The Lost Waterfront: The Decline and Rebirth of Manhattan’s Western Shore: A Slide Lecture with Shelley Seccombe

Shelley Seccombe’s photographs show it like it was—a dilapidated waterfront where once-handsome structures collapsed and burned, commerce dwindled to a trickle, and Villagers adapted the empty spaces for recreation. Beginning in 1972 and continuing to the present, Shelley recorded the metamorphosis of this segment of the river into the current Hudson River Park. Ms. Seccombe collected photographs from this long-term series, shown at the South Street Seaport Museum in 2006, into the art book Lost Waterfront: the Decline and Rebirth of Manhattan’s Western Shore. During this lecture, Ms. Seccombe will talk about her experience cataloging the changes that took place on Greenwich Village’s waterfront.