Front Street is part of the Historic Cobble Stone District in South Street Seaport. The area has been renovated, gentrified, and developed (by the Rouse company); I discuss the cloned look with other areas of the country in my posting on South Street Seaport. The original architecture, however, has been preserved, as you can see by the signage on the buildings in the photo above left. A walk down any of the streets is rewarding, and the area’s history can still be felt.

I like the quote from Moby Dick which is inscribed on a placard on Front Street. It captures the spirit of New York City at a time and in a place where its true nautical nature must have been preeminent:

“Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?- Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep.”

I have done several postings on aspects of this neighborhood: Belle de Jour, Dead to the World, Fishbridge Garden, Spiegeltent