Last week, we posted a video promoting the Port of New York and New Jersey made in the 1950s. Here is a similar if very different video made by RKO focussing on the Manhattan waterfront around 1937, at the height of the Great Depression.

While praising “magic Manhattan” the narrator describes the waterfront as “the frayed frontier of this golden island,” while in the same sentence calling it the “greatest on earth.” One part of the video contrasts the “opulence and prosperity” of the rich with the “jungles of the less fortunate,” the waterfront shantytowns of the wretchedly poor in the “dead-end of Manhattan.” The short film is a fascinating snapshot of that time in history.

1930s Manhattan Waterfront – 1937