Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan

As a transplanted native New Yorker, this is my favorite book about NYC. It is the NYC that few non-New Yorkers know and that appears to be fast disappearing in the land of million dollar condos. I found this while searching for information on the lower east side, where I grew up, and found a wonderful, engaging, and for me nostalgic visit to some of the old neighborhoods that built the city. It is rich with anecdote (who knew I was was from the same neighborhood as Jimmy Durante, albeit some 50 years apart) and descriptions of both the cultural and political landscapes that described a transformative New York and its melting pot of neighborhoods and people.

As Lopate says, even though Manhattan is an island, its waterfront is under-utilized and, as a result, little-known -- even by native NYers. His wonderful book explores the mysteries and hidden treasures that surround our "island" and makes for a fascinating read. Although the book is about the waterfront it really is about SO MUCH MORE -- such as the infighting that surrounded the failed Westway project or the sociology of the former Fulton Fish Market (now relocated to The Bronx) or the architecture of Battery Park City. New Yorkers and wannabe-New Yorkers will love this book because it reveals more fascinating city lore. It's more fun than any Circle Line Cruise.

Philip Lopate has written a wonderful paen to the waterfront of NYC. His descriptions of what is now, and what was yesterday strike just the right note. His notes (he calls them excursus) add substance and a bit of frivolity to what could have been a very dull subject (care to discuss the pros and cons of killing shipworms). He not only writes about what has been built, but what has been added and what was proposed but never built. More than anything else he makes a great case for opening up the waterfront to additional parks and recreational use of this wonderful resource.

Phillip LoPate's "Waterfront" is an elegantly structured, beautifully written book. The central narrative thread takes him around the perimeter of the island of Manhattan, and anyone who's even a little bit curious about ruins, industrial archaeology, and odd and forgotten spots will read about his adventures and travails with great pleasure. LoPate is also well versed in urban design, architecture and New York's history and uses each neighborhood as a chance to discuss everything from the politics of urban renewal to Manhattan's history as a center of piracy. In addition to the neighborhood-by-neighborhood travelogue, LoPate also includes several short "excursions" on other topics of related to New York's history and present, ranging from a discussion of shipworms to a revisionist look at the much-loathed Robert Moses. Not only is LoPate's own writing wonderful, but he drops in lots of pointers to other works -- I'm really tempted to look for "Heartbeats in the Muck" (about the ecological revival of NY harbor) if only to have the title on my bookshelf. Frankly, I picked this book up because I thought it would be a good before-bed book -- not too engaging, nice sleep aid. The joke was on me: I ended up staying up all night and reading the entire thing.

One of New York's premiere writers, Phillip Lopate, has written this wonderful book, WATERFRONT: A JOURNEY AROUND MANHATTAN, about his trek up the Hudson, through the harbor, and up the East River. This is not a long journey in length, but it evokes decades upon decades upon centuries of the history of New York.What Lopate has evoked, at the same time, is an awareness that somewhere in our development, we have lost touch with the fact that Manhattan is an island, and that our formidable legacy was derived from the fact that, for centuries, we were a powerful port city. Goods and immigrants arrived to our shores by ship well into the 20th century. And then, for several reasons and not all of them good ones, we began to shun the river, the tidal strait (East River), and our harbor.For the most part though, Lopate delights in seeing the city the way our forebears saw it. And then, sometimes, the effect is enormously sad: specifically, his journey to North Brother Island, the site where the General Slocum burned and partially sank, where so many bodies washed ashore as others died in the island's hospital. This section is eerily poignant and, to me, the best written. Lopate and his companions did not escape North Brother unscathed, physically and emotionally. And I doubt most readers will put down WATERFRONT without feeling unchanged. This is a wonderful book for New Yorkers and/or history fans.