The Manhattan you walk today is not the Manhattan the Dutch first settled. Nearly a quarter of the island sits on landfill. That’s approximately 3,000 acres. This artificial ground was created over four centuries by dumping rocks, earth, garbage, and construction debris into the rivers. The original shoreline, visible on colonial maps, lies buried beneath streets that now feel like a solid, permanent city.
The expansion began almost immediately after Europeans arrived. The British, fearing French naval attack, dumped earth into the harbor in 1683 to create a platform for defensive cannons. That mound of fill became Battery Park, the southernmost tip of Manhattan. It established the precedent that would reshape the island’s geography.
Governor Thomas Dongan’s charter of 1686 accelerated the process. The document allowed property owners to purchase “water lots” extending 200 feet beyond the low-tide mark. Once acquired, owners built underwater retaining structures and filled them with whatever material they could find. This “wharfing out” extended the shoreline block by block. It created new real estate from what had been harbor.
The original shoreline on the East Side roughly followed modern Pearl Street and Cherry Street. On the West Side, it tracked approximately along today’s Greenwich Street. Everything beyond those lines was created through landfill. Water Street, Front Street, South Street, and the entire Financial District waterfront. All of it came from layer upon layer of debris buried and built upon.
The most dramatic modern example is Battery Park City. This 92-acre planned community extends into the Hudson River west of the Financial District. The neighborhood didn’t exist before the 1970s. Its land was created using 1.2 million cubic yards of earth and rock excavated from the foundations of the original World Trade Center. Material from other construction projects and harbor dredging was added.
Walk through Battery Park City today. Nothing suggests you’re standing on artificial ground. High-rise apartments, office towers including the Brookfield Place complex, parks, and esplanades feel like permanent fixtures. Only maps showing the original shoreline reveal how recently this land emerged from the water.
Artist Agnes Denes highlighted this artificiality in 1982 with “Wheatfield—A Confrontation.” During the summer before development began on the southern portion of the Battery Park City landfill, Denes planted two acres of wheat on the rubble-strewn ground. This created a surreal contrast of golden grain against the steel towers of the Financial District. The project called attention to what she termed “misplaced priorities and deteriorating human values.” The transformation of harbor into real estate.
Archaeologists have discovered unexpected remnants within the fill. In 2010, during construction of the World Trade Center Vehicle Security Center, workers uncovered the remains of an 18th-century ship. It was buried 20 feet below street level. The vessel was built around 1773 from wood harvested in the Philadelphia region. It had apparently been deliberately sunk as part of landfill operations in the 1790s. The airless mud sealed the hull in remarkable condition for over two centuries.
The Hudson River Bulkhead, constructed between 1870 and the 1930s. It regularized the West Side shoreline from The Battery to 59th Street. General George B. McClellan, serving as the city’s first chief engineer of the Department of Docks after the Civil War, designed the massive stone. It allowed larger ships to dock directly at the island’s edge. The bulkhead itself was eventually cut off from the river by the World Trade Center excavation. Subsequent Battery Park City construction buried it. An infrastructure project buried beneath another layer of landfill.
Climate change now threatens these artificial shores. The land, being fill rather than bedrock, is particularly vulnerable to flooding and storm surge. Hurricane Sandy in 2012 inundated much of Lower Manhattan. It showed how the areas most at risk from rising seas are precisely those created through centuries of landfill. Current plans propose building sea walls around The Battery and portions of the East River waterfront. Essentially reinforcing the boundaries of artificial land against the water that once covered it.
The East River waterfront tells its own expansion story. The shoreline shifted outward from Pearl Street in the colonial era to Water Street by 1730. Then to Front Street by 1780. And finally to South Street by 1800. Each name marks a former water’s edge. It is now buried under subsequent development. The FDR Drive, built along the East River shore in the 1930s using embankments and pilings. Itadded another layer of artificial ground.
East River Park, running along the waterfront from Montgomery Street to 12th Street, sits entirely on landfill. In 2019, the city approved a controversial $1.45 billion resiliency project that will demolish and rebuild the park, raising its elevation to protect against flooding. The project essentially acknowledges that fill-based parks require constant renegotiation with the water they displaced.
Some urban planners have proposed extending Manhattan even further. Economist Jason Barr suggested creating new land along the southern shore for housing development. He argued that if billions will be spent on flood walls anyway, additional real estate could help fund the protection. Critics countered that extending artificial shores into rising seas represents the triumph of development logic over environmental reality.
The Egbert Vielé map of 1865 remains a crucial document for construction projects. It shows the original shoreline in contrast with mid-19th century expansion. Builders who ignore the underlying hydrology, where streams once flowed, where wetlands once absorbed storm water, often discover that the fill settles unpredictably. Basements flood inexplicably, and foundations shift in ways that solid bedrock would never permit.
