The Harlem River Ship Canal is a channel connecting the Hudson River and Spuyten Duyvil Creek to the Harlem River in New York City, separating the neighborhood of Marble Hill from the island of Manhattan. Marble Hill, part of the borough of Manhattan, was cut off from the island by the construction of the ship canal and is now located on the mainland after the previous course of the river was filled in.
The Harlem River Ship Canal was cut through upper Manhattan to allow larger ships to navigate. It was completed in 1895. To allow passage through the remainder of the river, the existing fixed bridges were replaced by drawbridges.
Spuyten Duyvil Creek originally flowed north of Manhattan's Marble Hill, and the completion of the canal to the south turned Marble Hill into an island, until 1914, when the original creekbed was filled in and Marble Hill became physically attached to the Bronx.
Today Spuyten Duyvil Creek, the Harlem River Ship Canal, and the Harlem River form a continuous channel. The Ship Canal is crossed by the Broadway Bridge, a vertical lift bridge carrying vehicular and pedestrian traffic on one level, and the subway on the upper level.
Famous quotes containing the words harlem, river, ship and/or canal:
“It doesn’t do good to open doors for someone who doesn’t have the price to get in. If he has the price, he may not need the laws. There is no law saying the Negro has to live in Harlem or Watts.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Now launch the small ship, now as the body dies
and life departs, launch out, the fragile soul
in the fragile ship of courage, the ark of faith
with its store of food and little cooking pans
and change of clothes,”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“My impression about the Panama Canal is that the great revolution it is going to introduce in the trade of the world is in the trade between the east and the west coast of the United States.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)