Manhattan Water-Bound: Planning and Developing Manhattan’s Waterfront from the Seventeenth Century to the Present by Ann L. Buttenwieser

Abstract

700 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE of each site’s history. It would have made more sense to group similar sites—bridges, lighthouses, hydropower, oil drilling and refining, and so on—and discuss them in the context of Texas’s history and development. Still another drawback is the inclusion of a number of engineering works that no longer exist or of which only remnants remain. An example is the Brazos Santiago Lighthouse, where only the piers of the lighthouse, supporting a modern harbor pilot’s office and radio station, survive today. But these are the only criticisms of what is overall a handsome, carefully produced, and welcome introduction to historic engineering works in the Lone Star State. Carol Poh Miller Ms. Miller is a historian and preservation consultant in Cleveland. She is the author of numerous articles in The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History recently published by In­ diana University Press. Manhattan 'Water-Bound,: Planning and Developing Manhattan’s Waterfront from the Seventeenth Century to the Present. By Ann L. Buttenwieser. New York: New York University Press, 1987. Pp. xxii + 243; illus­ trations, maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $35.00. The title of this slender volume promises more than the book can deliver. Ann Buttenwieser aims to cover the planning, designing, and building of waterfront elements over the 360 + years since the official establishment of Dutch rule, all in a working text of little more than 150 pages. And the first chapter, “Patterns,” is so broad and diffuse it offers only hints of a few subsequent themes. The result is compres­ sion, truncation, and selection so extreme as to cover only a small frac­ tion of the natural and man-made waterfront that grew up in all these years. The truth of the matter is, as the author admits in her intro­ duction, that Manhattan Water-Bound follows the case-study method so dear to the business historian’s heart, and the solid substance of the book is confined to only five cases of shoreline development—the 1871 plan of the Department of Docks, the construction of the ChelseaGansevoort piers that grew out of it, Riverside Park, the West Side El­ evated Highway, and East River (Franklin D. Roosevelt) Drive and its relation to the Vladek Homes. This approach is subject to question, and I will take up the matter at the conclusion of this review. Buttenwieser’s second chapter, an attempt to describe comprehen­ sively reclamation, shoreline rectification, pier and bulkhead construc­ tion, and street extension over a period of 250 years, introduces the essential approach of the work. The material is so complex and multi­ dimensional as to defy general, logical summary. The thread running throughout the chapter is the tangled interaction ofcolonial or federal policies, and state, municipal, and private interests and operations, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 701 all frequently conflicting and the results haphazard to the point of anarchy. These shifting lines of minimal planning and building are related to the irregular but spectacular rise of port commerce and the violent upheaval of the Revolutionary War. The result was a crazy quilt of dock construction, intermittent and often severe shortages of berthing space, and the chaos of waterfront shipping intermixed with marginal street activities. The promise of order came with the estab­ lishment of the New York Harbor Commission in 1855, which sets the stage for the presentation of the author’s five “cases.” The first important consequence of the new order was the creation of the Department of Docks in 1870, followed by a comprehensive dock plan drawn up in 1871, which was revived with changes in 1880 and was, seventeen years later, to lead to the beginning ofconstruction of the Chelsea-Gansevoort piers. The entire row was completed be­ tween the limits of 23d and Bloomfield Streets in 1910. Here we find the first example of what strikes me as the abortive or unfinished character of Buttenwieser’s narrative. We reach the end of the chapter without being given any description of the physical realization of these plans. She gives us little on the precise limits of the row, the number of piers, their dimensions and spacing, structure, function, and role in expediting the...