Actual work on the pier for the new East River Bridge, at the foot of Delancey Street, was begun in the spring of 1897.
Manhattan Island
Much confusion has arisen, and still exists, in the designation of the territory under the names of Manhattan Island and Island of Manhattan. The two islands a hundred years ago were widely different bodies. They are joined now.
Manhattan Island was the name given to a little knoll of land which lay within the limits of what is now Third, Houston and Lewis Streets and the East River. At high tide the place was a veritable island. There seems to be still a suggestion of it in the low buildings which occupy the ground of the former island. About the ancient boundary, as though closing it in, are tall tenements and factory buildings. On the grounds of this old island the first recreation pier was built, in 1897, at the foot of Third Street.
The Island of Manhattan has always been the name applied to the land occupied by the old City of New York, now the Borough of Manhattan.
In the heart of the block surrounded by Rivington, Stanton, Goerck and Mangin Streets, there is still to be seen the remains of a slanting-roofed market, closed in by the houses which have been built about it. It was set up in 1827, and named Manhattan Market after the nearby island.
Bone Alley
Work on the Hamilton Fish Park was begun in 1896, in the space bounded by Stanton, Houston, Pitt and Sheriff Streets, then divided into two blocks by Willett Street. This was a congested, tenement-house vicinity, where misery and poverty pervaded most of the dingy dwellings. In wiping out the two solidly built-up blocks, Bone Alley, well known in police history for a generation, was effaced. On the west side of Willett Street, midway of the block, Bone Alley had its start and extended sixty feet into the block—a twenty-five-foot space between tall tenements, running plump into a row of houses extending horizontal with it. When these houses were erected they each had long gardens, which were built upon when the land became too valuable to be spared for flower-beds or breathing-spots. In time they became the homes of rag-and bone-pickers, and thus the alley which led to them got its name, which it kept even after the rag-pickers and the law-breakers who succeeded them had been driven away by the police.