Seaport: New York’s Vanished Waterfront: Photographs from the Edwin Levick Collection

By the end of the nineteenth century, the Port of New York was the center of a huge maritime enterprise. Through this hub passed vessels and cargoes of every description, heading to or arriving from anywhere and everywhere around the globe. For much of the first half of the twentieth century, it was here that America’s commerce with Europe and Central and South America converged. In this busiest port in the world, seasoned sailors and fishermen, international traders, muscled longshoremen, barge brats, and yachters shaped and shared New York’s waterfront world. By 1960 maritime New York had greatly diminished, eclipsed by more efficient operations elsewhere. Fortunately, a small cadre of commercial photographers documented the dynamic social, economic, and political forces in the heyday of the wharves, waterways, and waterfront markets, capturing for the ages the gritty and sometimes glamorous life of the docks and their environs.