This enabled the area to retain its popularity for gay men to cruise and have sex at night. The concentration of men, numerous bars and warehouses, and nighttime isolation established the waterfront as one of the main centers for gay life that thrived well after World War II.Ĭhanges in the maritime industry and the growth of the airlines made the piers and the large shipping terminals obsolete, leading them to be abandoned by the mid-1960s. The area was surrounded by thousands of seamen of all nationalities and more than half a million unmarried and transient workers came into the port each year.īy World War I, the area had become a popular cruising area for gay men, and by the 1930s the opening of the elevated Miller (West Side) Highway (now demolished) cut through the area making it more of a backwater. By the early 20th century, Greenwich Village’s Hudson River waterfront and numerous piers with Beaux Arts style shipping terminals comprised the busiest section of New York’s port for cargo and trans-Atlantic passengers, with merchant ships, steamships, barges, and commuter ferries.
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