TheWorking Waterfront
, the Southwest waterfront was a bustling,noisy, smelly place.Wharves, piers, and warehouses lined the river,and local industry thrived.Schooners brought ice from New England for delivery to family iceboxes. Lumber came and went by boat. Maryland coal, shipped via the C&O Canal, piled up in nearby coal yards.A large municipal warehouse was the distribution point for fresh produce.Laborers,shopkeepers,domestic servants, and government clerks lived alongside bootleggers and gamblers. The city morgue was nearby, as were small ship-building facilities. Waterfront taverns,restaurants,and hotels served workers,travelers,and neighbors.Some families lived on houseboats.And colorful watermen tied up at the docks daily to sell the harvest of “the great protein factory”—the Chesapeake Bay. Gene Cherrico, who grew up at Sixth Street in the s,once delivered the Daily News along the waterfront.“The pay wasn’t much,”he said,“but the tips weregreat. At the Flagship [restaurant], the kitchen help gave me a bag of their famous rum buns. I would sit behind the re s t a u rant eating buns and shaved ice while watching hucksters selling crabs and fish from dockside boats.” Today’s large restaurants along the waterfront are the heirs to yesterday’s humble oyster shacks.The Fish Wharf between th and th streets has suc- ceeded the large municipal fish wharf once found along Maine Avenue.The daily catch now arrives by refrigerated truck.During urban renewal,plan- ners tried to change the waterfront from a work- p l a ce f or t h e b roa d - s h o u l d ered to a c en ter of entertainment and rec reation. In plannersare hoping to further this idea, creating a walkable waterfront more like the old days and adding more residential buildings.
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