Hudson River barges. Coal was delivered to a 700-foot pier at the foot of West 58th Street and carried to the building’s attic coal bunkers using a system of conveyor belts. From there, it dropped to the boiler room, where men shoveled the coal into boilers creating steam to run the electrical generators. Waste ash collecting in the building’s basement was taken to the same pier, where it was loaded onto barges for disposal.

 

Designed by Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White, the IRT Powerhouse was declared by the New York Times upon its opening to be “an ornament to the west side.... But for its stacks, it might suggest an art museum or public library rather than a powerhouse.” Its riverfront location fulfilled the desire of the IRT Company to provide “as commanding a site as possible” for the building, reflecting its belief that “the powerhouse of the city’s great transit system will be something in which New Yorkers will take no little pride.”

 

The delivery of coal to the city via the Hudson River was crucial to the city’s growth, dating back to the opening of the Delaware & Hudson Canal between Pennsylvania coal country and the Hudson River port of Rondout, near Kingston, in 1828.

 

New York City’s prominence as a major United States port led to its importance as a point of entry to millions of immigrants making long journeys across the Atlantic Ocean seeking the promise of a new life in America. Many continued their journeys into the country on newly constructed railroads, while many others stayed in the City and fueled its commercial, industrial, and cultural importance.

 

Ellis Island’s expedient position in the Upper Bay has brought it to governmental attention for centuries. Which state or federal government purpose did it serve before it became an immigration station from 1892 through the 1930s?

 

The island's strategic position in the Upper Bay brought it to governmental attention as early as 1794, when New York State fortified Ellis Island as part of a harbor defense system. In 1808, New York State bought the island from Samuel Ellis's heirs and subsequently sold it to the federal government, which used it for military purposes throughout the nineteenth century. Within a few years of the island's acquisition, the government built Fort Gibson, including a battery, magazine, and barracks, in anticipation of the War of 1812. Fort Gibson was active until 1861; later in the century, Ellis Island became the site of a naval powder magazine. Federal use continued when, at the end of the century, the federal government assumed responsibility for the acceptance and processing of immigrants in New York and needed new facilities for that purpose.

 

In the first of several expansions by landfill, the federal government doubled the island's size to roughly six acres and built a group of wooden structures for immigration processing. The architects Boring & Tilton won the competition to design the current immigration station at Ellis Island after the timber frame station was lost to fire in 1897.

 

Fun fact: Ellis Island is one of some fifty islands that together make up most of the City of New York. All but one of the city's five boroughs are either islands or on islands: Manhattan Island and Staten Island are islands in their own right, while Brooklyn and Queens are located on the western tip of Long Island -- only the Bronx is located on the mainland of the United States.

 

As New York City and its population and waterfront industries grew, important infrastructure was developed to confront pollution and clean waterways.

 

This monumental landmark designed by the celebrated architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White plays a crucial role in protecting water quality in the city’s rivers and bays. What is it?

 

The Bronx Grit Chamber was built in 1936-37 as a primary component of the Ward’s Island Sewage Treatment Works, an important early effort to combat water pollution using advanced scientific means. Before it was built, raw sewage from Manhattan and the Bronx was discharged directly into the city’s waterways. Designed under the direction of William F. Kendall of McKim, Mead & White, this neo-Classical building recalls the work of the visionary French architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and reminds us of the importance of giving architectural expression to even the most utilitarian of buildings.

 

Built between 1909-1911, this landmark was the visible expression of a massive infrastructure project intended to cleanse the increasingly polluted waters of the manmade Brooklyn waterway for which it was named. What is the landmark?

 

The Gowanus Canal was designed in the mid-19th century as a navigable waterway connecting the businesses in south Brooklyn to Gowanus Bay. The twice-daily tidal changes were insufficient to remove the effluent building up in the canal from a variety of sources, and in 1904, the Bureau of Sewers for the Borough of Brooklyn began digging a tunnel from the canal to Buttermilk Channel through which, by means of a large propeller, the polluted canal water would be flushed and replaced by fresh water. To celebrate the opening of the pumping station on June 21, 1911, a procession of boats proceeded down the canal and Miss Gowanus, Jennie Haviland, tossed lilies, a symbol of purity, into the water.

 

Though New York City has 520 miles of coast, prior to the 20th century there was relatively little public access to the shore. The creation of publicly accessible waterfront amenities is an important part of the City’s history.

 

What waterfront promenade’s construction coincided with the creation of a large public beach to provide “free and open” access to the coastline, and led to the rejuvenation of a Brooklyn neighborhood?

 

Prior to construction of the boardwalk, most of Brooklyn's waterfront was privately owned. Not only did businesses charge admission fees to use the beach, but in many places, the sand had begun to wash away, leaving only a sliver of shoreline. Planned and designed by Philip P. Farley, the Riegelmann (Coney Island) Boardwalk was completed in 1923. Not only did this municipal improvement provide “free and open” access to the expanded beach and ocean, but a new street plan, including curbs, sidewalks, and sewers, was implemented at Coney Island. The expanded beach and new boardwalk allowed, for the first time in New York City, people of all economic and social backgrounds full free and public access to the beach.