York is to measure in its facilities up to the size of its commerce this administration ought not to be allowed to close without the inception of the construction of that great facility for the port.

A review of the physical undertakings of the dock department would not be complete if I did not at least allude to the construction of the thousand-foot piers in the Forty-sixth street region. While that was an undertaking not initiated during this administration, the construction work will be carried on under this administration. Back in 1912, I think it was, we began to consider this matter, when we found that the War Department was very reluctant to consent even to a temporary extension of the pierhead line in the Hudson River. We found that with a legal right only to a 900-foot pier in the Chelsea district we already had ships coming into the harbor which could not be docked at those piers without projecting out into the river. After a great deal of negotiation we came to an agreement with the Secretary of War that the War Department would consent to a temporary extension of the pier-head line, provided that the city of New York would agree to deal with this problem once and for all and would provide at some other point in the harbor piers long enough to accommodate the longest transatlantic liners coming to the port or reasonably to be expected. We finally selected the Forty-sixth street district. The city proceeded to acquire the land. Title has now been vested. We proceeded to develop the physical plans for the construction of the piers. These have now been completed. To-day the coffer dam is complete, and the work of pumping behind the coffer dam has been begun. We are well under way toward the construction of the first of those great piers. The piers will be 1050 feet in length and will be long enough to accommodate any ship either now afloat or projected, or, according to the best naval experts, reasonably to be expected in the port of New York during the next twenty or thirty years. The city plans the construction of three or four docks of 1050 feet in length in that district, and when that work has been carried to completion I believe that the city will have solved for good the problem of facilities for the greatest transatlantic liners that come into the port.

These are the principal constructive works that the city has

undertaken for the development of its marine and rail terminal facilities. In connection with these facilities we are going to have to lay out and construct terminal markets. We tried this year to procure from the legislature the machinery for administering our present markets and for developing a real market plan for the city of New York. We asked the legislature to enact a bill creating a department of markets and concentrating in that department jurisdiction over all existing markets, which is now scattered among the finance department and the borough presidents, and we asked to have that department vested with the power to develop and present to the board of estimate a comprehensive market plan. That market plan must be developed in connection with the plans for terminals and for the rail facilities and the marine facilities of the city. The legislature, however, following a course which it seemed to have established for itself this year, disregarded the recommendations of the government of the city, and at the instance of the private interests opposed to the establishment of municipal markets of any kind, killed that bill. We are now compelled to carry on the administration of our public markets with the divided jurisdiction of to-day-maintenance and construction being in the borough presidents, financial and rate control being with the comptroller. No one is satisfied with the present arrangement. The comptroller does not want the jurisdiction he has; the borough presidents do not care for and do not need the jurisdiction that they have. Neither is effective, but we must go on the best we can under the existing plan, developing our scheme through the market committee of the board of estimate, constructing through the offices of the borough presidents and controlling through the finance department.

I believe that the city of New York will ultimately establish a series of wholesale municipal terminal markets, and through their establishment will cheapen the cost of the introduction of food products into the city of New York and their distribution to the consumers. We have not yet come to the development of the details of that plan, but it will have to be laid down in connection with and closely coordinated with the plans for the development of the terminals of the port.

These are our plans and the work that we have under way.

Its further extension will depend largely on the financial resources which we shall be able to command during the remaining years of this administration. I feel that the city is in a position to settle the West Side problem, to construct the South Brooklyn terminal railroad, to construct the dry dock, to finish the long piers; but how much farther it can go, how much farther toward the development of the terminal facilities or the market facilities, will depend on the husbanding of our resources in other directions. There is no more important physical work that the city has to do than this development of its port, and I believe that there is none in which the citizens of the city have a more direct interest.

(730)

DISCUSSION OF TRANSPORTATION, PORT AND
TERMINAL FACILITIES

RICHARD C. HARRISON, First Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Docks and Ferries:

You may be interested in connection with this wonderful port of ours to know a little about the way it is administered. We have an army of approximately two thousand men employed in the department of docks and ferries and we are spending this year only a shade under two million dollars to administer the port of New York.

What are we doing with it? First of all, from what the mayor has said, it must be clear to you that the department of docks and ferries is primarily a business department. We differ much from most of the city departments in that fact. We are practically dealing with customers of the city, our merchants, our maritime interests, those who deal in imports and exports. They come to us and ask us for our wares, that is, the piers, the bulkheads, the terminal facilities, all those things. which the city has provided to take care of these great interests.

Fortunately, through a wise policy-strangely wise in view of some other things which the city of New York did in the old days,-as long ago as 1870, when the department of docks and ferries was started, the city began to acquire its waterfront. Since that time we have acquired and we now own some two hundred and thirty-two piers, ranging from the wonderful structures with which you are all familiar at Chelsea, where the big liners come in, down to comparatively small but relatively no less important piers where we handle our building materials and those heavy, perhaps uninteresting objects which go so much to make up the commercial prosperity of the city. A great many of these piers, approximately twothirds I should say offhand, are leased. The city charter provides that the sinking fund commission, which is made up of the mayor, the comptroller, the president of the board of aldermen, the city chamberlain and the chairman of the finance committee of the board of aldermen, may lease the piers for a term of ten years with a maximum of four renewals, bringing it up to a total of fifty years. As a matter of fact, the city has leased few of its piers for a longer period than thirty years, but even with that condition existing, we find at the present time the rather unfortunate condition of a large portion of our most valuable waterfront here in Manhattan being tied up under leases which still have a substantial term to run and which make difficult certain readjustments in many instances desirable and necessary.

In addition to these leased piers, we have a large number of what we call open piers. These piers are perhaps not so imposing as the Chelsea piers. They are piers which most of us do not see often; but as a matter of fact, if it were not for them, the city of New York would be in a bad way; for they are piers where anyone can bring his boat, tie up, unload his cargo, and load again at nominal rates fixed by the legislature of the state of New York for the express purpose of encouraging the use of the piers and not for purposes of revenue. The average boat can tie up at one of these piers at an expense of only fifty cents a day, so they furnish a valuable adjunct to the commercial prosperity of the entire port. Secondly, the department of docks and ferries is a great engineering and construction department. We have a force paid for out of what is known as corporate stock, that is, bonds on which the city borrows money for a term of fifty years for permanent improvements. Approximately a million dollars a year has been devoted to keeping up in the department of docks and ferries a permanent construction force, that is, engineers who shall draw plans for the improvement of the waterfront, the building of the great sea wall which is practically completed around Manhattan Island at the present time, the construction of some of the smaller pier work and all those things which go to make up the physical upbuilding of the port of New York.

In addition to the actual work done by the department force, the department of docks and ferries is charged with the important work of drawing plans and specifications for all the great port work which is done under contract. The mayor alluded to one of those important works which is going on at the present time, and just in order to give you some little idea of what the responsibilities and duties of our engineering staff are, I will elaborate on it just for a moment or two. At Fortysixth street in the borough of Manhattan a site was selected for the construction of the new long passenger steamship piers. It was necessary at that particular site to dig out slips for the accommodation of steamships giving us a clear depth of water of forty-four feet. We found, however, that at a comparatively shallow depth below water level we struck bed rock, and the practical impossibility of taking out that rock under water in the wet made it necessary for us to enter upon one of the greatest engineering feats which is going on in the civilized world at the present time. We have constructed at that point what is known as a coffer-dam. A coffer-dam perhaps does not mean much to those of us who are not engineers, but reduced to its lowest terms it is nothing more or less than a temporary retaining wall to hold out water so that we can get an area back of it dry and keep it dry long enough to do temporary