DOWNTOWN SKYPORT
Foot of Wall Street and East River, August 12, 1936
Abbott File 162

Abbott took this photograph of the downtown skyport between Piers 11 and 12 from a schooner, perhaps Theoline. Built in 1934, the city-owned skyport docked amphibious planes that squired financiers from their suburban homes to Wall Street. Although an hour-and-a-half commute could be reduced to half-an-hour, commuter flight appealed as much to the futuristic imagination as to efficiency. Writing about the 1938 expansion of the skyport, the New York Post (May 18, 1938) noted cynically that "all this has a nostalgic flavor of 1929," when one could "dream of a whole swarm of brokers descending upon Wall Street from the sky each morning, then zooming away each afternoon, to let the city get on as best it may." Ironically, the skyport improvements were a WPA relief project.

Abbott's photograph features docked planes and the skyport office, its roof labeled in large letters for the benefit of incoming pilots. Two shoeshine boys on the pier sat still enough to be captured by Abbott's long exposure. The slender shaft of 60 Wall Tower contrasts with the bulk of 120 Wall Street, and the top of the Woolworth Building (1913) is visible in the distance (center). Shortly after Abbott took this photograph, Piers 11 and 12 were demolished for the expansion of the skyport. Today, a new Pier 11 docks Delta Airline's water shuttle to LaGuardia Airport, again linking airborne travelers to Wall Street. When the elevated F.D.R. Drive was built in the 1950s, the small buildings on South Street were replaced by a gas station. In the 1960s, the gas station and adjacent lots were succeeded by office towers which, joining 120 Wall Street, now form a solid skyscraper wall along the waterfront.

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