South Street Seaport, Lower Manhattan

I had a busy weekend of "faith, family, and friends". I hope your weekend was enjoyable, too!

On Friday, I went to lower Manhattan to take part in a Big Onion walking tour that was being sponsored by my husband's employer.
"Big Onion Walking Tours" is a tour company that leads locals and visitors alike on innovative and exciting tours through New York's ethnic neighborhoods and historic districts, peeling away the many layers of New York City's history and lore. Our guide was a charming young woman named Beth who is a Ph.D. candidate in American History at Columbia University.

I know I spent a lot of time in March and April taking you around the sights of lower Manhattan, but there is quite a bit more I'd like to share with you about our many-layered city! Before the Big Onion tour, I did some preliminary walking and photo-taking to share of some interesting sights of lower Manhattan.

The first stop is South Street Seaport The seaport has a world-class maritime museum, breathtaking views, and more than 100 shops, cafes, and restaurants. This renovated American landmark is right on Lower Manhattan's historic waterfront, located where Fulton Street meets the East River, and adjacent to the Financial District.


The seaport features some of the oldest architecture in downtown Manhattan and includes the largest concentration of restored early 19th-century commercial buildings in the city. This includes renovated original mercantile buildings, renovated sailing ships, the former Fulton Fish Market, and modern tourist malls featuring food, shopping, and nightlife, with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Below is a picture of the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse which is located at the entrance to the Historic Seaport District. It is a memorial to the passengers, officers, and crew who died as heroes when the steamship Titanic sank after a collision with an iceberg on April 15, 1912. It was originally erected by public subscription in 1913 and stood above the East River on the roof of the old Sea Men's Church Institute until they moved their headquarters and the lighthouse was donated to the South Street Museum.

As you walk past the lighthouse into the seaport you see Schermerhorn Row. 

In the 1700’s the Schermerhorns, a family of shipmasters and chandlers purchased much of the area that is today’s Seaport District. In 1810, Peter Schermerhorn began construction of a block-long series of conjoined buildings now known as Schermerhorn Row. The South Street Seaport Museum Visitor Center, exhibition galleries, and maritime library are now located there, as well as restaurants and specialty stores.
Across from Schermerhorn Row is the Fulton Market, which was established in 1822 to sell a variety of foodstuffs and produce. The Fulton Fish Market was once part of it until 2005, and during much of its 188-year tenure at the original site, the Fulton Fish Market was the most important wholesale East Coast fish market in the United States. The fish market is now in a new, modern structure in the borough of the Bronx.

The Peking, a four-masted bark, is docked at Pier 16 and is seen in the first photo with the NYC skyline, and below. It represents the final chapter in the evolution of merchant vessels powered only by the wind. Launched in Hamburg, Germany in 1911, she was used to carrying manufactured goods to South America and to return via Cape Horn with nitrate. In 1975, Peking was acquired by the museum, and with paid admission visitors can go below decks to tour restored living quarters, to view an exhibition of vintage photos of the ship during her active career, and other exhibits.



The Ambrose lightship is also docked along Pier 16. It was built in 1908 to guide ships safely from the Atlantic Ocean into the broad mouth of lower New York Bay between Coney Island, New York, and Sandy Hook, New Jersey, which is an area filled with sandbars and shoals invisible to approaching vessels. While a lighthouse is normally used for this purpose, the water here was too deep, and the bottom too soft, and this floating alternative was devised.
South Street's Ambrose lightship occupied her original station until 1933 and then served as the Scotland lightship closer to Sandy Hook until 1963. She was given to the museum by the U.S. Coast Guard in 1968. Today, visitors can board the Ambrose to view an exhibition of photographs, charts, and artifacts on navigation and the role of lightships

Across is Pier 17, a building with 3 floors of shops and restaurants but, more importantly, spectacular views of the Brooklyn Bridge from the back deck of the pavilion.

A view inside Pier 17's three tiers.

The view of the Brooklyn Bridge and Brooklyn Heights from the top deck of the Pier 17 pavilion. On a nice summer day, it is pleasant to sit in one of the permanent deck lounges and watch the East River boat traffic go by. Although stationary I think it almost feels like being on the deck of a cruise ship!

The surrounding blocks of the seaport have some interesting old buildings to view that reflect back to the maritime era of the port of New York.

Carmine's Italian Seafood restaurant (no affiliation with the midtown restaurant with the same name) has been in the area on Front Street and Beekman for over 100 years and still serves up old-fashioned red sauce lunch and dinners. There is local lore that, Carmine Russo, the original owner, began his restaurant career as a boy, selling food first from a milk crate on the corner of Beekman Street and later in the Fulton Market building. Many people in the neighborhood remember Russo as a colorful, local figure. Marlon Brando is reported to have met him when filming On the Waterfront in the 1950s. As South Street Seaport legend goes, Russo's deep voice and commanding presence made an impression on Brando and, years later, became the inspiration for the Godfather character

Herman Melville included the life, language, and culture of the seaport area in his novels, placing Moby Dick narrator Ishmael on Front Street a block that is being redeveloped into a residential neighborhood of condos and rental apartment buildings. A homage to Moby Dick can be found above one of the building's entrances.

It reads:

"Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?- Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep." - 1851 Herman Melville Moby Dick

And another relic of an old New York is this interesting old door on Water Street.

As you leave the seaport you enter into the Financial district of lower Manhattan, as you can see in the photo below. The middle building holds some nostalgia for me as it was the sophomore resident dorm for my daughter when she attended New York University. At one time it was an office building but as NYU expanded it needed more student housing converted this entire building into a dormitory, and provided a shuttle bus service to the students to transport them to the university which is located in the Greenwich Village section of NYC.

I hope you enjoyed this little look into South Street Seaport. It is full of crowds and activities in the summer along with outdoor concerts and events, and opportunities to take boat rides on the river and into the New York Bay to pass the Statue of Liberty.

Tomorrow I will show you more of Lower Manhattan, including the New York City Vietnam Memorial.

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