CONSTRUCTING THE FRAME OF NEW YORK: COMMERCE, BEAUTY AND THE BATTLE OVER THIRTEENTH AVENUE

• Published in: The journal of the gilded age and progressive era 2018-07, Vol.17 (3), p.501-523
• Main Author: Trask, Jeffrey
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 19th century; Aesthetics; Annual reports; Architects; Architectural engineering; Beauty; Cities; Construction; Docks; Landscape architecture; Modernization; Ports; Railroads; Stevens, Simon
• ISSN: 1537-7814; 1943-3557
• DOI: 10.1017/S1537781418000087

This article examines contests over improving the municipal waterfront in New York during the Gilded Age, and it uncovers the hidden history of Thirteenth Avenue. To maintain its commercial prominence and competitive edge, New York established the Department of Docks in 1870, granting it the authority to manage maritime trade and oversee the redesign and modernization of the city's wharves and piers. Debates about how a modern industrial and commercial waterfront should look centered on new ideas about the aesthetic economy of cities. Business and civic leaders believed that the beauty of the built environment could be leveraged as an asset to attract commerce and industrial investment. But these debates about improving the industrial waterfront ultimately pitted business interests against maritime labor and local manufacturers. Thirteenth Avenue was a small-scale industrial district on the far edge of Greenwich Village that stood in the way of the lucrative transatlantic steamship trade. Siding with mercantile interests over those of small manufacturers, the city condemned Thirteenth Avenue in the 1890s and reclaimed it for the Hudson River to make way for the Chelsea Piers. These elaborate Beaux-Arts piers served as an aesthetic frame for New York City, but they also reflected the unequal dynamics of municipal planning and politics at the turn of the twentieth century.