By the end of the nineteenth century, the Port of New York was the center of a huge maritime enterprise. Through this hub passed vessels and cargoes of every description, heading to or arriving from anywhere and everywhere around the globe. For much of the first half of the twentieth century, it was here that America's commerce with Europe and Central and South America converged. In this busiest port in the world, seasoned sailors and fishermen, international traders, muscled longshoremen, barge brats, and yachters shaped and shared New York's waterfront world. By 1960 maritime New York had greatly diminished, eclipsed by more efficient operations elsewhere. Fortunately, a small cadre of commercial photographers documented the dynamic social, economic, and political forces in the heyday of the wharves, waterways, and waterfront markets, capturing for the ages the gritty and sometimes glamorous life of the docks and their environs.

"Here's the perfect companion volume to Phillip Lopate's Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan (Forecasts, Feb. 9). A pictorial celebration of New York's maritime heritage, the book reproduces more than 100 black-and-white photographs from the vast collection of vintage photos and negatives that the Frederick Lewis News Agency bequeathed to the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Va., starting in 1955. Chief among the photographers represented in the collection was British émigré Edwin Levick, who with his assistants took pictures of many New York scenes in the early 1900s but seemed to have a special fondness for the waterfront. As Thomas Moore, the senior curator of photography at the Mariners' Museum, observes in his preface, 'Levick's images capture the energy of a confident nation unflinchingly marching into a new and promising century.' Not simply a distillation of Waterfront, Lopate's introductory essay, 'The Port of New York in Its Heyday,' pays ample tribute to Levick and the other photographers who recorded a now-vanished world a century ago." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

A lively read and a visual treat. (Max Kozloff, author of New York: Capital of Photography)

A small cadre of commercial photographers documents the dynamic social, economic, and political forces in the heyday of New York's wharves, waterways, and waterfront markets, capturing for the ages the gritty and sometimes glamorous life of the docks and their environs.

Edwin Levick (1869-1929) worked as a commercial photographer in New York for forty years. Phillip Lopate, the author of three critically acclaimed essay collections, two novels, and numerous other works, is Adams Chair and professor of English at Hofstra University.