New Book Celebrates The Ups And Downs Of NYC's Hudson River Waterfront

Architectural historian William Hennessey has a new book called Along the Hudson: Walking Manhattan's Western Waterfront which traces the ups-and-downs of development along Manhattan’s western waterfront.

Tiffany Hansen: This is All Of It. I'm Tiffany Hansen in for Alison Stewart. Because of federal cuts, New York Public Radio is losing $6 million over the next two years. Your financial support right now will make a significant difference to the future of public radio here in New York. You can start, you can increase your monthly donation right now at wnyc.org/donate. Thank you for that. Let's get started with this next hour and a walk along the Hudson.

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The Hudson River has been a key part of the economic development and success of New York City for centuries, but as trade travel and manufacturing along the river began to decline, the riverfront began to fall into disrepair. In recent years, Manhattan's Hudson waterfront has been revitalized. In a new book, architectural historian William J. Hennessy explores the history, design and beauty of our section of the Hudson River. The book is titled Along The Hudson: Walking Manhattan's Western Waterfront. The book guides readers on a tour from the southern tip of Manhattan up the west side to Spuyten Duyvil. Joining us now to talk about some of the things you will see if you take that walk up the Hudson is William J. Hennessy. Hi, Bill.

William J. Hennessy: Good afternoon.

Tiffany Hansen: Listeners, of course, Bill and I want you in this conversation as well. What's your favorite thing to do along the Hudson River? What's your favorite pier, your favorite park, your favorite memorial along the riverfront? What's a part of Manhattan's western waterfront that you really love? You can call us 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can also text us at that number. Bill, let's just start at the beginning. The Hudson springs from somewhere way upstate. Tell us where.

William J. Hennessy: Right. Lake Tear of the Clouds up in the Adirondack Mountains.

Tiffany Hansen: That's such a great name. Love that.

William J. Hennessy: It is. It's wonderful. Cascades down about 315 miles until it empties into the Atlantic in the Lower Bay.

Tiffany Hansen: My husband and I often have this discussion as we're walking along the Hudson River. Is it a river? Is it an estuary? Is it a river?

William J. Hennessy: Yes.

Tiffany Hansen: No, it's a river.

William J. Hennessy: Yes, and an estuary.

Tiffany Hansen: We're both right. It's a tidal estuary, and also, it's a river that flows north to south.

William J. Hennessy: I think one of the interesting things about the river, in fact, the Lenape Indians had actually called it the river that flows two ways. You have a lot of fresh water coming down from the mountains and you have a great deal of saltwater coming in from the Atlantic.

Tiffany Hansen: Flushing in, right?

William J. Hennessy: Right. The river's tidal all the way up to Troy, New York, and is an extraordinarily rich estuary because of this constant interchange of fresh and salt water.

Tiffany Hansen: Is it that interchange of fresh and salt water that affects the tidal flow of the river? I know that that changes. Really that's the essence of it. I would assume, right, in the spring when there's a lot of water flowing from the north, that things kind of get mixed up. I don't know. I'm guessing, Bill. Help me.

William J. Hennessy: Well, I think certainly seasonally you get more water coming one direction than the other. If you take a look at the river and watch a barge going by, one day that barge, if it makes regular trips, looks like it's really struggling to get down the river. The next day it zips along. It's got the tide right [crosstalk] to make that journey.

Tiffany Hansen: Those tidal changes all affect the ecosystem of the Hudson. Obviously, it's not a static ecosystem. It's been changing over the years as much as the waterfront itself has been changing, right?

William J. Hennessy: Right. Early commentators, Europeans arriving for the first time in New York Harbor, could not believe the quantity of oysters that were simply strewn on the ground, and you'd gather them up as if there was no tomorrow.

Tiffany Hansen: Right.

William J. Hennessy: Similarly, with fish in the river, it was astonishingly rich. Of course, we've managed to kill off a good deal of that and efforts are now actively underway to bring it back.

Tiffany Hansen: Yes, and I want to get to that because I know that there have been some wild oysters that have been spotted recently down in the lower 20s in the piers. We are talking with Bill Hennessy about the book about the Hudson River. The title of the book is Along The Hudson: Walking Manhattan's Western Waterfront. Listeners, we want to hear from you. What are your recommendations for when you take a walk along The Hudson? Call us, text us, 212-433-9692. What should we stop and see? What should we take note of? Those oysters, were they over-fished? Remind us what happened there.

William J. Hennessy: Well, initially, if you didn't have much money to eat in New York, your choice was oysters. They were so cheap and so abundant right into the early years of the 19th century. As the century went along and as the river became more and more polluted, the quantity and quality of the oysters went way down and continued to drop until the mid-1970s when the federal Clean Water Act was passed and that was the beginning of the turnaround.

Tiffany Hansen: How is the water in the Hudson right now?

William J. Hennessy: I think constantly getting better. One hears reports of, oh, we spotted some more shad this year than usual. Hudson River Park has what they call the Million Oyster Project. They're constantly seeding the river, hoping to bring back the oysters.

Tiffany Hansen: Bill, we have a call here from Bob in New Jersey. Now, we're talking here a little bit about the New York side, but Bob wants to mention, by the way, the river does touch the New Jersey side. Hi, Bob.

Bob: Hi.

Tiffany Hansen: You have a recommendation?

Bob: Well, defaultly, I've become a lot more familiar with two ways of looking at Manhattan via the Hudson River. We have the Palisades Interstate Park. Don't get confused, but the Henry Hudson Drive starting in nearby Edgewater goes up pretty much to the tip of Manhattan. In the same area starting in Fort Lee, in the park area, the Palisades Interstate Park, we also have a walkway that goes 18 miles south, almost completely available for walking and biking. It starts again in Fort Lee, goes to Edgewater, gets all the ways down to Liberty State Park, and then hits Weehawken. The only thing I can say is that we do get the better view.

Tiffany Hansen: [laughs] Thank you for that, Bob. We appreciate that. He mentioned there's a Henry Hudson on the other side of the river on the New Jersey side. For people who don't know the history here, remind us who Henry Hudson was and why is this river named after him?

William J. Hennessy: Ah, well, Henry Hudson was the English/Dutch explorer who, as they used to say, discovered.

Tiffany Hansen: We're using air quotes, right?

William J. Hennessy: Exactly. The river. There was some question about the river that he discovered should be called.

Tiffany Hansen: Did he offer up his own name? Hey, guys, it could be named after me.

William J. Hennessy: In fact, the Dutch initially called it the North River-

Tiffany Hansen: Oh, nice.

William J. Hennessy: -as a way of distinguishing it from what they called the South River, which is the Delaware, or the East River, which is the street flying into Long Island Sound.

Tiffany Hansen: I wouldn't have minded that I don't think.

William J. Hennessy: In fact, a lot of charts even today of New York Harbor, if you look at the map, it'll say North River.

Tiffany Hansen: Oh, nice.

William J. Hennessy: The Hudson name only took on currency later on.

Tiffany Hansen: Got it. Bill, we have a text here. "I've watched the Hudson River Park develop throughout the years. My favorite activities are kayaking in the summer. To celebrate my 50th, I decided to challenge myself and swim 1.6 miles on the Pride Swim. It was a great experience, and I recommend that to anyone. The views of the city from the river are stunning." Is it worth getting out in a boat and trying to take a look at the river while you're on it and looking at the shoreline? Do you recommend that?

William J. Hennessy: Absolutely. If you happen to be a lazy type, we happen to have great ferry service coming back now along the Hudson.

Tiffany Hansen: I don't think I would swim. I think I'll pass on the swimming.

William J. Hennessy: If you're a kayaker there have-

Tiffany Hansen: Yes, I see kayakers a lot.

William J. Hennessy: -at least three places in Hudson River Park where you can rent a kayak. Then further up at Dyckman Street, there's a marina where you can actually take sailing lessons and go out in a sailboat and take a look at the city.

Tiffany Hansen: Wow, I love that. Where is that? That's up at Dyckman?

William J. Hennessy: That's at the very end of Dyckman Street at the marina there.

Tiffany Hansen: Okay, got it. All right, let's talk to George in Manhattan with a question. Hi, George.

George: Hi. I have a question for your guest or anyone who's listening. If they could think of a worse use of the Hudson River Park and the river here in the river than the new movie studio that's going up at 55th and the Hudson River. It's completely closed to the public. It's massive. It's just going to create more congestion and it's just an utterly bad decision by the EDC. I just wonder if your guest knows about it and has any opinion about it.

Tiffany Hansen: All right, George, thanks so much for the call. There has been a lot of architecture along the waterfront on the New York City side that has people's hackles up at various points throughout history, some of which is still standing. Whether you have an opinion or not on the project that he's referring to, one of the pieces of architecture that I really did want to talk to you about is the salt box.

William J. Hennessy: Ah, yes.

Tiffany Hansen: We might tell listeners about that, and I'll invite listeners again really quick, Bill, if they want to call and share their ideas about where to go when you're walking along the Hudson River here in Manhattan. You can call us, you can text us, 212-433-9692. Okay, Bill, salt box, go.

William J. Hennessy: Sure. Well, in spite of what's happening with climate change, we still do get ice on New York City streets. The city is compelled to try to keep people from sliding on it, which means a great deal of salt needs to be accumulated and spread. There are salt warehouses that the Department of Sanitation has set up at locations all over the city. Most of them are architecturally negligible or just ugly. One exception, though.

Tiffany Hansen: Yes.

William J. Hennessy: That is at Canal Street, where the city decided to do it right. They hired the architect, Richard Dattner, to create a salt warehouse that did its job, but also was visually interesting. It's an extraordinary construction made out of cast in place concrete. People have struggled coming up with a metaphor for it. Some people say it's designed to look like the crystals of salt. Other people have suggested, maybe waggishly, that the architect was struggling with the design, crumpled up a sheet of paper with a drawing he didn't like, threw it on the floor, looked down and said, "That's it."

Tiffany Hansen: They're both sort of accurate.

William J. Hennessy: They are.

Tiffany Hansen: They are both sort of accurate. Remind listeners again where they can see that.

William J. Hennessy: This is down on Canal Street, just right on the river. Might say, though, when that building went up, there was huge opposition to it in the '80s from the people who lived in the neighborhood. They've come to love it and find it as a kind of symbol of the specialness of that section.

Tiffany Hansen: Who knows, maybe somebody will say that someday about whatever this movie studio is. Who knows? We have our doubts, but we'll see. Time will tell. All right, we should probably start at the very end of Manhattan here at Battery Park, as we're taking our virtual walking tour. There were several forts in Battery Park over the centuries. Right. There was Fort Amsterdam, Fort George. Is that why it's called Battery Park?

William J. Hennessy: Yes, in essence. As you mentioned, the first fort there, put up by the Dutch, was Fort Amsterdam. It was, from a point of view today, quite afar inland. It was exactly on the site where the great US Customs House is located. Now, over the years, as people tried to level the hills of lower Manhattan, they took the dirt, dumped it in the harbor, and what's now Battery Park was created. Comes along the War of 1812, Fort Amsterdam has been torn down. Government decides they need to defend the harbor.

They built a new fort actually on an artificial island sticking out into the harbor at the tip there. Things go along a little further. That was called the Battery. More landfill occurred and pretty soon the land moved out and encompassed that fort, and it was no longer on an island anymore, but on the shore. It became obsolete and then went through a whole series of fascinating changes. The first one was that the entrepreneurs like PT Barnum took it over and created what was called Castle Garden.

Tiffany Hansen: I was going to ask you about that. Can you actually still see part of that?

William J. Hennessy: Yes. All the foundation is all [crosstalk]

Tiffany Hansen: Despite the fact that they tried to demolish it. Then demolition was stopped, if I remember that right.

William J. Hennessy: Right.

Tiffany Hansen: Okay.

William J. Hennessy: Anyway, Castle Garden was where Jenny Lind the Swedish Nightingale and the Premiere of Beethoven's 9th Symphony in America took place there. Time moved along again. Federal government took it over and it became an immigrant processing station before Ellis Island opened. That was finished. Then it became New York's first aquarium.

Tiffany Hansen: Oh, that's right.

William J. Hennessy: It stayed there until the '60s, I think, when it moved out to Coney Island at which point then people said, well, tear this old thing down. Big hullabaloo involved. Now it has been partly reconstructed as Castle Clinton, Federal Monument, which is where you catch the ferry boat to the Statue of Liberty.

Tiffany Hansen: Cue the hullabaloo, in other words. All right, we are talking about the Hudson River, and the book is called Along The Hudson: Walking Manhattan's Western Waterfront. The author is William J. Hennessy. We're going to continue our conversation in just a minute. You are listening to All Of It. I'm Tiffany Hansen in for Alison Stewart, and we will be right back.

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This is All Of It. I'm Tiffany Hansen in for Alison Stewart, and we are talking about the Hudson River. The book we are discussing is Along The Hudson: Walking Manhattan's Western Waterfront. The author is William J. Hennessy. Bill joins us now to talk about it, and we want you to join this conversation as well. You can do that by calling us, texting us, 212-433-9692. Let us know what's your favorite part. What's your favorite pier, park, memorial along the riverfront? Where do you like to walk? Bill, we have a text here that says, "The cherry tree blossoms in the spring along the Hudson River in Riverside Park are beautiful." I tend to agree.

William J. Hennessy: Yes.

Tiffany Hansen: Have you walked every single inch of the waterfront at this point?

William J. Hennessy: I have several times, actually.

Tiffany Hansen: Several times. In several different seasons. In other words, are you getting all the views of the Hudson?

William J. Hennessy: That's what's wonderful, as it changes constantly, as you say.

Tiffany Hansen: We were talking about Battery Park. One of the great things about Battery Park is all of the art down there. Just talk about some of your favorites what people should maybe go look for.

William J. Hennessy: Well, Battery Park is a gathering ground for memorials of every possible kind, from Giovanni da Verrazzano, the Italian explorer who worked in New York Harbor, to a memorial to radio operators who have lost their lives on transatlantic ships. First name on the list is the radio operator on the Titanic. My favorite, I think, is memorial that's at the very western edge of the park that is dedicated to merchant seamen who lost their lives in the Second World War.

It's on a small jetty that goes out into the river, and it is based on a photograph taken from a German U-boat of a sinking American cargo ship. It shows the two people surviving. One of them is actually partly in the water and he appears and disappears as the tide rises and falls. It's tremendously moving.

Tiffany Hansen: You mentioned the Titanic, which made me shuffle through my notes here. Which pier is it that the survivors of the Titanic came to?

William J. Hennessy: They came to Pier 54.

Tiffany Hansen: 54, that's right. Okay, and that also is famous for another reason.

William J. Hennessy: Yes, and again not such a happy reason. That was the pier from which the Lusitania departed on its ill-fated journey in 1915.

Tiffany Hansen: If folks want to walk down there, what are they going to see when they go down to Pier 54?

William J. Hennessy: Well, actually, the only thing that remains of Pier 54, which was part of a huge complex gold at Chelsea Piers that the city put up at the turn of the 20th century, is the steel frame that once held the facade.

Tiffany Hansen: There was a fire too, right?

William J. Hennessy: A series of fires, fell into dereliction. Pier was ultimately demolished and is now the site of Little Island, that extraordinarily man-made confection out into the river. I'm happy to say history held out. There was an insistent that as a kind of memorial, that rusted steel frame where you can still just make out the words Canard Line still stands there right in front of the entrance to Little Island.

Tiffany Hansen: If we're talking about that area around Little Island, we also have to mention the highlie. Talk to us about the history of the railroad that ran there.

William J. Hennessy: Well, the New York Harbor in the 1930s was the busiest harbor in the world. The amount of goods and people that passed through those docks was simply formidable. They congregated on West Street. There was a railroad that ran straight down the center of West Street to take goods and services north to get them away from there. The number of deaths that occurred by people being run over trains was so severe they called it Death Alley. In fact, the railroad even hired mounted west side cowboys to ride in front of the freight trains to tell people to get out of the way. Ultimately the city decided, "We really have to do something about this."

Tiffany Hansen: That doesn't seem like a long-term fix.

William J. Hennessy: No.

Tiffany Hansen: Yes. [chuckles]

William J. Hennessy: The Manhattan Borough president urged the creation of a two-part solution, a two stacked roadway. One was a vehicular roadway, and the other was a railroad that would carry things. They were ultimately built but separately next to each other. The Miller Highway and the High Line that ran from a terminal at a little south of Canal Street all the way up to the huge freight yards that were just south of Penn Station.

That worked from the early '30s right up to the '60s, at which point there was no traffic left to make it worthwhile. The lower part from Gansevoort Street south was demolished and the rest simply sat there. The CSX railroad, which had inherited it from the New York Central ultimately was convinced to give it to New York City. Then a group called the Friends of the High Line got together and the rest is history. It's become one of New York's great attractions.

Tiffany Hansen: Well, you mentioned Gansevoort Street, so I want to talk about-- There's a sandy beach there now that folks can- but let's go back in time. There was a fort there, right? Was that named after Gansevoo-- Who is this person? Is that right? I could be imagining that.

William J. Hennessy: I don't know about that, to be honest with you.

Tiffany Hansen: Well, you have your homework now, Bill.

William J. Hennessy: I do indeed. It was of course the center of New York's commercial meat market for decades, and there's still one or two places hanging on. The creation of the Whitney Museum has transformed it into a shops and restaurant neighborhood.

Tiffany Hansen: In addition to the sandy beach area, what do you suggest folks search out in that area?

William J. Hennessy: Well, the story of the sandy beach is actually a great one. New York developed its waterfront, kept building out into the river, but was legally not allowed under this city charter to go further than 400ft from the low tide line. That worked fine if you had small sailing ships. As ships got longer and longer and longer, you needed longer and longer piers for them. They couldn't go farther than 400ft into the river. They had to start reclaiming land that they'd filled in on the shore, moving back into Manhattan land that they'd previously filled in.

Tiffany Hansen: Oh, interesting.

William J. Hennessy: There was one 13th Avenue that ran up the west side of Manhattan and except for one little spot on this Gansevoort Peninsula, it's completely gone now. The Chelsea Piers were created by moving the waterfront 560ft back into Manhattan Island. The only place in that stretch of Manhattan that that move back didn't take place was the Gansevoort Peninsula. It sat as essentially a parking garage in a city dump truck depot for years. Recently, last two years, it's been redeveloped. The beautiful playing fields there, there's a fireboat station there, but most of all a sand beach that you can play on right on the edge of the Hudson.

Tiffany Hansen: Okay, so, let's head a little farther up the peninsula now to the IRT powerhouse. We were talking about the salt box earlier. Let's talk about the Inter Borough Rapid Transit Company powerhouse. Where is it and what do we look for?

William J. Hennessy: One of my favorite buildings on the shore. In 1904, the city opened its first subway. The IRT ran up East Side to 42nd Street across, and then all the way north to 157th Street. Transformational. Opened whole new areas of the city for development. Changed the way New Yorkers lived and worked. The IRT ran on electric power, so the company needed to generate that power. They couldn't just plug into a Con Ed grid as you would today. They built a powerhouse on the shores of the Hudson at 58th Street.

They made a great decision. They said, "This is a big deal that we're doing here, and we don't want just a utilitarian building. We're engaged in noble work here and we want a building that is dignified. We want to build a monument." They actually said this as if it could be a library or a museum. Instead of hiring a regular architect, they went to McKim, Mead and White, the toniest architects in the city, and Stanford White built them a kind of powerhouse palace there. Beautifully detailed.

Tiffany Hansen: Now it's a historical marker, right?

William J. Hennessy: It is. It's suffered over the years. Used to have six magnificent smokestacks that walked down the top. Great Italian Renaissance detailing on the outside, but still worth taking a look at.

Tiffany Hansen: Bill, here's what we've done is we've started an entire conversation offline here among people about whether this is an estuary, a river, a fjord. The comments are coming fast and furious now. I think maybe there's another book for you in that, as is the notion of don't forget the New Jersey side. Your next book, maybe you should just go up and down the New Jersey side and give us companion book to the one you've written here.

William J. Hennessy: With full disclosure.

Tiffany Hansen: Yes. Let's hear it.

William J. Hennessy: The current book spends a lot of time-

Tiffany Hansen: I like it.

William J. Hennessy: -encouraging people not just to look at the Manhattan thing, but to look across the river. We talk about the wonderful railway terminals across the way. We talk about the Palisades. We had a caller from Fort Lee. There's a section about Fort Lee being--

Tiffany Hansen: Yes, somebody mentioned Hoboken as well.

William J. Hennessy: Yes. Fort Lee was the center of the American movie industry for years. We talk about that.

Tiffany Hansen: That's right.

William J. Hennessy: Of course, the glorious Palisades.

Tiffany Hansen: Right. Okay, well, let's come back to our side of the river now, and we'll head uptown a little bit more and we'll talk about Riverside Park here. 72nd to 110th, let's say. Talk to us. Remind us how Robert Moses was involved there.

William J. Hennessy: Sure. The working waterfront in New York Piers 1 to 99 essentially stopped at 59th, 60th Street. That was followed by along the river, a set of really huge rail yards. They went up to about 72nd Street. Then the railway was down to six tracks, and it was wide open. In 1875, Andrew Haswell Green, who, as a commissioner of Central Park, was in charge of developing the whole Upper West Side, which was pretty much virgin territory at that point, he hired Frederick Longstead, who designed Central Park, to create both Riverside Drive and the adjacent park to it. The Riverside Drive pretty much turned out as planned, beautiful street that was meant to be rival of Fifth Avenue.

Olmsted didn't do, frankly, quite such a good job with the park. It has steep slope. He didn't try to develop that in any way. It ended in six ugly railroad tracks along the river. It stayed that way until the New Deal, when the combination of federal money and Robert Moses chutzpun imagination transformed the park. He buried the railroad line, put it in a tunnel that runs on an esplanade right up the center, and therefore gave people access to the river and then immediately took it away by building an extension of the West Side highway that goes all the way north through the city. He also built playgrounds.

Tiffany Hansen: We have here, there's a playground in Riverside Park at around 83rd Street called the River Run Playground. Has a water feature that traces the path of the Hudson River from its source down to the city. Kids can splash in it. Our producer Kate says, "Very cute."

William J. Hennessy: Yes.

Tiffany Hansen: Do you give it that same recommendation? Very cute. Worth seeing.

William J. Hennessy: Along with the dinosaur playground that's not far. [chuckles]

Tiffany Hansen: Nice. All right, I'm feeling the need to keep ourselves moving here uptown, further, closer to my neighborhood, Grant's Tomb and the Ralph Ellison Memorial, which is on Riverside Drive and 150th street, both really great stopping points on your walking journey uptown. Anything you want to say about either and or both of those?

William J. Hennessy: Sure. As you walk north through Riverside Park, you pass a great series of monuments. There's a fantastic horseback sculpture of Joan of Arc by Anaheim Hyatt Huntington. There's the city's fireman's Memorial. There's statues of various Union Civil War generals. Then you come to Grant's Tomb, which is this enormous, serious, somewhat self-impressed monument. City had to fight very hard beating off competition to get the right to build that.

They did, copying the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and notably Napoleon's tomb in Paris. When it opened, a million people came to the dedication. It was a big deal. Today you can go up there and have the place to yourself.

Tiffany Hansen: Have a picnic.

William J. Hennessy: Exactly. Then as you go further north, there are additional monuments. One of the nicest because it's quiet and unexpected is the Ralph Ellison Memorial.

Tiffany Hansen: I sit in that little park quite a bit. It's lovely.

William J. Hennessy: It is. Ralph Ellison lived right there on Riverside Drive. It was where he wrote Invisible Man. People decided that needed to be commemorated, so they hired the wonderful sculptor Elizabeth Catlett, who is having a big exhibition at the National Gallery in Washington right now, to design this piece. I think she did an extraordinary job. Big slab of steel with a man cut out. You can literally see through him, across town and render him invisible.

Tiffany Hansen: Yes, it's a pretty great memorial. Definitely worth checking out. Of course, we need to wrap it up here. We haven't even talked about the lighthouse. We haven't even talked about Spuyten Duyvil. You can read about it, listeners, in the book, which is called Along The Hudson: Walking Manhattan's Western Waterfront. The author is William J. Hennessy and we've been talking with him about the book and about the Hudson. Bill, we appreciate all of your work, all of your walking and all of your recommendations.

William J. Hennessy: Thanks so much. Appreciate you having me on.