March 10, 2025 • 15 mins
Located in the heart of Manhattan's historic Seaport District, the South Street Seaport Museum preserves and interprets the history of New York as a great port city. The exhibition Maritime City, in the Museum’s newly restored and renovated historic 1868 A.A. Thomson & Co. building at 213 Water Street, highlights how New York City, as we know it today, arose from the sea. Our guest is Museum President and CEO, Captain Jonathan Boulware. For more, visit southstreetseaportmuseum.org.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Get Connected with Nina del Rio, a weekly
conversation about fitness, health and happenings in our community on
one oh six point seven Light FM.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Thanks for listening to Get Connected. The South Street Seaport Museum,
located in the heart of the historic Seaport District, preserves
and interprets the history of New York as a great
port city, and tickets are now on sale for Maritimes City.
The exhibition housed in the museum's newly restored and renovated
historic eighteen sixty eight AA Thompson and Co. Building at
(00:32):
two thirteen Water Street, opening this week Maritime City. Opening
this week. Our guest is the museum's president and CEO,
Captain Jonathan Boulware. Thank you for being on the show.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Thank you for having me, Nina.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Absolutely you can find out more about the exhibit and
the museum at South Streetseportmuseum dot org. So Jonathan Bolware
Museum opens Maritime City this week. It's an exhibition that
showcases five hundred and forty curated objects from the museum's
vast collections. What story does this exhibition tell? Well?
Speaker 3 (01:05):
To answer that question, they have to take a step
back first and say really, because it's an outflow of
the story we tell here at the Museum, which has
changed over our fifty seven year history. But the core
piece of it is the premise that New York arose
from the sea. Practically, financially, culturally. Much of what we
understand about the City that Never sleeps has its origins
(01:27):
in its connections to the rest of the world via
the sea. And so that's true of the city, it's
true of the city's people. Ross Perlin's recent book that
revealed that eight hundred languages and dialects are spoken here
in the city, primarily in Queens we acknowledge, but nonetheless
here in New York City. And why because we were
connected via the sea to the rest of the world.
And so we think about this global city that belongs
(01:49):
not entirely to the United States, one that has an
international identity. And so this show Maritime City leans very
directly into that. It is our first really substantial show,
our fact driven show, since Hurricane Sandy, and in a
building that has been hardened against sandy, so a lot
of things happening here at once. It is a sort
of grand reopening of the museum from an object driven standpoint,
(02:12):
and so the Maritime City show is that some of
the finest artifacts in our collection but selected for their
ability to participate in that narrative of New York's long
term sort of from conception through to present day relationship
with the water.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
It's a really interesting point. People don't often think of
us as a city of water, although we are bound
by it. It goes back to the origins of the city.
I know, as you like to say at the museum,
it's not that the seaport is next to the financial district.
The financial district is next to the seaport. That's why
it exists downtown, because that's where the city began. Again,
Maritime City features five hundred and forty objects from the
(02:49):
museum's collection, which is over eighty thousand items. That's right,
historical artifacts, archival records, many not previously seen by the public.
Can you talk about that breath and depth of history
that the museum preserves.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Yeah, I mean here again, I'll start at the high
altitude and say that in interception, our first collection was
in the physical world. It was ships and piers and buildings,
which I think is interesting for New Yorkers in particular
to think about is that in a city that has
always had a has been typified by ambition, which again
I would connect back to the maritime trade. But that
(03:23):
ambition led early Manhattanites to build outward into the river.
So even as I'm sitting here in my office speaking
with you, i am on what is landfill from the
early nineteenth century, earlate eighteenth century, it was once the
East River, and long before we built up into the sky,
we built out and that ambition led to a city
(03:44):
that has a certain restlessness to it. But when and
that restlesses is also it vests itself in rais and
renew There's a lot of instances in the city in
which buildings were knocked down and new things were built,
and then that was knocked down and something new built
after that. That is inseparable from the city's characteristic of ambition.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Right.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
So, the idea that the South Street Seaport as the
last cohesive vestige of the port, the commercial port of
Old New York, is preserved, is wildly improbable, and it
was made possible by in part the changing sentiment around
preservation in the nineteen sixties, particularly post destruction of Pennsylvania Station.
(04:26):
So top level before we even get into the breadth
of the collection of artifacts. We're talking about a collection
of buildings, of ships, of peers, of cobblestone streets that
typify the sort of Dutch come English New York and
America story of the city.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
The South Street Seaport Museum debuts Maritime City, a new
exhibition at their building at two thirteen Water Street this week.
Tickets are on sale now. The exhibition opened on Wednesday.
You can find out more at South Streetseportmuseum dot org.
Our guest is the Museum's president and CEO, Captain Jonathan Bolwaar.
You're listening to Get Connected on one O six point
seven light FM. I'm Mina del Rio And as we
(05:05):
talk about the architecture and the landscape down in the Seaport,
what's your next thought that how does this connect to
the exhibition? Now?
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Yeah, So I'm sitting right now in a building that's
you know, most people won't know it as this, but
it's the AA Low Building. It's on the backside of
Skirmerhorn Row. And these names Skirmlhorn and Low and adjacent
to me Phelps are the names of early financial New York.
They would be succeeded later by Chase and Morgan and Lehman,
and these names that sort of are synonymous with the
growth of the financial infrastructure that would become Wall Street,
(05:36):
and so we're again operating within historic fabric. Over the years,
the museum has also collected as a collecting institution about
twenty eight thousand physical artifacts and further sixty thousand, sixty
five thousand pieces of ephemera printed material. And the breadth
of this collection is extremely wide, and that includes the
(05:59):
thing that you would expect maritime museum to collect, things
that are like ship parts and paintings of ships and
of water. But they're also of the physical infrastructure of
the early port that includes architectural elements. It includes art,
fine art as well as more folk art traditions. So
what were sailors making or what were they collecting as
(06:20):
they were voyaging around the world, not necessarily in exploratory rules,
but in roles of simple commerce. In effect, this connection
that I've been describing of the world via the water
was primarily through two main vehicles as it pertained to humans.
One was the sailors, the people, the mariners, the captains
and the crew of the ships. Whether it was sail
(06:41):
or steam that were going from here to Albany, or
here to Boston, or here to Shanghai. Whatever those voyages were,
they were carrying with them the things that they brought
from their last praise and trading them and gathering things
and bringing them home. And so we have the sort
of incidental collections that come from people who were actually
working on the sea. And then of course we have
(07:03):
the broader scale things that are imports and things that
are part of you know, by the nineteenth century, certainly
even eighteenth century New York was becoming the emporium to America,
and it was bringing in all of the things that
were a la mode at the time, tea from China
and porcelain bowls from China, and on and on these
lists of things, and again the folk art kinds of things, sailors, valentines,
(07:25):
and scrimshaw and bone art, and the plastic of the
nineteenth century, which was whalebone and whale oil, you know,
for umbrella staves and corset frames and napkin rings and
pie crimpers, and so the collection is that, and it
is also broadly ephemera of the simple life in the
water's edge of New York City at the time, bills
(07:46):
of lading and receipts and advertisements for ships that made
the fastest passage to San Francisco or whatever it was.
It's mind bogglingly dense and incredibly so fortunate that we
get to be able to bring undred and fifties artifacts,
five hundred and forty of these artifacts.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Fourth, can you talk a little bit, maybe just a
couple of ones that really typify or maybe just even
favorite things, because there's so many in this exhibition, But
are you talking about also a specific time period? Right?
Like what period are we talking about? We're talking about
like right before the city became incorporated as the five
boroughs and all those things. And how far forward in
time do we get?
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Yeah, in the show, there are it's a pretty broad
time span, and it doesn't actually have a beginning or
end it. These are selected from the collection without respect
to time, but with a sort of deference to the
narrative of New York as a maritime city. You asked about.
And I love the question of favorite artifacts, because of
course I have some, and I kind of picked different
ones each time. But I'll give you two examples right now.
(08:45):
One of them is actually a pair of artifacts. On
the first floor, we have a painting of the Asian
Port of Canton, and it is it is the moment
when Canton opened to the west, and it's a fairly
simple little painting with six flagpoles, and on those six
flagpoles are the six early trading partners that were we're
(09:07):
trading with Kanton, one of which was a young United States.
On the third floor there is a beautiful large red
China bowl, a porcelain bowl, and that is about eighteen twenty,
so again mentioning where we are in time and place.
Opposite side of the same block where I'm sitting right
now is Skermahorn Row, a warehouse from the very early
nineteenth century and arguably the most important historic warehouse to
(09:29):
the story of the Port of New York as we're
describing it. And then we've got this China bowl. So
the building was completed in eighteen twelve, the bowl was
imported in eighteen twenty, so just eight years apart, and
the China trade was really busy on the East River.
So my fanciful imagination is that that China bowl landed
right here at peer sixteen. The museum's very peer and
(09:49):
was carried ashore and placed into skirmahorn row, and then
it went out into the world and did whatever it
did in private collection and whatever. And many many years later,
two hundred years later, now we are showing that in
the place where it first came as short. Now this
may not be true, but it does illuminate a story
where you've got this sort of pictorial image of a
(10:10):
port opening and introducing New York and Canton to each other,
and at the same time a piece of bowl that
would have been part of that trade.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
There's something about that too, if you think about in
my knowledge about this time period, and the ship travel
was minimal, but you know, it's you're on this boat
for two years, going out on these voyages. The luck
of someone even bringing these things back. You see them
in museums and it seems like it's just there. But
the luck, the fortunance of being able to have these
things preserved and bring it back, and it made it
(10:43):
all the way from then to hear and pretty exciting.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Actually, yeah, and I'll riff on that for just a
minute too. I think, like you know, I mentioned landfill earlier.
The landfill here is full of the things that didn't
make it. Yeah, right, the imported Chinese teacups that broke
and were put into the and ended up as landfill.
With those come up in archaeological digs that have to
do with you know, construction project and they're digging for
(11:07):
new footings required. Archaeology will reveal that those bowls that
didn't make it ended up, you know, in a much
more undignified end.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
They built the city, indeed, they did it.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
And so my second artifact is it is sort of
the it's the largest physical thing in the show, probably
in competition for that for our entire collection. It is
a twenty two foot builder's model of the ship Queen
Mary that was commissioned by the Quneard line when Queen
Mary was built. And of course many New Yorkers will know,
and I mean, I would say even among the listenerships,
(11:42):
some of you are saying to yourselves, oh, you know,
my parents or my grandparents came to America on the
Queen Mary. Very very common story wartime service bring gis
back from the from the European theater. But this builder's
model is exactly contemporaneous with the ship Queen Mary, and
Queen Mary is probably the most. It's an overused word,
but I would say iconic liners to the story of
(12:04):
New York City. And she was built deliberately, as was
her sister, Queen Elizabeth, for the New York service back
and forth from the UK to here. And those trips
were immigrants making a start of a new life. They
were people on holiday, and her cummings and goings were
breathlessly covered in the media every time she came. She
was a darling of New York. And so we have
(12:24):
this model, which you know, you've seen ship models. Everyone's
seen ship models. This one's twenty two feet long and
made of a single white mahogany log. It is a
piece of just absolutely beautiful art in addition to being
a potent demonstration of this sort of connection of New
York to the rest of the world.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Let's talk about in the last couple of minutes, Nuts
and both of the exhibits, so ages who it's appropriate for,
the cost, Is it accessible those things?
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Yeah, I mean, I would say, and I'm a nerd,
but I would say it is absolutely appealing to everyone.
I think, you know, for the maritime history buff there's
ample things to dig deep in there, but even people
who have even the vegus of New York curiosities, or
who appreciate absolutely beautiful things, absolutely stunningly displayed. We have
all of that to offer. We have been you know,
(13:11):
in the previews and as we've been bringing in kind
of friends of the museum and getting acclimated to using
the building in preparation for this week's opening, I've just
been so happy at how the broad diversity of people
who represent our visitorship as well. But everybody comes in
here and finds a thing that they're interested in, whether
they've got a previous interest in the sea, or in shipping,
or in or any of these topics or not. The
(13:32):
building is accessible completely and we are Tickets are available
for sale online. We do have a pay what you
wish option. Our ticket price is eighteen dollars, but we
have a pay what you wish option available only in
person for people who need to take advantage of that.
But our core goal here is to welcome New York
(13:52):
into something that really belongs to you, right, it belongs
to you, New York. This show, this is for you,
and yes it'll be for visitors as well. But I'm
really happy to be bringing kind of the physical culture
of some of the early parts of New York that
many people here in New York have not had the
chance to see. And I'm also really happy that the
delight that we're already getting from the people that we've
had see the show.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
And this is a lovely building, a lovely campus. There's
the Bound and Coast Stationers right there too, which I'm
a big fan of. I think it's worth people just
checking out to see what is going on at the
museum in general. Tell us more about what else is
down there.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Yeah, as I mentioned, we're in the seaport and we
have a campus like setup here, so that's the new
show is in the Thompson Building, which is a two
thirteen Water Street. Right next door is the nineteenth century
letterpress printing office bound in Company Stations. But we're also
in Scirmelhorn Row at twelve Fulton Street with introductory galleries
and on Peer sixteen. And as many people here in
New York know, the fleet of historic ships is our
(14:48):
biggest billboard, it's our biggest attraction. But two of our
vessels actually sail from Memorial Day through into October, a
tugboat and a schooner. So we're bringing history to life
by operating muscles from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
and we're definitely unique in New York in that respect.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
The exhibition opens this week Maritime City, South Street Sport
Museum dot org. You can find tickets online and our
guest has been Jonathan Bulware, the Museum's president and CEO.
Thank you for being on Get Connected.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
Delightful to be with you. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
This has been Get Connected with Nina del Rio on
one oh six point seven Lightfm. The views and opinions
of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views of
the station. If you missed any part of our show
or want to share it, visit our website for downloads
and podcasts at one oh six to seven lightfm dot com.
Thanks for listening.
Welcome to Get Connected with Nina del Rio, a weekly
conversation about fitness, health and happenings in our community on
one oh six point seven Light FM.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Thanks for listening to Get Connected. The South Street Seaport Museum,
located in the heart of the historic Seaport District, preserves
and interprets the history of New York as a great
port city, and tickets are now on sale for Maritimes City.
The exhibition housed in the museum's newly restored and renovated
historic eighteen sixty eight AA Thompson and Co. Building at
(00:32):
two thirteen Water Street, opening this week Maritime City. Opening
this week. Our guest is the museum's president and CEO,
Captain Jonathan Boulware. Thank you for being on the show.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Thank you for having me, Nina.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Absolutely you can find out more about the exhibit and
the museum at South Streetseportmuseum dot org. So Jonathan Bolware
Museum opens Maritime City this week. It's an exhibition that
showcases five hundred and forty curated objects from the museum's
vast collections. What story does this exhibition tell? Well?
Speaker 3 (01:05):
To answer that question, they have to take a step
back first and say really, because it's an outflow of
the story we tell here at the Museum, which has
changed over our fifty seven year history. But the core
piece of it is the premise that New York arose
from the sea. Practically, financially, culturally. Much of what we
understand about the City that Never sleeps has its origins
(01:27):
in its connections to the rest of the world via
the sea. And so that's true of the city, it's
true of the city's people. Ross Perlin's recent book that
revealed that eight hundred languages and dialects are spoken here
in the city, primarily in Queens we acknowledge, but nonetheless
here in New York City. And why because we were
connected via the sea to the rest of the world.
And so we think about this global city that belongs
(01:49):
not entirely to the United States, one that has an
international identity. And so this show Maritime City leans very
directly into that. It is our first really substantial show,
our fact driven show, since Hurricane Sandy, and in a
building that has been hardened against sandy, so a lot
of things happening here at once. It is a sort
of grand reopening of the museum from an object driven standpoint,
(02:12):
and so the Maritime City show is that some of
the finest artifacts in our collection but selected for their
ability to participate in that narrative of New York's long
term sort of from conception through to present day relationship
with the water.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
It's a really interesting point. People don't often think of
us as a city of water, although we are bound
by it. It goes back to the origins of the city.
I know, as you like to say at the museum,
it's not that the seaport is next to the financial district.
The financial district is next to the seaport. That's why
it exists downtown, because that's where the city began. Again,
Maritime City features five hundred and forty objects from the
(02:49):
museum's collection, which is over eighty thousand items. That's right,
historical artifacts, archival records, many not previously seen by the public.
Can you talk about that breath and depth of history
that the museum preserves.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Yeah, I mean here again, I'll start at the high
altitude and say that in interception, our first collection was
in the physical world. It was ships and piers and buildings,
which I think is interesting for New Yorkers in particular
to think about is that in a city that has
always had a has been typified by ambition, which again
I would connect back to the maritime trade. But that
(03:23):
ambition led early Manhattanites to build outward into the river.
So even as I'm sitting here in my office speaking
with you, i am on what is landfill from the
early nineteenth century, earlate eighteenth century, it was once the
East River, and long before we built up into the sky,
we built out and that ambition led to a city
(03:44):
that has a certain restlessness to it. But when and
that restlesses is also it vests itself in rais and
renew There's a lot of instances in the city in
which buildings were knocked down and new things were built,
and then that was knocked down and something new built
after that. That is inseparable from the city's characteristic of ambition.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Right.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
So, the idea that the South Street Seaport as the
last cohesive vestige of the port, the commercial port of
Old New York, is preserved, is wildly improbable, and it
was made possible by in part the changing sentiment around
preservation in the nineteen sixties, particularly post destruction of Pennsylvania Station.
(04:26):
So top level before we even get into the breadth
of the collection of artifacts. We're talking about a collection
of buildings, of ships, of peers, of cobblestone streets that
typify the sort of Dutch come English New York and
America story of the city.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
The South Street Seaport Museum debuts Maritime City, a new
exhibition at their building at two thirteen Water Street this week.
Tickets are on sale now. The exhibition opened on Wednesday.
You can find out more at South Streetseportmuseum dot org.
Our guest is the Museum's president and CEO, Captain Jonathan Bolwaar.
You're listening to Get Connected on one O six point
seven light FM. I'm Mina del Rio And as we
(05:05):
talk about the architecture and the landscape down in the Seaport,
what's your next thought that how does this connect to
the exhibition? Now?
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Yeah, So I'm sitting right now in a building that's
you know, most people won't know it as this, but
it's the AA Low Building. It's on the backside of
Skirmerhorn Row. And these names Skirmlhorn and Low and adjacent
to me Phelps are the names of early financial New York.
They would be succeeded later by Chase and Morgan and Lehman,
and these names that sort of are synonymous with the
growth of the financial infrastructure that would become Wall Street,
(05:36):
and so we're again operating within historic fabric. Over the years,
the museum has also collected as a collecting institution about
twenty eight thousand physical artifacts and further sixty thousand, sixty
five thousand pieces of ephemera printed material. And the breadth
of this collection is extremely wide, and that includes the
(05:59):
thing that you would expect maritime museum to collect, things
that are like ship parts and paintings of ships and
of water. But they're also of the physical infrastructure of
the early port that includes architectural elements. It includes art,
fine art as well as more folk art traditions. So
what were sailors making or what were they collecting as
(06:20):
they were voyaging around the world, not necessarily in exploratory rules,
but in roles of simple commerce. In effect, this connection
that I've been describing of the world via the water
was primarily through two main vehicles as it pertained to humans.
One was the sailors, the people, the mariners, the captains
and the crew of the ships. Whether it was sail
(06:41):
or steam that were going from here to Albany, or
here to Boston, or here to Shanghai. Whatever those voyages were,
they were carrying with them the things that they brought
from their last praise and trading them and gathering things
and bringing them home. And so we have the sort
of incidental collections that come from people who were actually
working on the sea. And then of course we have
(07:03):
the broader scale things that are imports and things that
are part of you know, by the nineteenth century, certainly
even eighteenth century New York was becoming the emporium to America,
and it was bringing in all of the things that
were a la mode at the time, tea from China
and porcelain bowls from China, and on and on these
lists of things, and again the folk art kinds of things, sailors, valentines,
(07:25):
and scrimshaw and bone art, and the plastic of the
nineteenth century, which was whalebone and whale oil, you know,
for umbrella staves and corset frames and napkin rings and
pie crimpers, and so the collection is that, and it
is also broadly ephemera of the simple life in the
water's edge of New York City at the time, bills
(07:46):
of lading and receipts and advertisements for ships that made
the fastest passage to San Francisco or whatever it was.
It's mind bogglingly dense and incredibly so fortunate that we
get to be able to bring undred and fifties artifacts,
five hundred and forty of these artifacts.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Fourth, can you talk a little bit, maybe just a
couple of ones that really typify or maybe just even
favorite things, because there's so many in this exhibition, But
are you talking about also a specific time period? Right?
Like what period are we talking about? We're talking about
like right before the city became incorporated as the five
boroughs and all those things. And how far forward in
time do we get?
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Yeah, in the show, there are it's a pretty broad
time span, and it doesn't actually have a beginning or
end it. These are selected from the collection without respect
to time, but with a sort of deference to the
narrative of New York as a maritime city. You asked about.
And I love the question of favorite artifacts, because of
course I have some, and I kind of picked different
ones each time. But I'll give you two examples right now.
(08:45):
One of them is actually a pair of artifacts. On
the first floor, we have a painting of the Asian
Port of Canton, and it is it is the moment
when Canton opened to the west, and it's a fairly
simple little painting with six flagpoles, and on those six
flagpoles are the six early trading partners that were we're
(09:07):
trading with Kanton, one of which was a young United States.
On the third floor there is a beautiful large red
China bowl, a porcelain bowl, and that is about eighteen twenty,
so again mentioning where we are in time and place.
Opposite side of the same block where I'm sitting right
now is Skermahorn Row, a warehouse from the very early
nineteenth century and arguably the most important historic warehouse to
(09:29):
the story of the Port of New York as we're
describing it. And then we've got this China bowl. So
the building was completed in eighteen twelve, the bowl was
imported in eighteen twenty, so just eight years apart, and
the China trade was really busy on the East River.
So my fanciful imagination is that that China bowl landed
right here at peer sixteen. The museum's very peer and
(09:49):
was carried ashore and placed into skirmahorn row, and then
it went out into the world and did whatever it
did in private collection and whatever. And many many years later,
two hundred years later, now we are showing that in
the place where it first came as short. Now this
may not be true, but it does illuminate a story
where you've got this sort of pictorial image of a
(10:10):
port opening and introducing New York and Canton to each other,
and at the same time a piece of bowl that
would have been part of that trade.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
There's something about that too, if you think about in
my knowledge about this time period, and the ship travel
was minimal, but you know, it's you're on this boat
for two years, going out on these voyages. The luck
of someone even bringing these things back. You see them
in museums and it seems like it's just there. But
the luck, the fortunance of being able to have these
things preserved and bring it back, and it made it
(10:43):
all the way from then to hear and pretty exciting.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Actually, yeah, and I'll riff on that for just a
minute too. I think, like you know, I mentioned landfill earlier.
The landfill here is full of the things that didn't
make it. Yeah, right, the imported Chinese teacups that broke
and were put into the and ended up as landfill.
With those come up in archaeological digs that have to
do with you know, construction project and they're digging for
(11:07):
new footings required. Archaeology will reveal that those bowls that
didn't make it ended up, you know, in a much
more undignified end.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
They built the city, indeed, they did it.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
And so my second artifact is it is sort of
the it's the largest physical thing in the show, probably
in competition for that for our entire collection. It is
a twenty two foot builder's model of the ship Queen
Mary that was commissioned by the Quneard line when Queen
Mary was built. And of course many New Yorkers will know,
and I mean, I would say even among the listenerships,
(11:42):
some of you are saying to yourselves, oh, you know,
my parents or my grandparents came to America on the
Queen Mary. Very very common story wartime service bring gis
back from the from the European theater. But this builder's
model is exactly contemporaneous with the ship Queen Mary, and
Queen Mary is probably the most. It's an overused word,
but I would say iconic liners to the story of
(12:04):
New York City. And she was built deliberately, as was
her sister, Queen Elizabeth, for the New York service back
and forth from the UK to here. And those trips
were immigrants making a start of a new life. They
were people on holiday, and her cummings and goings were
breathlessly covered in the media every time she came. She
was a darling of New York. And so we have
(12:24):
this model, which you know, you've seen ship models. Everyone's
seen ship models. This one's twenty two feet long and
made of a single white mahogany log. It is a
piece of just absolutely beautiful art in addition to being
a potent demonstration of this sort of connection of New
York to the rest of the world.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Let's talk about in the last couple of minutes, Nuts
and both of the exhibits, so ages who it's appropriate for,
the cost, Is it accessible those things?
Speaker 3 (12:50):
Yeah, I mean, I would say, and I'm a nerd,
but I would say it is absolutely appealing to everyone.
I think, you know, for the maritime history buff there's
ample things to dig deep in there, but even people
who have even the vegus of New York curiosities, or
who appreciate absolutely beautiful things, absolutely stunningly displayed. We have
all of that to offer. We have been you know,
(13:11):
in the previews and as we've been bringing in kind
of friends of the museum and getting acclimated to using
the building in preparation for this week's opening, I've just
been so happy at how the broad diversity of people
who represent our visitorship as well. But everybody comes in
here and finds a thing that they're interested in, whether
they've got a previous interest in the sea, or in shipping,
or in or any of these topics or not. The
(13:32):
building is accessible completely and we are Tickets are available
for sale online. We do have a pay what you
wish option. Our ticket price is eighteen dollars, but we
have a pay what you wish option available only in
person for people who need to take advantage of that.
But our core goal here is to welcome New York
(13:52):
into something that really belongs to you, right, it belongs
to you, New York. This show, this is for you,
and yes it'll be for visitors as well. But I'm
really happy to be bringing kind of the physical culture
of some of the early parts of New York that
many people here in New York have not had the
chance to see. And I'm also really happy that the
delight that we're already getting from the people that we've
had see the show.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
And this is a lovely building, a lovely campus. There's
the Bound and Coast Stationers right there too, which I'm
a big fan of. I think it's worth people just
checking out to see what is going on at the
museum in general. Tell us more about what else is
down there.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Yeah, as I mentioned, we're in the seaport and we
have a campus like setup here, so that's the new
show is in the Thompson Building, which is a two
thirteen Water Street. Right next door is the nineteenth century
letterpress printing office bound in Company Stations. But we're also
in Scirmelhorn Row at twelve Fulton Street with introductory galleries
and on Peer sixteen. And as many people here in
New York know, the fleet of historic ships is our
(14:48):
biggest billboard, it's our biggest attraction. But two of our
vessels actually sail from Memorial Day through into October, a
tugboat and a schooner. So we're bringing history to life
by operating muscles from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
and we're definitely unique in New York in that respect.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
The exhibition opens this week Maritime City, South Street Sport
Museum dot org. You can find tickets online and our
guest has been Jonathan Bulware, the Museum's president and CEO.
Thank you for being on Get Connected.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
Delightful to be with you. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
This has been Get Connected with Nina del Rio on
one oh six point seven Lightfm. The views and opinions
of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views of
the station. If you missed any part of our show
or want to share it, visit our website for downloads
and podcasts at one oh six to seven lightfm dot com.
Thanks for listening.
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