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New York - Manhattan - West Street and North (Hudson) River Water Front Area: Battery Place to 72d St. along North River. Maps on pages 75, 127, and 149. Although the western rim of Manhattan is but a small segment of New York's far-flung port, along it is concentrated the largest aggregate of marine enterprises in the world. Glaciers of freight and cargo move across this strip of North (Hudson) River water front. It is the domain of the super-liner, but it is shared also by the freighter, the river boat, the ferry, and the soot-faced tug. Great trunk line railroads from the hinterland, barred from the city by the Hudson, transship their passengers to ferries at the Jersey railheads and their freight cars to scows. In consequence, the railroads use nearly as many North River piers as the steamship lines. The broad highway, West Street and its continuations, which skirts the North River from Battery Place to Fifty-ninth Street, is, during the day, a surging mass of back-firing, horn-blowing, gear-grinding trucks and taxis. All other water-front sounds are submerged in the cacophony of the daily avalanche of freight and passengers in transit. Ships and shipping are not visible along much of West Street. South of Twenty-third Street, the river is walled by an almost unbroken line of bulkhead sheds and dock structures. North of Twenty-third, an occasional open spot in the bulkhead permits a glimpse of the Hudson and the Jersey shore beyond. Opposite the piers, along the entire length of the highway, nearly every block houses its quota of cheap lunchrooms, tawdry saloons and waterfront haberdasheries catering to the thousands of polyglot seamen who haunt the "front." Men "on the beach" (out of employment) usually make their headquarters in barrooms, which are frequented mainly by employees of lines leasing piers in their vicinity. In Revolutionary days what is now West Street was under water. About 1811 the bank was extended and raised to allow the building of docks. A number of water grants, or permanent leases, were given at nominal rentals to individuals and corporations who later profited greatly when the city reclaimed the property. Not until 1870, however, did this western water front come into considerable use, and it was 1890 before West Street displaced South Street as the main gateway for water-borne traffic. Passenger lines use many North River terminals. Transatlantic, South American, West Indian, and intercoastal ships dock north of Fourteenth Street, while the terminals of the coastwise and Long Island Sound lines are scattered between this point and the Battery. The most notable exception is the "Great White Fleet" of the United Fruit Company, whose steamers, engaged in the West Indian fruit and passenger trade, are berthed at the famous "banana docks," Piers 2, 3, 7, and 9, near the foot of West Street. Not far to the north, somewhat more modest heights are reached by the NEW YORK POST and WEST STREET BUILDINGS. The former, a seventeen-story structure of buff-colored brick at 75 West Street, houses the daily paper which was founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1801. The twenty-three-story West Street Building, at No. 90, was designed by Cass Gilbert and completed in 1905. Its elaborate pinnacles, decorative chimneys and gables disclose the late French Gothic influence. Just north of the West Street Building, a pedestrian footbridge provides safe passage from the foot of Liberty Street to the ferry terminal of the Central Railroad of New Jersey. Between this point and Fortysecond Street, the railroads maintain eleven ferry services to Jersey City, Hoboken, and Weehawken. These are used by more than sixty million passengers, and between ten and eleven million vehicles, annually. In the block between Liberty and Cortlandt Streets, at 107 West Street, is the WATCH MUSEUM of Fred W. Jensen and Son, managed by three generations of the Jensen family. Its collection contains timepieces of every known variety, the most intricate being a mechanism that splits seconds and records the passing minutes, hours, days of the week and month, and phases of the moon. In 1807, Robert Fulton Clermont cast off from a pier at Cortlandt Street and steamed up the Hudson to Albany, demonstrating the practicability of steamship transportation. The NEW YORK TELEPHONE COMPANY SKYSCRAPER at No. 140 is an unusually successful attempt to obtain the maximum spatial benefits under the restrictions of the zoning law. Designed in 1926 by Ralph Walker of the office of McKenzie, Voorhees, and Gmelin, it is the largest telephone building in the world, thirty-two stories high and covering an area of 52,000 square feet. Despite difficulties raised by its irregularshaped site, the building masses are exceptionally well related, endowing the structure with a silhouette of great strength. The exterior, of buff brick and limestone with a granite base, is enriched by ornamental flowers and elephant heads. This building is the headquarters for the largest of the component companies of the Bell Telephone System, serving New York State and part of Connecticut. From the World-Telegram Building, between Barclay Street and Park Place, to the great Pennsylvania Railroad pier for perishable freight, between Hubert and Watts Streets, West Street bounds the Washington Market. At 260 West Street stood the Phoenix Foundry where Captain John Ericsson in the late 1830's constructed America's first iron sailing boats and steamships with screw propellers. Opposite Duane Street, the ramps of the newest extension of the WEST SIDE (Elevated) HIGHWAY slope into West Street. A 350-foot parabolic bridge over the wide intersection at Canal Street links this segment with the fourand-one-half-mile elevated roadway that follows the water front to the Henry Hudson Parkway at Seventy-second Street. This magnificent express drive, which provides the motorist with an unexcelled view of the Jersey water front, the mid-town sky line, and the liners berthed along the North River, leads by means of Canal Street ramps directly to the Holland Tunnel. Eventually the highway will be extended south, curving around the Battery and South Street to the East River Drive. ST. JOHN'S PARK FREIGHT TERMINAL, a three-story structure covering three city blocks between Charlton and Clarkson Streets, marks the southern terminus of the New York Central's West Side line. The terminal, which was opened in 1934, is the principal delivery station for dairy freight in the city. In a group of buildings which occupy the block around 463 West Street and a portion of the adjoining block are consolidated the RESEARCH LABORATORIES OF THE BELL TELEPHONE SYSTEM. Here scientists have made many contributions to the telephone and to allied means of communication, such as sound films, picture transmitters, and public address systems. To visit these laboratories special permission must be obtained. GANSEVOORT MARKET, or "Farmers' Market," as it is generally known, occupies the block between Gansevoort and Little West Twelfth Streets. Farmers from Long Island, Staten Island, New Jersey, and Connecticut bring their produce here at night for sale under supervision of the Department of Public Markets. Activities begin at 4 A.M. Farmers in overalls and mud-caked shoes stand in trucks, shouting their wares. Commission merchants, pushcart vendors, and restaurant buyers trudge warily from one stand to another, digging arms into baskets of fruits or vegetables to ascertain quality. Trucks move continually in and out among the piled crates of tomatoes, beans, cabbages, lettuce, and other greens in the street. Hungry derelicts wander about in the hope of picking up a stray vegetable dropped from some truck, while patient nuns wait to receive leftover, unsalable goods for distribution among the destitute. In a wharf at the foot of Gansevoort Street, Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick, once served as customs inspector. Across West Street is the WEST WASHINGTON MARKET, comprising ten quaint red-brick buildings which house a live poultry market patronized mostly by kosher butchers. Since poultry requires ample heat in winter, every stall is equipped with a furnace, so that each roof adds more than a dozen chimneys to its picturesque architecture. From this point to Twenty-second Street, Eleventh Avenue (as the water-front street is here called) skirts the weather-beaten CHELSEA PIERS designed by Warren and Wetmore. These nine great docks, built by the city between 1902 and 1907 for the transatlantic ships of that period, serve such lines as the United States, Grace, Cunard White Star, Panama Pacific, and American Merchant, and are among the busiest on the river. SEAMEN'S HOUSE, an eight-story Y.M.C.A. building at the corner of Twentieth Street and Eleventh Avenue, furnishes up-to-date living and recreational facilities for more than 250 sailors. Because of the heavy concentration of shipping at the Chelsea Piers, this area has been a strategic sector in the industrial conflicts that break out periodically between maritime labor and shipowners. During the 1936-7 strike, when rank and file seamen tied up the ships in their struggle for a better agreement, Eleventh Avenue was the scene of frequent clashes between pickets and scabs, "goon squads" (thugs) and defense squads, strikers and police. The NATIONAL MARITIME UNION OF AMERICA, established after the termination of the strike, has its headquarters at 126 Eleventh Avenue. Unlike their sea-going brothers, the port's "dock-wallopers" (longshoremen), thousands of whom live in slum areas adjoining West Street, have been quiet in recent years, although they steadily oppose the hiring system, called the "shape-up," whereby the boss stevedore selects his working force several times daily from crowds of longshoremen massed before the dock gates. At Twenty-second Street the North River shore line bends sharply westward. The highway is called Thirteenth Avenue from this point to Thirtieth Street, whence it extends northward to Fifty-ninth Street as Twelfth Avenue. Not far beyond the great Twenty-third Street ferry terminal, in the block between Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh Streets, the STARRETT LEHIGH BUILDING dominates the water front. The building, erected in 1931, represents an effort to solve the problem of freight distribution in a congested metropolis. It comprises a huge railroad yard, loading platforms for trucks and trailers, and facilities for the storage, repacking, redistribution, manufacturing, and display of goods. Although the first three floors and central portion are steel-frame in construction, the rest of the building follows a cantilevered concrete design. The great horizontal bands of concrete floor, brick parapet, and continuous windows sweep majestically to meet the service portion, which rises, framed in steel, near the center of the block. The building has unusual power and constitutes an important step in the development of contemporary architecture. The architects were Russell G. and Walter M. Cory. The railroads have burrowed deeply into the water front between Twenty-fifth and Seventy-second Streets, pre-empting most of the piers and nearly all the property opposite. The New York Central's THIRTIETH STREET YARD straddles ten city blocks, and its SIXTIETH STREET YARD, thirteen blocks, constituting two of the largest privately owned areas in the city. The latter is the main receiving, classification, and departure yard for the only all-rail freight line on Manhattan Island. Sandwiched among this welter of railroad sidings are the piers of the Hudson River lines and the terminals of many of the world's greatest liners. The new TRANSATLANTIC DOCKS of the Cunard White Star, French, Hapag Lloyd, Italian, Swedish American, and Furness Bermuda lines extend from Forty-fourth to Fifty-seventh Street, and were especially designed to handle luxurious ships like the Queen Mary, Normandie, Europa, Rex, and other greyhounds of the Atlantic. Piers 88, go, and 92, each of which is 1,100 feet long, make this terminal the largest in the world. New York, New York Art Print Buy at AllPosters.com