By: Benyamin Davidsons

Decades ago, New York City’s piers were all-important trading ports where longshoremen unloaded goods from cargo ships. At that time, NYC had been a major industrial center, producing all kinds of products, and shipping them off via ships at the piers. For a long time now though, NYC is no longer a manufacturing center and so the piers became unused and desolate. As with any space left void, crime soon took hold there, and the waterfront piers were known as a port for drug dealers. Then in the 1990’s, thanks to efforts by former Mayors David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani, there was a drastic reduction in crime and the piers were safe again.

As per a recent article in the NY Times, with the economic boom that followed, the space was first reimagined as beautiful waterfronts for sunny days with picnics open to the masses as a kind of public backyard.

New York has actually done a great job transforming the pier in Gantry Plaza State Park in Long Island City. Formerly named after the oversized machines (called gantries) that were used to unloaded cargo ships at the pier, now Long Island City’s pier is a beautiful park—a recreational escape full of life. “I tell my friends about the park here,” said Patricia Foley, 60, an Upper East Side resident who comes to LIC to relax. “They say, ‘Oh, you want us to come to Long Island City?’ Before you wouldn’t do that, but it’s so nice here now.” Per the NY Times, the park here did not exist when Jason D. Antos, the executive director of the Queens Historical Society, was a kid in the 1980s and ’90s. Back then, the pier was “very desolate and very eerie,” said Mr. Antos. “To see its transformation is amazing.”

Brooklyn has its own pier in Bay Ridge. Formerly Bay Ridge was a hub where people would come to take a ferry to Staten Island, before the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was completed in 1964. Today, it’s a popular fishing and recreational spot, boasting brilliant views of the waterfront, the bridge, Lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. Here is also the site of the popular American Veterans Memorial Pier, a 25-foot-high memorial honoring the Brooklyn victims of the September 11 terror attacks. Located south of Owl’s Head Park, the pier is an escape from the hustle and bustle of Manhattan.

“You feel a lot of stress in Manhattan,” said Ken Wang, 27, who works at a Manhattan bank and loves to come to the pier with his girlfriend. “But when you come here you feel different.” “Look at this view,” he told the NY Times. “This is why we come here.”

Staten Island, similarly, enjoys the pier located at the Midland Beach neighborhood, known as the Ocean Breeze Fishing Pier. With a broad unobstructed view of the Atlantic Ocean, sometimes dolphins or whales can be seen below in the open waters. In the early 20th century, the area was home to a busy shore front entertainment district, with amusement park rides and casinos, said Carli DeFillo, the collections manager at Historic Richmond Town. Per the Times, this pier too became filled with crime and vandalism, only to reopen in 2003.

Manhattan has its own pier too, on the West side: The Christopher Street Pier. It didn’t always used to be a good or even safe neighborhood, but today Greenwich Village is one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the United States, and accordingly the pier attracts many well-heeled New Yorkers who come to unwind and enjoy the grassy beach.