page_title: Jamaica Bay
section_title: Historic seaport proposal
hierarchical_section_title: Jamaica Bay / History / Historic seaport proposal
caption_attribution_description: The waves of Jamaica Bay aproaching the green coastline of Brooklyn, NYC
context_page_description: Jamaica Bay is an estuary on the southern portion of the western tip of Long Island, in the U.S. state of New York. The estuary is partially man-made, and partially natural. The bay connects with Lower New York Bay to the west, through Rockaway Inlet, and is the westernmost of the coastal lagoons on the south shore of Long Island. Politically, it is primarily divided between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens in New York City, with a small part touching Nassau County.
  The bay contains numerous marshy islands. It was known as Grassy Bay as late as the 1940s. Jamaica Bay is located adjacent to the confluence of the New York Bight and New York Bay, and is at the turning point of the primarily east-west oriented coastline of southern New England and Long Island and the north-south oriented coastline of the mid-Atlantic coast.
context_section_description: Some modifications to Jamaica Bay were conducted in the early 20th century as a result of a never-realized plan to develop Jamaica Bay as a seaport. As early as 1886, the U.S. Engineering Department (now Army Corps of Engineers) had created plans to dredge Rockaway Inlet in preparation for constructing a large seaport in Jamaica Bay. These plans were scrapped because there was not enough commercial traffic to justify the construction of the seaport. Over the next two decades, commercial activity in New York City increased. New proposals for the Jamaica Bay seaport emerged in the 1900s. By 1905, the value of the city's manufacturing sector was assessed at $1.5 billion, a figure cited by supporters of the Jamaica Bay project.
  In 1910, developers unveiled a plan to convert Jamaica Bay to a seaport district as part of the New York State Barge Canal project, which would connect Hudson River to the Great Lakes by way of a new canal in upstate New York. The new seaport would convert existing inland creeks into barge canals with lengths of up to 1.5 miles (2.4 km), and the 25 square miles (65 km²) area of the bay was to be dredged. An aggregate 4,200 acres (1,700 ha) of marshlands in the bay would be converted to land that could be built upon, while residential communities would be built on Long Island for port workers. Railroads would be built to collect cargo from these ports, and a canal would extend northward across Long Island to the Long Island Sound.
  The project began in 1911, despite doubts about the feasibility of the project. Some engineers believed that shifting sand dunes and the tides in Jamaica Bay might make it impossible to construct the seaport district. The next year, developers began dredging ports within Jamaica Bay in order to make it navigable for the large vessels that were supposed to use the bay. Significant progress on the dredging had been completed by 1918, and the city allowed the construction of several piers. However, only one pier was built near Barren Island. The pier, which was built in order to receive landfill for the other proposed piers, stretched 1 mile (1.6 km) northeast and was 700 feet (210 m) wide. A total of six such piers were planned for this area. In June 1918, a 447-foot-long (136 m) municipally owned pier was opened at Mill Basin. At the time, there were proposals to fill in 8,000 acres (3,200 ha) between Mill and Barren Islands so 14 more piers could be built. With the United States' entry into World War I, the project was abandoned.
  The plans were revived by 1927. At the time, the docklands were expected to gain a connection to the Long Island Rail Road. Planners wanted to create a spur of the Bay Ridge Branch south to Flatlands, with two branches to Canarsie and Mill Basin. A connection to Staten Island would be built via the planned Staten Island Tunnel, which would in turn allow freight to be delivered and shipped to the rest of the continental United States. By 1928, the Barren Island Airport was being constructed on the bay's west shore, and advocates for the seaport project were pushing the city to construct the docklands simultaneously. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey offered to build the new railroad link for $2 million and lease it to the city.  In 1930, the city approved of a report recommending the acquisition of a right-of-way for a proposed LIRR branch to Paerdegat Basin. The railroad would connect to the New York Connecting Railroad, which would then connect to the national railroad system at large. Dredging Paerdegat Basin was a key part of the plan, as it would allow easier access for ships headed to Canarsie. As part of the updated proposal, two artificial islands for shipping operations would be built in Jamaica Bay.
  In January 1931, the New York City Board of Estimate approved a plan to build railroads on both sides of Paerdegat Basin, connecting the LIRR to Canarsie Pier to the east and to Floyd Bennett Field to the west.  By that time, the city had spent $10 million, and the federal government $2 million, toward improving the bay for a proposed
caption: Plumb Beach, Brooklyn
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot G3", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2006:11:11 14:58:40", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "196", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "180", "Thumbnail YResolution": "180", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "2036", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3918", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/1250", "EXIF FNumber": "63/10", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2006:11:11 14:58:40", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2006:11:11 14:58:40", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "329/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "85/16", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "101/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "461/16", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1024", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "768", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "1024", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "768", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1572", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "25600/7", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "25600/7", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}