Seaport Museum Evokes Lower Manhattan’s Port Origins
For hundreds of years, goods and ideas have been exchanged at the South Street Seaport. From the 17th-century colonists who built the first primitive docks after discovering a hospitable coastline; to the 18th-century merchants who funded new wharves, slips, and streets as commerce boomed at the East River; to the 19th-century era of swift international clipper ships that crisscrossed the Atlantic (while slower vessels traveled west, connecting to the country’s interior via the Hudson River and the Erie Canal), New York rose at the waterfront and became a global capital of finance and culture.
Palimpsests of the mighty port remain in the cobblestones of Fulton Street, the tall masts of the iron-hulled cargo ship Wavertree docked at Pier 16, and historic buildings such as the 1868 A. A. Thomson warehouse at 213 Water Street.
Tomorrow (March 12), the South Street Seaport Museum will open “Maritime City,” a sweeping exhibition that illustrates New York’s port origins, at the newly restored Thomson warehouse. Showcasing 540 objects from the museum’s collection of 80,000 works of art, historical artifacts, and archival records, Maritime City spans the first three floors of the historic building, itself an artifact.
“New York emerged from the sea – practically, financially logistically, romantically,” said Capt. Jonathan Boulware, the museum’s president and CEO, who described the restored Thomson warehouse as a “new center of gravity” for the museum, joining its two other addresses at 12 Fulton Street (which will continue to mount exhibitions) and Pier 16 (which hosts the museum’s fleet of historic ships).
Highlights of Maritime City include:
• The 22-foot-long, 1935 builder model of the ocean liner RMS Queen Mary
• A rare surviving wheel from the French ocean liner SS Normandie
• Tools, toys, instruments, ships in bottles, mechanical devices
• Paintings by James Edward Buttersworth, Antonio Jacobsen, and Gordon Grant; large, detailed maps of old Lower Manhattan
• Interactive displays; drawers that open to reveal technical drawings and ship plans, letterpress broadsides, lithographs, wood engravings, historic posters and prints
Programs and events will complement the exhibition. On the evening of March 19, learn about the 22-foot-long model of the RMS Queen Mary in a presentation by Martina Caruso, the museum’s director of collections and exhibitions. On March 22, attend a morning meditation session amid the artifacts. On March 28, between 5pm and 8pm, stop in for a free self-guided exploration of the new exhibition, as a pianist tickles the ivories. Special Maritime City programs continue in April and beyond.
The Maritime City exhibition is “specifically designed to welcome broad and diverse audiences – adults and students – to experience this marvelous collection of artifacts, to pull on the threads of a broad New York story,” said Capt. Boulware. “We invite all to visit this maritime museum for a maritime city, this maritime museum for all people.”
The Seaport Museum is open Wednesday through Sunday, 11am to 5pm. Regular admission is $18 for adults, $15 for seniors and students, and $5 for children under the age of 18. Admission grants access to the 1885 tall ship Wavertree and 1908 lightship Ambrose at Pier 16, as well as all exhibitions at 12 Fulton Street and 213 Water Street. In addition to regular admission, pay-what-you-wish admission is available in person at the museum.