9. Municipal Ferry Pier
AKA: Battery Maritime Building
Location: 11 South Street
Built: 1906-1909
Architects: Walker & Morris
National Register Number: 76001246
Listed: December 12, 1976
Visited: July 21, 2007
Manhattan used to be lousy with piers, just lousy with 'em. They were once the linchpins of turn-of-the-century New York's transport infrastructure. Now they're not. First the speed of car and subway travel made interborough ferries a poky option for most commuters; then a post-war economic shift away from manufacturing, not to mention containerization and competition from New Jersey, killed off the commercial usefulness of NYC's waterfront. So by the 1970s and 80s, once-bustling piers were left abandoned in the river to rot away, or serve as meeting places for furtive gay sex (waaay before my time, don't you dare look at me like that).
The Battery Maritime Building was blindsided by these changes. It served commuters going to and from Brooklyn until 1938, a mere thirty years. Afterwards, it was subject to decades of use -- and underuse -- as home to several city agencies, and launch-point for ferries traveling to Governors Island. When I first saw it in 2002, it looked a magnificent wreck, rusting and painted a sickly blue. Since then, Jan Hird Pokorny and Tishman Construction gave it a fitting restoration that reconstructed much than had been lost and recovered the building's original color scheme of pistachio, lime, and strawberry ice cream.
The colors aren't the only interesting thing about the building, mind (I mean, look at that decorative rivet work, for one!) but they compel me because they seem so queerly modern: they wouldn't be out of place on a product from Target or IKEA, and yeah, I mean that as a COMPLIMENT, mofo. And yet I can't think of many contemporary Manhattan buildings that really run riot with color the way the Battery Maritime and a few maverick cast-irons do. Even the stuntiest of post-modern stunts usually work their tomfoolery on a building's profile or massing or detailing. (The Westin New York at Times Square and Schnabel's "Venetian" [yeah, sure] apartment repainting comes to mind as exceptions.) They all seem stuck with black, white, or glassy grays and blues that evanesce into the sky under some weathers IF they're lucky to be so graceful.
Only a few weeks ago, the NYC Economic Development Corporation announced the building would be transformed into a food marketplace/event space, ferry terminal, and hotel complex. Now it's a deserving place, don't get me wrong, but color me skeptical: where's the foot traffic going to come from? There's been explosive residential growth in the Financial District lately (as we'll see, a LOT of landmarked commercial buildings in the area are now fancy-schmancy apartment buildings), but from what I've seen, it hasn't made the pier's immediate surroundings any livelier. The best it can hope for is capturing some of the folks coming off the Staten Island Ferry or the tourists headed for the Statue of Liberty.
Location: 11 South Street
Built: 1906-1909
Architects: Walker & Morris
National Register Number: 76001246
Listed: December 12, 1976
Visited: July 21, 2007
Manhattan used to be lousy with piers, just lousy with 'em. They were once the linchpins of turn-of-the-century New York's transport infrastructure. Now they're not. First the speed of car and subway travel made interborough ferries a poky option for most commuters; then a post-war economic shift away from manufacturing, not to mention containerization and competition from New Jersey, killed off the commercial usefulness of NYC's waterfront. So by the 1970s and 80s, once-bustling piers were left abandoned in the river to rot away, or serve as meeting places for furtive gay sex (waaay before my time, don't you dare look at me like that).
The Battery Maritime Building was blindsided by these changes. It served commuters going to and from Brooklyn until 1938, a mere thirty years. Afterwards, it was subject to decades of use -- and underuse -- as home to several city agencies, and launch-point for ferries traveling to Governors Island. When I first saw it in 2002, it looked a magnificent wreck, rusting and painted a sickly blue. Since then, Jan Hird Pokorny and Tishman Construction gave it a fitting restoration that reconstructed much than had been lost and recovered the building's original color scheme of pistachio, lime, and strawberry ice cream.
The colors aren't the only interesting thing about the building, mind (I mean, look at that decorative rivet work, for one!) but they compel me because they seem so queerly modern: they wouldn't be out of place on a product from Target or IKEA, and yeah, I mean that as a COMPLIMENT, mofo. And yet I can't think of many contemporary Manhattan buildings that really run riot with color the way the Battery Maritime and a few maverick cast-irons do. Even the stuntiest of post-modern stunts usually work their tomfoolery on a building's profile or massing or detailing. (The Westin New York at Times Square and Schnabel's "Venetian" [yeah, sure] apartment repainting comes to mind as exceptions.) They all seem stuck with black, white, or glassy grays and blues that evanesce into the sky under some weathers IF they're lucky to be so graceful.
Only a few weeks ago, the NYC Economic Development Corporation announced the building would be transformed into a food marketplace/event space, ferry terminal, and hotel complex. Now it's a deserving place, don't get me wrong, but color me skeptical: where's the foot traffic going to come from? There's been explosive residential growth in the Financial District lately (as we'll see, a LOT of landmarked commercial buildings in the area are now fancy-schmancy apartment buildings), but from what I've seen, it hasn't made the pier's immediate surroundings any livelier. The best it can hope for is capturing some of the folks coming off the Staten Island Ferry or the tourists headed for the Statue of Liberty.
Labels: Financial District, South Street Seaport and Water Street Corridor, Walker and Morris
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