Cruising the Dead River: David Wojnarowicz and New York's Ruined Waterfront

by Fiona Anderson

Writing in the New York Times in 1979, almost contemporaneous with Koch’s pledge to “[open] the waters to the people of the city,” architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable bade a bittersweet farewell to the “shabby” East Side harbor, as she criticized the young developer Donald Trump’s emergent plans for a commercial restructuring of the still-abandoned riverfront: I guess what I am really doing is saying good-bye. Because what will surely be lost is the spirit and identity of the area as it has existed over centuries—something that may only be important to those of us who have loved the small, shabby streets and buildings redolent of time and fish, or shared the cold sunlight of a quiet Sunday morning on the waterfront with the Fulton market cats, when the nineteenth century seemed very much alive.14