DOCK FACILITIES IN NEW YORK CITY. 41 
width, with slips 300 feet wide. Back of these piers will be reserved a suffi- 
cient strip of upland space, some 325 feet in width, for warehouses, railroad 
connections and other features required by an up-to-date water front freight 
terminal. 
These outlying developments are planned essentially for ‘‘Trans-ship- 
ments” and “City-Imports”’ but with the anticipation that industrial and 
manufacturing centers will be developed in the immediate hinterland. 
Still further, a plan is proposed for Jamaica Bay. The immediate 
improvement of this Bay under appropriation from the United States Gov- 
ernment and from the city contemplates a 15-foot channel with certain 
local dock improvements which will tend to build up industrial and manu- 
facturing centers. As these future centers grow and justify further expendi- 
ture, the whole bay is to be developed into one great freight terminal and 
commercial area for manufacturing industries such as are now carried on 
in Manhattan under the great handicaps of expensive ground rents, unsani- 
tary conditions, slow truckage hauls, etc. 
In connection with this presentation of the present water front freight 
terminals in the harbor and their proposed extensions, the present lack of 
mechanical equipment is worthy of note. Practically no piers in New York 
Harbor aside from the “Chelsea Sections,’’ are equipped with cranes and 
other mechanical freight-handling devices. Doubtless this has been due in 
a large measure to the fact that until recently congestion has not made 
imperative the intensive use of any section of the water front. Further, 
piers of the present width do not permit two or three-story sheds for the 
handling or temporary storing of freight, since all freight on a pier must of 
necessity pass out at the bulkhead through the narrow entrance to the pier. 
Hence, if from two or three-story structures great quantities of freight were 
being delivered at once, prohibitive congestion would result. Therefore, the 
-absence of more than one-story sheds, and, further, the moderate rise and 
fall of tides have led to the handling of freight from steamers to piers, and 
vice versa, largely by mechanical appliances on the steamships themselves. 
In the proposed plans for the outlying sections, especially in the Jamaica 
Bay and the Staten Island districts, provision is made for piers of sufficient 
width to allow a wide, open driveway down the center; freight sheds to be 
on either side between the driveway and the edges of the pier. These 
piers will be practically equivalent to quays or bulkheads. On such piers 
it will be practicable to build two or even three-story sheds, since the 
freight accumulated from steamers can be readily passed out through the 
entire length of the driveway side of the shed. For the handling of cargoes 
to the second and third stories of such sheds, mechanical devices will of 
