The lesser-known birthplace of New York poised to become Manhattan's coolest corner

A boundary marked on the pavement near Pearl Street shows the point at which the waters of the East River lapped at lower Manhattan when the first Europeans arrived there. Today, beyond the line to the south and east, out towards Brooklyn, some of the city’s last remaining cobbled streets, bordered by unwieldy brick buildings, are set on land that was previously the ripple of gentle harbour tides.

The South Street Seaport is the birthplace of New York. The seed of the Big Apple grew from this quiet corner just below the Lower East Side, as the bounty of a booming clipper trade funnelled through its ports, spawning offices, warehouses and printing works to document its business. That the shimmering facade of the financial district looms over these 11 blocks of unruly tenements is no coincidence. Wall Street, the banking capital of the world, is where it is today because of its proximity to the once-global commerce of the old seaport.

“Part of this city’s success is down to its determination to strive forward,” says Jonathan Boulware, director of the South Street Seaport Museum. “Championing preservation of the past in that environment is very challenging.”

But Boulware, an actual sea captain, has succeeded. The South Street Seaport is, he says, the city’s preservation pin-up, one of the few places in Manhattan harbouring a true sense of a time before subways and skyscrapers. It’s not an easy existence, crammed in awkwardly between the financial district and the constant noise of the FDR overpass, but it’s an important one.

This summer, Pier 17, a $425 million (￡326 million) retail, culture and culinary centre that replaces a tired department store, opens in earnest, announcing itself with rooftop concerts featuring the likes of the Kings of Leon and Diana Ross.

The development is not limited to the waterfront, creeping inland and ingratiating itself across the Seaport District, helping to rejuvenate a neighbourhood that bore the brunt of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The old East River is not the only water line scarred into South Street.

The Seaport, which was awarded $10.4 million by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help recover from Sandy, is now home to Manhattan’s first iPic cinema, a swanky “premier” movie house, the only US location of designer Carla Sozzani’s concept store 10 Corso Como, and Cipriani’s first New York hotel, the potently chic Mr C Seaport. The creeking Tin Building, historic home to the Fulton Fish Market since its inception in 1835 until its departure to a new location in the Bronx in 2005, will soon be a food hall curated by Jean-Georges.

It may seem jarring for a neighbourhood that once teemed as much with grubby industry as it did with drunken sailors, brawling and brothels to receive a corporate-cum-hipster makeover, but it’s a necessity to keep visitors – and locals – coming back to its clumsy, uneven streets.

The charm still oozes, though. The window heads of Schermerhorn Row, built in 1811 and now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, remain slipped from their designed setting and now sit skewiff, a result of over-enthusiasm in starting – and finishing – construction before the land reclaimed from the river had time to set. Bowne and Co Stationers, founded in 1775 and New York’s longest running business under the same name, still peddles its trade on Water Street, printing in small batches the same way it did throughout the 19th century. Away from the centre of the redevelopment, less polished streets still allow fleeting glimpses of the bewitching Brooklyn Bridge, as it would have done 200 years ago.

Parched from the early June heat, I sought refreshment at Jack’s Stir Brew on Front Street. If coffee ever provided evidence of a neighbourhood’s direction, it was here. The customer ahead of me communicated a drinks order to the barista in a language that barely seemed human, let alone English. I bought a white Americano and sat by the window. On the wall next to me was framed a tattered and faded order form from the South Street Seaport Corporation: 60 lobsters, two tubs of scallops and another 30 lobsters.

Across the road from the coffee shop, mounted on a newer building that appeared to be propping up its older neighbour, was a plaque recalling a passage about the Seaport from Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick: “Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall northward. What do you see? Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks.”

Such ocean reveries focused on the activities of the humble clipper, the trade of which Boulware says was like the 19th-century version of the Dot Com boom. The full-rigger Wavertree, sat at the waterfront beyond the FDR, is South Street’s homage to its origins.

Built in 1885 in Southampton, the Wavertree is one of the last wrought iron sailing ships. Boulware says it would have been unremarkable in its day, finished towards the end of the era of sail, but today is a rare nod to New York’s maritime past.

He can barely conceal his pride when he speaks of its journey, via four trips around the globe, carrying coal, timber and kerosene, and a short career as a floating warehouse in South America, to the Seaport. But it is Pioneer, an 1885 schooner that completes daily sightseeing trips around the harbour, that the captain most admires. “It’s the only way to get out and see the harbour,” he says.

Cristina Carlson, vice president of communications for the Howard Hughes Corporation, may have different motivations, but is as enthused as Boulware in creating “a new landmark for the city”. Some feel unsettled by a real estate company having such a large hand in subtle historical preservation, but Boulware appears to see the positives in revitalising the neighbourhood in such a way that will see the South Street Seaport be less of a museum district, and more a living, breathing heritage postcode.

The essentials

The South Street Seaport Museum (southstreetseaportmuseum.org) is open Wednesday to Sunday (adults $12/￡9.25 and children $6). A trip on Pioneer costs $32 for an adult and $28 for a child. Book in advance.

Pier 17 is now open (pier17ny.com). Concerts run through August, September and October.

Virgin Atlantic (0844 2092 770; virginatlantic.com) flies up to six times daily from Heathrow to New York with fares from ￡321 return.

Further information can be found at nycgo.com. For ideas on where to stay, see our guide to the best hotels in Manhattan.