Public Access
The Water Trail Association was formed in 2008, the same year the Water Trail itself was officially launched, but its roots trace back to an earlier generation of clandestine paddlers and rowers attracted by the recreational potential of the Upper Harbor and encouraged by improvements—thanks to the Clean Water Act—in water quality. Lacking official launches or community boathouses, they employed great creativity and occasional subterfuge to get their craft on the water, and once there often faced disapproval and hostility from commercial mariners and maritime authorities.
In the 1990s, as the city began to reimagine and rezone its once-industrial waterfront, a few pioneering boating groups–the Downtown Boathouse, Floating the Apple, and New York Outrigger— established beachheads on the west side of Manhattan, eventually grandfathering themselves into the nascent Hudson River Park. Some advocates, perhaps most notably Mike Davis, the founder of Floating the Apple, began pushing for access points at every street end and community boathouses in every neighborhood, arguing that the harbor was public space—our largest Commons—and it was the city’s responsibility to promote access to it.
One early battleground was the sandy beach on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge. The upland landowner, the city’s Economic Development Corporation, had built an esplanade along the East River there, and even cut a special tiny gate in it so that people walking their dogs could let them jump down onto the beach. People themselves, though, were not permitted to jump over the railing, and kayakers and rowers who pulled up there from the water side were chased off by the Harbor Police. The protests that ensued led to an early, primitive public access website, NewYorkHarborBeaches.site, and, eventually, to a slight policy modification–paddlers can now land there. Nearly 20 years later, however, there is still no upland access to or from the beach.
In other places around the harbor, advocacy campaigns have led to new public access points. The Governors Island kayak dock is one example—it is open during daylight hours year-round, though you are supposed to call the island security office when you land to let them know you are there (the number is posted atop on the gate at the top of the gangway). In addition to the old Parks Department beach at the foot of Main St. in “Dumbo Cove,” Brooklyn Bridge Park now offers a second launch site at the Pier 4 beach, near the Brooklyn Bridge Park Boathouse. And while not the beach that the paddling community asked for, a new concrete kayak ramp is set to open in September 2023 at Gansevoort Peninsula, near the end of West 12th Street in Hudson River Park (see the Water Trail map for pictures of all of these sites).
That said, there are plenty of places in the harbor where despite sustained advocacy efforts, the water remains off limits. Case in point: the recent decision not to include water access at the end of Huntington Street on the Gowanus Canal, despite overwhelming public support during the supposed ‘community design’ process the city touted. In short, we’re still a long ways from Mike Davis’ vision of a city where the end of every public street is a place where residents can touch—and get on—the water.