From Standard To Remnant

From the 1930s, postcard nostalgia about the “days of the Square Rigger”: “Stokes” in this case is Isaac Newtown Phelps Stokes, who wrote the definitive book, in six volumes, on the physical and visual history of New York City up to the early twentieth century: The iconography of Manhattan Island. The Stokes Collection is, at least in part, the material that I.N.P. gathered during his research. The ships on the left are tied up at the South Street piers south of Maiden Lane, and are a mix of passenger and freight. There were no passengers terminals at that time, so you got off a ship into the craziness of barrels and bales stacked up on the street. The buildings on the right, on the west side of South Street, were all industrial. Some were warehouses serving the docks, some had ship-related industries. (The word “loft” in NYC usage generally started as “sail loft.” Sail lofts were big open spaces for sewing sails and turned out to be useful for a lot of other uses.) From 1912 (twenty…