Front Street

Front Street is part of the Historic Cobble Stone District in South Street Seaport. The area has been renovated, gentrified and developed (by the Rouse company) - I discuss the cloned look with other areas of the country in my posting on South Street - click here. The original architecture, however, has been preserved as you can see by the signage on the buildings in the photo above left. A walk down any of the streets is rewarding and the area's history can still be felt.

I like the quote from Moby Dick which is inscribed on a placard on Front Street. It captures the spirit of New York City at a time and in a place where its true nautical nature must have been preeminent:

"Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?- Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep."

I have done several postings on aspects of this neighborhood. Click on any of the following links: South Street Seaport, Belle de Jour, Dead to the World, Fishbridge Garden, Spiegeltent.