1883 New York Harbor

In 1883, Brooklyn was a vigorous and independent city, the third largest in the United States, with its cultural and social center in the Heights just south of the Brooklyn Bridge and warehouses and factories lining the shore below to serve the active port. By 1870, ferry lines were carrying over 50 million passengers a year, mostly commuters, to New York, and traffic grew rapidly in the following decade. Just 500 yards off the Manhattan shore, Governors Island, designated in 1689 for the benefit and accommodation of His Majesty’s governors and previously known as Nutten Island, had fortifications dating from 1794 that made it a major administrative center for the U.S. Army, and its strong defenses during the War of 1812 may have deterred a British attack on New York. Liberty Island, formerly Bedloe’s Island, became the site chosen for the statue France presented to the United States in 1884 to mark the long alliance of the two nations; called Liberty Enlightening the World, it was placed at the entrance to New York Harbor by the sculptor Frederic Bartholdt so that millions of immigrants arriving by boat could see it, and Gustav Eiffel designed its internal support for the 151 foot statue. From the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883, with no skyscrapers to block the view, people could see from Brooklyn to Staten Island and across Manhattan to the Hudson and the New Jersey shore, overlooking one of the world’s busiest ports, where an unbroken line of piers extended along lower Manhattan’s eastern shore to 11th Street and steam and sailing ships departed for New England, California, South America, and Europe. The narrow, densely built streets of the port were crowded with warehouses, shipyards, small factories, and residences, while the spire of Trinity Church and the tower of the Tribune Building rose above the low buildings. Ellis Island, named for 18th-century owner Samuel Ellis and acquired by the federal government in 1808, served as an active U.S. Navy arsenal before Congress approved it in 1890 as the site of the New York Immigration Center, where in the peak immigration year of 1907 over 1.2 million people entered the United States.

New York, New York · United States