Silent Beaches began in part because of a startling realization, one that I think I share with many other New Yorkers and visitors alike: which is that we often barely notice the water coursing around, through and underneath us.

 

Yet, the waterfront is NYC’s reason for being.  It is easy to forget that New York is actually an archipelago amidst a tidal estuary.  It’s hard to imagine, in our thumping metropolis, that it was a deep harbor protected from the open ocean, and teeming with fish, oysters, beavers and muskrats that Hudson took note of when he bumped into Coney Island while looking for a shortcut to Asia.

 

The Course Silent Beaches: New York City’s Waterfront takes us to a variety of lesser-known waterfront spaces, each one embodying in its own way, the story of New York City past and present. Each chapter of our text focuses on one location, and features a historical narrative and archival photographs as well as works of contemporary fiction and visual art that the site has inspired. Using this text as well as a series of related articles, we will examine the narrative of this great city and what the future holds for all waterfront habitats.