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New York - Manhattan - South Street Area: South Ferry to Corlears Hook along the East River. The bowsprit of many a clipper -- Baltimore, California, McKay -- and Liverpool packet once jutted over South Street, now visited by ungainly scows, fishing smacks, lighters, and car floats from Long Island and Jersey City. This famous "street o' ships," a two-mile stretch of bumpy stones skirting the East River from the Battery to Corlears Hook, is historically associated with New York's development as a great port; though today but few ocean-going craft breast the piers that once berthed whole fleets of gallant windjammers. The Lightnings and Comets and Flying Clouds of a later day, requiring deeper water, steam up the broad fairway of the North ( Hudson) River, leaving South Street to the traffic of the ten-ton truck. Viewed from the piers near the Battery end of South Street, the East River bridges -- Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg -- form a superimposed pattern of steel and stone, like a photograph from a camera that was jarred during exposure. Across the river, on a bluff overlooking the plebeian harbor activities, are the staid residences of Brooklyn Heights, for more than a century the center of wealthy conservative society. The rumble of speeding trucks, the blasts from near-by steam shovels, and the intermittent whistles from passing river traffic join in crescendos of dissonance. Sailors in pea jackets and dungarees, workmen in overalls, neat office clerks and shabby drifters throng the highway. On mild sunny days the drifters sit along the docks with their "junk bags," share cigarette butts, and stare endlessly into the water. In winter they cluster in little groups about small bonfires; many sleep at night in doorways with newspapers for covering. Others join the homeless men who sleep in the MUNICIPAL LODGING HOUSE, ANNEX No. 2, in the old ferry shed at the foot of Whitehall Street. The majority of the piers along South Street are leased or owned by railroad companies. Pier 4, at the foot of Broad Street, marks approximately the site of the first dock -- built by the Dutch -- on Manhattan Island. What is now South Street was then under water, so the exact location is inland. The NEW YORK STATE BARGE CANAL TERMINAL occupies Pier 6 where arklike, weather-beaten Erie Canal barges are moored. Many of the barge captains are married, and their families live on board the year round. In winter the boats sometimes lie for months along the river banks farther north. At 61 Whitehall Street is the old EASTERN HOTEL, now used as an office building. In 1822 the owner, Captain John B. Coles, remodeled the original structure, a warehouse, and named it the Eagle Hotel. It was renamed the Eastern in 1856. The frame of the building reputedly contains mahogany beams that were used as ballast in eighteenth-century merchantmen. Among the hotel's guests were Robert Fulton, Jenny Lind, P. T. Barnum, and many of the illustrious entertainers who appeared in Castle Garden, now the Aquarium. The two blocks between Whitehall and Broad are typical of the lower length of South Street. Here, dilapidated brick and brownstone structures crowd the sidewalks, upper floors forlornly vacant, street floors occupied by cut-rate "drink and food" stores, low-priced barber shops, secondhand clothes stores, sail lofts, and chandleries. Broad Coenties Slip, which was filled in about 1835, encloses JEANETTE PARK, a rendezvous popular with South Street's army of beached seamen and homeless unemployed. The park was named for the ill-fated vessel of the Jeanette Polar Expedition, promoted in 1880 by the elder James Gordon Bennett. The concrete and chromium structure within the park houses the famous OYSTER BAR, established in the neighborhood in 1849. Its founder, Robert Peach, opened up shop by the simple device of setting three planks across two barrels. In 1898, Patrick O'Connor, age twelve, became his assistant, and, five years later, his partner. Peach retired in 1917, but O'Connor carried on. He now operates the park bar. The SEAMEN'S CHURCH INSTITUTE OF New York occupies a thirteenstory brick and stone-trimmed structure at 25 South Street (latitude 40° 42' 10'' N, longitude 74° 00' 35'' W). Surmounting the roof is a small lighthouse tower erected in 1913, by public subscription, as a memorial to the passengers, officers, and crew of the S.S. Titanic, luxury liner that sank April 15, 1912, after striking an iceberg on her maiden voyage to America. Standing guard over the main entrance of the building is a gilded figurehead of Sir Galahad, reminiscent of the carvings on the prows of the clipper ships which docked near by during the nineteenth century. Above the figurehead is a ship's bell rescued from the S.S. Atlantic which foundered off Fisher's Island on Thanksgiving Day, 1846, with a loss of seventy-eight lives. The bell, connected with a clock, rings ship's time every half-hour. The institute was founded in 1834, and in 1843 established churches on the water front. In 1854 activities were expanded to include provision for sailors' lodging and entertainment. Several missions, floating churches, and boarding houses were operated throughout the port until 1913 when the present building was opened as the institute's center. An annex with accommodations for a thousand guests -- making a total lodging capacity of about fifteen hundred at the institute -- was completed in 1929. Seamen are charged moderate rates for lodging and meals; privileges include admission to moving pictures and other entertainment, and the use of libraries, club, game, and writing rooms. A merchant marine school, conducted by the institute, is the oldest surviving school of its kind in New York. It was founded in 1916. In the middle of Old Slip is the FIRST PRECINCT POLICE STATION, a grim, solid structure reminiscent of a fortified Florentine Renaissance palazzo. North, across the street, is the UNITED STATES ASSAY BUILDING, a five-story granite building with a massive chimney. The public is not admitted to this sanctuary where scrap gold and silver are melted into bullion. The thoroughfare's only skyscraper is at Wall and South Streets, 120 WALL STREET. It is a huge, white, thirty-three-story building, uncompromising in its literal conformance to the setback ordinance. Ely Jacques Kahn was the architect. A bronze PLAQUE identifies the site as that of Murray's Wharf, where George Washington landed April 23, 1789, on his way to Federal Hall for his inauguration as President. Private seaplanes of Wall Street commuters land at the MUNICIPAL DOWNTOWN SKYPORT between Piers 11 and 12. The squat fortress-like WAREHOUSE on the corner of De Peyster Street is one of the oldest buildings on the street. It was built of rough-hewn granite blocks more than one hundred years ago by the Griswold brothers, East India merchants. FULTON MARKET, largest wholesale fish mart on the Atlantic Coast, was established in 1821 as a retail market to "supply the common people with the necessities of life at a reasonable price." The market covers an area of six city blocks bounded by Fulton, Water, Dover , and South Streets, and includes two large markets on the South Street docks near Fulton. Before daybreak tons of fish are unloaded from the holds of stubby-sticked trawlers and draggers and from refrigerated trucks from New England and New Jersey. Six days a week, from 2 to 9 A.M., the section is a bedlam as rubber-booted men in the street and in narrow stalls clean, bone, ice, unpack, and repack approximately one hundred varieties of fish. SWEET's, a restaurant established almost a century ago, is on the southwest corner of Fulton and South Streets. In old days it was especially popular among shipmasters and South Street merchants, and from 1850 to 1860, when "blackbirders" flourished along the East River, many nefarious slave-running deals were transacted in this South Street "Delmonico's." From a pier near the present Peck's Slip, the first licensed Brooklyn ferry began operations in 1654. Fares were three stivers for whites, and six stivers for Indians. Between Dover and Roosevelt Streets, South Street passes under the Brooklyn Bridge. Near by, at 174 South Street is the BIRTHPLACE OF FORMER GOVERNOR ALFRED E. SMITH. Almost the entire block between Catharine Slip and Market Slip is occupied by the HEARST PUBLICATION PLANT which houses the editorial and press rooms of the New York Journal and American and the Sunday American. The American Weekly is also printed here. The stretch of shore from Catharine Slip to Corlears Hook was occupied by the shipbuilding industry during the War of 1812 and in the decade preceding it. Many of New York's privateers that harassed British sea-traffic during the war were constructed in the local shipways. And from these yards was recruited Noah Brown's heroic band who fashioned Commodore Perry's fleet for the Battle of Lake Erie. South Street gradually assumes a quieter tempo at Market Slip as trucks and pedestrians become less frequent. Farther on, at Rutgers Slip, there is a pathetic little park more liberally supplied with benches than with shade. From Clinton Street to Corlears Hook Park the East River is walled from view by a continuous line of railroad pier sheds, and only an occasional blast from an unseen tug reminds one that water-borne traffic is passing. Manhattan Montage Art Print Buy at AllPosters.com Manhattan Skyline Art Print Buy at AllPosters.com City That Never Sleeps Framed Art Print Buy at AllPosters.com