Framed or unframed, desk size to sofa size, printed by us in Arizona and Alabama since 2007. Explore now.
Shorpy is funded by you. Patreon contributors get an ad-free experience.
Learn more.
May 22, 1936. "Warehouse district, Water and Dock Streets, Brooklyn, looking west under Brooklyn Bridge to Lower Manhattan." 8x10 gelatin silver print by Berenice Abbott for the Federal Art Project. View full size.
Bernice Abbot took her camera around New York City, stubbornly photographing the marginalized spaces (and occasionally people) that most people ignored. As Craig points out, this area is all spiffy and gentrified now. Thankfully, we have Abbot's record of how this area looked when it was a no-nonsense warehouse area.
I remember this corner from my years wandering around forgotten sections of Brooklyn. The warehouse on the right is now a 2-story shell used as a performance space (St. Ann's Warehouse), and the building that's going up in this picture came down in 2008. The cobblestone streets survived, but the sidewalks got paved. Neat to see it way back when!
The skyscraper in the foreground on the Manhattan side is now known as "70 Pine Street." It is surprisingly little known, considering it's 900 feet high.
On Shorpy:
Today’s Top 5