Pier 42 is a pier on the

Lower East Side The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Historically, it w ...

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. It was the last working cargo pier on the Manhattan shore of the

East River The East River is a saltwater Estuary, tidal estuary or strait in New York City. The waterway, which is not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates Long Island, ...

, operating from 1963 to 1987. Since the early 2010s, plans have been underway to turn Pier 42 into a park.

History

In the mid-19th century, sea trade in New York shifted to the deeper channels of the

Hudson River The Hudson River, historically the North River, is a river that flows from north to south largely through eastern New York (state), New York state. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains at Henderson Lake (New York), Henderson Lake in the ...

, and the streets along the East River shore were developed with factories, and later with tenements housing various immigrant communities. The waterfront block of South Street opposite Pier 42 lingered on as an industrial area for a few more decades. The pier was constructed in 1963 as a newsprint terminal. At the time, a fifth of all ocean-borne goods arriving in the United States came by ship to New York. At Pier 42, an estimated 935 million bananas arrived every year from

Ecuador Ecuador, officially the Republic of Ecuador, is a country in northwestern South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. It also includes the Galápagos Province which contain ...

. It received its last shipment, a load of bananas, in November 1987. The high cost of labor and transportation, as well as the residential development of the shoreline neighborhoods spelled an end to Manhattan’s role as an international port of trade.

Park conversion

With the pier’s closing, it sat unused for nearly two decades while the shore on either side was redeveloped as a series of linear parks comprising the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway, which nearly circumnavigates the urban island. Following the

September 11, 2001 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

at the World Trade Center, federal and state funding became available for park expansion projects as part of the revitalization of lower Manhattan. The heavy storm surge that flooded the neighborhood during

Hurricane Sandy Hurricane Sandy (unofficially referred to as Superstorm Sandy) was an extremely large and devastating tropical cyclone which ravaged the Caribbean and the coastal Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States in late ...

in October 2012 inspired community advocates to demand a design that would make Pier 42 a park with a function, serving as a soft storm barrier. During Pier 42’s design phase the temporary project Paths to Pier 42 brought neighborhood residents, artists, designers and community organizations together to activate this park space with collaborative installations and public events to create more accessible green, open space on the waterfront. Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects is working on the design of this eight-acre waterfront park on Pier 42, with an emphasis on providing passive recreation space, soft barriers to storm surges, marine habitat, and ecological education opportunities. In deference to the park’s industrial past, a portion of the storage structure’s frame will be retained and used as a pavilion. The first space within the park, in the upland section, was scheduled to open in 2021. Construction began in March 2021, and a deck with recreational fields opened in November 2022. The park at Pier 42 opened on July 3, 2024.

References

External links

Pier 42
— New York City Department of Parks & Recreation
Paths to Pier 42
{{coord, 40, 42, 37, N, 73, 58, 55, W, type:landmark_region:US-NY, display=title Parks in Manhattan East River Lower East Side Manhattan Waterfront Greenway Piers in New York City

History

Park conversion

See also

References

External links