Today The Seaport has an enclave of unique shops and restaurants, from long-time businesses like Buon Amici and Bridge Cafe to newer ones like Pasanella & Son and Firefly. These businesses have improved the historic Front Street area, and their example and success is a model for the future of the area. New shops, restaurants, outdoor cafes, a food market, and retail for everyday living will help ensure that The Seaport remains a dynamic port for the 21st century.

South Street Seaport in New York City, Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston and Union Station DC in the nation’s capital - three of the top destinations in the U.S. and “must see” attractions for international travelers - have come together to form this new brand. Their mission is to provide a new product that includes the top two activities of the international traveler, shopping and dining. Packaged with the rich history that each project brings to the brand, the traveler will be able to see and do everything they desire in one main attraction in each city.


The South Street Seaport’s low-scale buildings have a legacy of combined retail and tourism. A sense of the district’s gritty and boisterous past as New York City’s wholesale fish market also lingers in some of the area’s oldest commercial buildings. These brick and stone structures also have historic ties to the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the piers.

The Seaport district has long been a laboratory in which historic preservation has taken place alongside development. The South Street Seaport Museum was founded in the 1960s; an exacting restoration of Schermerhorn Row took place in the 1970s; Pier 17 was developed in the 1980s by The Rouse Company; and mixed-use preservation and development has been underway along Front Street in recent years. Each project has explored new designs while drawing on the visual richness of the Seaport’s historic and natural environments.

The historic buildings west of the Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) Drive have stood for more than a century. East of the FDR, stands the historic Tin Building. The 1907 structure was once a thriving marketplace where the city’s fish was imported and processed. It originally stood at water’s edge, prior to the construction of the current Pier 17 building. A fire in 1995 all but destroyed the 55,000-square-foot building, leaving it vacant today, and awaiting a grand restoration.

The cobblestone-paved “uplands” west of the FDR includes the red brick Fulton Market Building on Fulton and Front Streets. The second floor of that three-story building currently houses the wildy popular Bodies: The Exhibition.

Retail stores and restaurants occupy sections of the Fulton Market Building’s lower floor. The Fulton Stall Market, a specialty market, operates seasonally in the former fish market stalls along South Street.