Join us for an exclusive tour of the Seaport Museum’s latest exhibition, Maritime City, which highlights how New York City, as we know it today, arose from the sea. Throughout the extensive three-floor exhibition, 540 carefully selected objects from the collections and archives of the Seaport Museum are on view to underscore how the city’s identity as a global capital of culture and finance is rooted in its origins as a seaport.
 

As you walk through the exhibition, you will discover how the waterways, people, and industries of the Greater New York area—including Greenwich Village Hudson River waterfront—led to the creation of a truly diverse city. By sharing the material culture of New York and its people, the objects on display highlight stories of the working class people employed by ships, shipping lines, and other local industries throughout history, as well as the emigrant workers and immigrant families that came through the port as their first stop in America.
 

For four centuries, the port of New York has connected people to the world through the exchange of goods, ideas, languages, and cultures. Indigenous Lenape people were the first stewards of the waterways, creating trade routes connecting Manahatta to the sea. In the 17th century, European colonists, enslaved Africans, and migrants built on this foundation to give birth to a restless and ambitious city. Later waves of immigration would grow a world capital formed by its oceanic links to the world.