A collection of mostly urban, waterfront, color photos taken from 1984 to 2010, mainly of shore areas most New Yorkers know nothing about. These extraordinary photos were snapped mainly by Cy Adler, founder of Shorewalkers, Inc. The book is dedicated to all the shorewalkers who have helped plan and organize many of the scenes you will see depicted herein. Insight into over a thousand miles of changing waterfront around the New York City archipelago and along the Hudson River. 147 pages. Over 130 photographs.
PREFACE
Waters have always attracted me. For the past 35 Years, I have been walking along the rivers, bays, estuaries, canals, lakes, meers, oceans, sounds, marshes, ponds, waterfalls, aqueducts, and kills in New York and New Jersey. These expeditions were sometimes with other shorewalkers, and sometimes alone. In the process I have met a many wonderful people. I have trod over a thousand miles of changing waterfront, and have taken a few thousand photographs.
This Book is dedicated to, and is in a sense a history of, the Shorewalkers, a group started innocently in 1982 to explore on foot the local waterfronts. We wanted outdoor adventure, fresh air, and exercise; we found much more. The Shorewalkers group has changed and grown over the years into an organization that not only organizes shore walks, but also works to create and protect paths along the waterways. Hundreds of dedicated hike leaders and volunteer helpers have made it possible for Shorewalkers to grow. We continue to seek out and enjoy the many beautiful sights around us, and at the same time preserve the waterways and shores as places of recreation for future generations.
Aside from beautiful waterscapes, sunsets, ships, birds, and water loving foliage. What follows is a part of my photographic collection.
My motto is:
COLLECTING IS GOOD,
SHOREWALKING IS BETTER.
Cheers-
Cy A Adler
President, Shorewalkers Inc.
INTRODUCTION: A CHANGING URBAN WATERFRONT
In the 1980’s, large sections of the NY-NJ waterfront were inaccessible and seedy. Several piers along the Hudson and East rivers were ship-less and inhabited by homeless people, and there were drug dealers who set up shacks in their empty, darkened recesses. Once busy and productive waterways in the Hudson estuary were empty. In 1950, some 400 ships per day docked along the finger piers which jutted into the rivers and bays of New York and New Jersey. Each night, 30,000 merchant seamen off ships from around the world slept and wandered around Manhattan. An estimated ten billion dollars of cargo entered and left the port of New York, which was the biggest shipping waterfront in the United States at the time. The urban shipping industry was killed by a combination of: the Container Revolution, which diverted cargo ships to the Newark and Elizabeth container ports; the airlines, which sucked passengers away from the transatlantic passenger ships; and the decline of industry along the Hudson and other nearby industrial areas. Cities such as New York, New Jersey City, and Hoboken were left with vacant waterports and rotting piers. It took thirty years before economics and politics meshed to convert most of the dead and dying waterfront into accessible parks. That process is still going on today. In the 1980’s, I felt that our waterfronts would give those who walk along them a breath of fresh salt air. The strip where water meets land can be exciting and sometimes scary; it is always changing. Since its founding in 1982, Shorewalker leaders and I have lead over 2500 hikes and excursions, mainly along waterfront areas throughout the metropolitan region. My very first Shorewalker shore walk took place on a cold December day in 1982 when I set out to explore the changing Hudson River coast from Battery Park along the proposed Westway Route. We ate lunch under the viaduct in a diner at 128th street in Harlem, now gone. Then we explored the wilderness along the river and above the George Washington Bridge. Finally we ended at an Irish pub in Inwood in the north end of Manhattan where beer was fifteen cents a glass. It was a walk of about twelve miles through rubble and along rail lines. Now the same walk is almost entirely in waterfront parks and we do not crawl through holes in fences. The rails have been fenced off and beer is six dollars a mug. In January of 1983, a few walkers and I explored the unkempt shores of seedy Floyd Bennett field, with its shattered hangers, and nearby Dead Horse Bay, a semi-reclaimed garbage dump on the shores of Jamaica bay in Brooklyn. Now these areas have been transformed into the beautiful Gateway National Recreation Area. In 1983, we took a scary but eye-opening walk along the northern shore of Staten Island, from Saint George to Port Richmond along the Kill Van Kull, among rotting empty warehouses and rusting train tracks. Most of that is now a beautiful park with a minor version of Yankee Stadium. REVIEWS ‘A treasure trove of photographs whose colors and images have muted over time, evoking an era when NYC was gritty and untended….discover and explore the beauty of the unexpected waterfront….’ ‘….a lovely document of the history of the Shorewalkers….’
-Christine Yost, Director of Shorewalkers
-Laura Rosen, Photographer
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