OYSTER HOUSES
South Street and Pike Slip
APRIL 1, 1937. ABBOTT FILE 232

Oyster Houses, 1930 (CGLI)

These houseboats moored under the Manhattan Bridge sold oysters to restaurants and hotels. The oysters were shipped in from Long Island, and the shells, like those piled up in Abbott's photograph, were sent on to New Jersey as feed for chicken farms. Project researcher Edith Brandinger interviewed Mr. Nikolaus, who took over Housman's oyster house when the last member of the family died. Nikolaus explained that the Housmans had been in the oyster business since 1810. The houseboats, which were probably built in the 1860s, were once privately owned but by the 1930s were owned by the city and leased to their occupants. Although Nikolaus claimed that houseboats kept oysters fresher and cooler than an indoor market, these two boats were the last in what was once a fleet of 50. The 1937 New York telephone directory lists 17 oyster houses, almost all with Fulton Fish Market addresses, several blocks south and on land. At the end of Pike Slip today is a commercial parking lot, standing in the shadow of an elevated portion of the F.D.R. Drive. At water's edge, homeless people have built makeshift shelters.

Abbott bought her first 8-x-10-inch view camera in 1930, and these oyster houses were her first subject. Unfamiliar with the camera's swings and tilts, Abbott could not control the impression that the houses were collapsing in upon each other. When she returned to the site in 1937, she again distorted her subject, but in a controlled manner. She "stretched" the composition to include within the frame the two oyster houses, the overhead span of the Manhattan Bridge, the heap of shells in the foreground, and the oceanliner in the distance at the right edge. This all-inclusive approach produced a pair of rich contrasts: the small-scale, nineteenth-century maritime vessels with the huge sleek oceanliner, and the rectilinear maze of modern engineering above with the heap of primitive organic matter below. Abbott took this photograph on the same day as Grand Street, nos. 605-609, which also exploits the expressive possibilities of a wide-angle view.

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