Photo Exhibit Recalls Gritty Waterfront Before It Became Hudson River Park

This 1973 photo by Shelley Seccombe, with Pier 42 in the background, is part of an outdoor exhibit of images by seven photographers who took pictures of the Manhattan waterfront before its transformation to today's Hudson River Park. Photo ©1973-2007 by Shelley Seccombe

It’s hard to imagine the four miles of waterfront that stretches north from Tribeca without its extraordinary mix of green open spaces, playgrounds, gardens and much more that is Hudson River Park. But graphic reminders of a gritty past are now on display on the fence between Tribeca’s Piers 25 and 26, near North Moore Street. 

Images by seven photographers capture the landscape that, derelict as it was, still drew many to the river’s edge, including artists who saw creative possibilities awaiting them among the crumbling piers. Juxtaposed with those photos are images of the same spaces today. The exhibit, “Hudson River Park: Then & Now,” is a tribute to the transformation of the waterfront, now nearly complete, that began with the 1998 passage of the Hudson River Park Act.

Andreas Sterzing recalled [1] photographing in the long-abandoned Pier 34 that, for a time in the 1980s, had been taken over by artists. He wrote: “For me every time entering the pier was like going into a magical maze, a mysterious, ever changing and mind-altering place; time, sounds and the world of Manhattan temporarily turning into a distant memory.”