WATERFRONT
FROM PIER 19, EAST RIVER
Foot of Peck Slip
AUGUST 12, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 157
Abbott's photograph of a banana boat from Honduras loading its cargo onto a railroad car at Pier 20, south of the Brooklyn Bridge, seems more a modernist montage than a documentary photograph. The project file's description of Manhattan's fruit transportation system clarifies the relationships between rail, ship, and bridge travel which appear sandwiched together in the photograph.
At Piers 19 and 20, the Standard Fruit and Steamship Company docked its 15 fruit boats from Mexico, Central and South America, and the West Indies. Steamships unloaded their cargo of unripened fruit at Pier 20, where trucks, many using the Brooklyn Bridge, carried much of it to local markets. What remained was loaded at Pier 19 onto freight cars, which returned by barge to New Jersey freight yards for transportation further inland. Both the steamships and freight cars were specially equipped to keep the fruit ventilated and cool.
All that remains of this view is the Brooklyn Bridge. The East River piers lost business to Brooklyn and New Jersey's more modern piers, which were built for larger vessels. In 1967, Piers 19 and 20 and some 50 other piers were torn down. With traffic on the elevated F.D.R. Drive rushing overhead, this stretch of the East River waterfront is now largely abandoned, except for makeshift shelters constructed by the homeless.