By Richard Magat

Oct. 21, 2015:  New Yorkers are generally considered landlubbers, but some maritime lovers are working to restore the city's seafaring heritage. They are organized in such groups as the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance and the New Amsterdam Market. They oppose what an op-ed article in the New York Times describes as "another sterile development that further reduces Manhattan to an overstuffed version of every other city in the country."

Even as the city has sprouted ever-taller skyscrapers and multimillion dollar condominiums, such efforts have tried to take root. The most ambitious was the South Street Seaport, a 12-square-block historic district on the East River in Lower Manhattan. The area was renowned for its proximity to moorings in the harbor. Bowsprits and jib-booms projected nearly to buildings across the street. Following the neighborhood's decline, a citizens group lobbied for the creation of the South Street Seaport Museum, which included a fleet of historic ships.

As the area could no longer accommodate steam-powered ships, ocean liners docked on Manhattan's West Side. One of these, the SS United States, smashed all trans-Atlantic speed records on its maiden voyage in l952 and still holds the record. One of the last remaining ocean liners, the vessel is decaying in a private shipyard in Philadelphia.

Manhattan's waterways provide ample sightseeing and other tourist attractions (e.g., the looming Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum), but they sometimes present dangers. The greatest was the deadly fire aboard the General Slocum passenger ship, which caught fire in 1904 carrying passengers along the East River to a church picnic. The loss of life, an estimated 1,021 passengers, was the greatest in New York City until the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

A few steamships still use the West Side piers that once welcomed the Queen Mary and other majestic ocean liners. Nowadays, the Manhattan rivers are plied by ferries to New Jersey and Staten Island.

The city's Dutch heritage is marked by Spuyten Duyvil Creek, a narrow tidal channel separating Manhattan from the Bronx and connecting the Harlem and Hudson Rivers. It has been translated as "spouting devil," "to spite the devil," and "spewing devil," among other variations.

When the waterway was reconfigured to make it more navigable, a neighborhood of Manhattan called Marble Hill was severed and became physically connected to the Bronx rather than Manhattan, to the annoyance of Marble Hill residents. After years of protest, despite designation by the Greater New York Charter of 1897 of Marble Hill as part of the Borough of Manhattan, the "orphan" neighborhood was declared by the New York Legislature in 1984 to be part of Manhattan.