South Street Seaport

The old port on the “Street of Ships”: warehouses from 1811 and an iron sailing ship from 1885 at the pier

Local name: South Street Seaport

Collection: New York · USA · Open in OpenStreetMap

Schermerhorn Row on Fulton Street · Jim.henderson, CC0, Wikimedia Commons

The story

Before you is South Street Seaport, the old port of New York on the East River. This was once water. The shore ran along today’s Pearl Street, and the city gradually granted pieces of the river to be filled in for wharves. In 1804 the owners of the last of these lots were required to build South Street within three months. In 1811 and 1812 the merchant Peter Schermerhorn built a row of twelve brick warehouses on the south side of Fulton Street. This is Schermerhorn Row, one of the first commercial rows in the city. The great fire of 1835 spared it. In the first half of the nineteenth century South Street was known as the “Street of Ships.” A forest of masts lined the waterfront. The bowsprits of big sailing ships reached over the street and almost into the office windows opposite. The poet Walt Whitman called New York “the City of Ships.” Later, ships grew larger, the water at these piers was too shallow, and the port emptied. In 1967 local enthusiasts founded the South Street Seaport Museum here. The museum took over the old warehouses when they were about to be torn down. Walk over to Pier 16. The Wavertree is moored there, a three-masted sailing ship with an iron hull, built in 1885 in Southampton, England. For twenty-four years she carried cargo around the world and sailed around the globe at least three times. According to the museum, she is the last surviving iron-hulled, three-masted, full-rigged cargo ship.

Visiting

Fulton Street at South Street, Lower Manhattan. The street and the waterfront are open to everyone. The South Street Seaport Museum and the Wavertree at Pier 16 are not open every day, usually 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; admission is paid, and opening days are on seaportmuseum.org. Boarding is by an angled gangway, and the lower and upper decks are reached by steep stairs.