South Street Districts
South Street runs along the East River, extending from the southern tip of Manhattan to near the approach to the Williamsburg Bridge. Known as the Street of Ships during its heyday, it was the commercial center of a young United States until the arrival of large steamships, requiring deep water piers, made it obsolete. By the 1930s the area had fallen into disrepair, with warehouses and the Fulton Fish Market remaining as the main commercial activities. The preservation efforts that followed the creation of the South Street Seaport Museum in the 1960s, and the subsequent designation of the South Street Seaport Historic District in 1977, have transformed this area.
Manhattan Skyline I: South Street and Jones Lane (1936). Abbott took the photograph standing on Pier 11, looking west. The composition juxtaposes a row of low-rise brick buildings that housed shipping offices, and dated back to the 19th century, with the iconic skyscrapers comprising the Lower Manhattan skyline of the 1930s. Jones Lane is the dark band in the center of the photograph (if you zoom in, it is just to the right of the man on the bicycle). Jones Lane was demapped in the mid-1960s with the construction of 111 Wall Street (the rectangular building in the middle of the photograph on the right). Jones Lane would go straight through the center of the building.
South and DePeyster Streets (1935). Abbott’s image shows the narrow De Peyster Street, flanked by low-rise waterfront structures: a tobacco warehouse at 72 South Street and a union headquarters at 70 South Street (the Marine, Firemen, Oilers, and Watertenders Union). In the background are 60 Wall Tower (now 70 Pine Street, center) and the Bank of Manhattan (now 40 Wall Street, left). As in the case of Jones Lane, De Peyster Street was demapped in the early 1980s with the construction of the Continental Center. De Peyster Street would go—you guessed it—through the center of the building.
Fulton Street Docks, Manhattan Skyline (1935). The South Street Seaport was New York City’s main 19th-century commercial port, and the Fulton Street docks served as the Manhattan terminal for the Fulton Ferry, which began steam-powered service between Manhattan and Brooklyn in 1814. The South Street Seaport Museum was founded in 1967 to save the area's remaining 19th-century commercial buildings from modern office development.
Fish Market, South Street (1935). Abbott’s image shows the Fulton Fish Market, which opened in 1822 and dominated the wholesale fish distribution in the US until the 1950s. In 1936, a 125-foot section of the market collapsed, necessitating the replacement of the whole building by a new structure. The Fulton Fish Market moved to the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center, in the Bronx, in 2005.
South Street, 151 to 160 (1937). Again juxtaposing the 19th Century structures along South Street with the 1930s skyline, we see see a row of businesses. These include Tedy’s, a small early-morning lunchroom and diner, and the West English Company, sailmakers and ship chandlers (we also get a glimpse of the Meyer’s Hotel across Peck Slip). Parked in front of them, trucks and horse-drawn carts. Today, the skyline is not visible from Abbott’s vantage point, being obscured by the FDR Drive viaduct. Of the original structures, only Jasper Ward House survives, at the end of the block, on 151 South Street.