Still There

From the Wurts Brothers, circa 1930, “43 Water Street (looking north)”:

In case it’s not excruciatingly obvious, 43 Water Street is the low building in the center bottom, with the ad painted on the brick wall. The rail over Water Street was part of the Third Avenue elevated, heading to South Ferry off to the left. Obviously, the photographer was having fun with showing the small old buildings in front of the new skyscrapers, but the irregular redevelopment of the far east side of lower Manhattan leads to some interesting results. Here’s street view today:

The building in the center with all the cell-phone antennas on the roof is in the earlier photo, as are its neighbors, including the mid-rise building a couple of lots up Water Street to the right. The wide space in front of the antennaed building is Coenties Slip, a seventeenth-century space between two piers that has been filled in, stranded by landfill into the river, and turned into a street. The wider space in front of 43 Water and its neighbors to the right was an extension of Coenties Slip, renamed as Jeannette Park in the 1880s.

43 Water and its neighbors were replaced by 55 Water Street, a behemoth of a building. Other large buildings have been constructed further up Water, and the street itself widened. The changes are such that I was surprised to realize I recognized the buildings at the corner of Coenties and Water.