Midtown Manhattan Skyline

The massive, dark steel structures standing in Gantry Plaza State Park are known as gantries. Built in the nineteen twenties, these towering machines once hoisted heavy freight cars from trains onto barges to be shipped across the East River. Each gantry could move a hundred-ton rail car up or down eighteen feet to match the changing tides of the river. They are the last remnants of a time when this entire shoreline was a working industrial shipyard, rather than a place for viewing the city.