EAST RIVER, FOOT OF EAST 9TH STREET
MARCH 4, 1937. ABBOTT FILE 211

East River, Foot of East 9th Street, variant image 1

On the same day that Abbott photographed decrepit buildings on Stanton and Corlears Streets, she photographed two utility boats at Pier 61. The smaller vessel Rockaway picked up floating objects and took soundings of the river to ensure safe passage of large vessels. The William J. Conway belonged to the U.S. government and was used for towing. As a painter climbed the mast of the Conway, Abbott exposed three negatives and chose the one that most clearly shows his action, hand and foot delicately poised.

East River, Foot of East 9th Street, variant image 2

In 1939, the city razed this pier and others between Grand and 14th Streets to construct the first leg of the East River Drive and its adjacent park. A notorious slum, this stretch of waterfront proved the easiest starting point for the city's ambitious plan to outline Manhattan Island with continuous highway. Although Abbott ignored the Dickensian squalor of the area, two variant images facing inland from the pier show tenements and industrial buildings in the process of demolition. The gas tanks to the north are reminders of the neighborhood's moniker the "gashouse district," named for the stench of leaking gas. The tanks and the slums west of the new highway remained until the construction in 1949 of the New York City Housing Authority's Jacob Riis Houses.

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