A rendering of the remade seaport. Photo: Howard Hughes Corp/SHoP Architects

South Street Seaport, that battered, neglected, kitschified zone of 19th-century warehouses and shipping offices, is one of the most evocative corners in New York. Here, you can still sense the mercantile soul of a maritime city. For several hundred years, longshoremen hoisted sacks of coffee, sugar, and opium onto the docks, feeding the continent’s economy. The Fulton Fish Market kept the cobblestones slick and the traffic livelyfor 183 years, until 2005, when it moved to ­shinier — and less mobbed-up — quarters in the Bronx. The smells lingered for a while, but today the area’s tangy, clattering romance has faded to melancholy. Tourists pass through for an hour or two, breathing in the brine of nostalgia. The seaport’s heyday was always a lifetime or two ago. Even in 1952, The New Yorker’s Joseph Mitchell seemed to be writing its eulogy. “The smoky riverbank dawn, the racket the fishmongers make, the seaweedy smell, and the sight of this plentifulness always give me a feeling of well-being, and sometimes they elate me,” he wrote in “Up in the Old Hotel.”........Continue Reading

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