This program is part of Village Preservation’s Semiquincentennial series of programs celebrating our Revolutionary Village. Revolutionary Village not only celebrates the founding of our country, but the exceptional role our neighborhoods played in its development and the realization of its ideals over the last 250 years and beyond.

Join Village Preservation’s Director of Programs as we celebrate the legacy of one of our nation’s greatest engineers, Robert Fulton. We’ll explore the Greenwich Village’s Hudson River waterfront and the East Village’s East River waterfront and the pivotal role they played in shaping New York City and our country at large, from the earliest days of the American Revolution to the mid-20th century. These critical shorelines evolved from a strategic Revolutionary War landscape into one of the most dynamic engines of commerce, industry, and invention in the United States.

During the Revolutionary era, the East River witnessed the landing of British forces as they captured New York. In the decades that followed, this same stretch of river became central to the young nation’s economic expansion, as piers, shipyards, and markets transformed the area into a bustling maritime corridor.

As the 19th century progressed, the Hudson River became America’s front door and fostered incredible advances in steam navigation and maritime engineering, such as Robert Fulton’s steamboat Clermont. It was also the site of new systems of food distribution, transportation, and industrial production that reshaped daily life in New York and beyond. We will also look at the people who lived and worked along the waterfront: dockworkers, inventors, merchants, immigrants, and reformers whose labor and ideas helped fuel the city’s rise as a global capital.

William Roka is the Director of Programs at Village Preservation. He is also an independent historian and writer. His research has focused on the history of travel and ocean liners in the early 20th century, and he has presented at conferences in the United Kingdom, Argentina, Australia, and across the United States.