The Street of Ships

In the first half of the nineteenth century South Street was known as the Street of Ships. From Coenties Slip to Roosevelt Street the East River piers were crowded with sailing vessels, and the bowsprits of the largest reached across the street and almost into the office windows on the far side, as the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission put it in 1968. The street itself was new, built on landfill between 1798 and about 1810, and from the Revolution to the Civil War this waterfront was the commercial heart of the port. Packets of the Black Ball Line often moored at Peck Slip. The Black Ball Line, founded by Quaker merchants led by Jeremiah Thompson, changed ocean travel. On 5 January 1818 its James Monroe left New York for Liverpool in a snowstorm on the advertised day, the first transatlantic service to sail on a fixed date whether its holds were full or not.

The eastbound passage took about three weeks and the westbound nearly six, against the prevailing winds. Steam ended the street's reign. Larger ships needed the deeper water of the Hudson, where a pier for them opened in 1847, and by 1870 steamships carried nine ocean passengers in ten. South Street now runs beneath the FDR Drive, though the Seaport Museum's 1885 ship Wavertree still lies at the piers a short walk south of Peck Slip.