Dennis Saul
In the first decades of the 20th century, the piers of New York City were the vital connection between the metropolis and the rest of the world. The waterfront along the Hudson and East Rivers was a forest of wooden pilings and long covered sheds, a scene of constant activity where giant ocean liners, cargo ships, and excursion steamboats docked. These piers were the city’s great gateways, handling a massive flow of people, raw materials, and manufactured goods.
The most glamorous and impressive piers were those built for the great transatlantic ocean liners. Along the Hudson River waterfront in the neighborhood of Chelsea, the city constructed a new set of massive piers between 1902 and 1910. The Chelsea Piers were state-of-the-art, with grand, granite-faced entrances and long, covered sheds designed to accommodate the new generation of enormous steamships. This was the New York home of the world’s most famous shipping companies, the Cunard Line and the White Star Line. A sailing day for a ship like the Lusitania or the Olympic was a major event, with crowds of passengers and well-wishers filling the pier, and mountains of luggage and mail being loaded into the ship’s hold. It was to one of these piers, Pier 54, that the ship Carpathia brought the survivors of the Titanic disaster in 1912.
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While the Hudson River piers in Manhattan handled passengers and luxury goods, the piers of Brooklyn and the East River were the workhorses of the port. In areas like Red Hook and at the massive Bush Terminal complex in Sunset Park, hundreds of piers were dedicated to commercial freight. These docks were a scene of intense manual labor. Teams of longshoremen muscled barrels of molasses, sacks of coffee from South America, and crates of all sizes between the holds of cargo ships and the large warehouses that lined the waterfront. Small barges called “lighters” shuttled goods between the ships and the railroad terminals on the New Jersey shore.
The city’s waterfront also featured piers dedicated solely to recreation. Some were built as amusement piers, extending far out into the water and featuring bandstands for concerts, dance pavilions, and fishing areas. These were popular destinations on hot summer evenings.
Other piers served as the departure points for the fleet of excursion steamboats that carried New Yorkers on day trips. From these docks, thousands of people would board vessels like the PS General Slocum to travel to picnic groves along the Long Island Sound or to the beach resorts at Coney Island and Rockaway Beach. On a summer weekend, these piers would be packed with families and church groups looking for a day of escape from the city.
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