Next time you’re stuck in traffic between 23rd Street and 34th Street on the FDR Drive, take a moment to consider where the land beneath you came from.
It wasn’t fill from digging the subways or skyscrapers—it was actually transported here all the way from England in the 1940s.
“During World War II, the Luftwaffe savagely bombed the city of Bristol, England, a major port for American supply ships,” wrote Michael Pollack in his FYI column in The New York Times in June 2009.
“After the supplies were unloaded, the American ships had no British goods to replace them on the return trip, and needed ballast for stability. So they loaded up rubble from Bristol’s bombed-out buildings.”
“Back in New York, the ships dumped the ballast from 23rd to 34th Street as landfill for what would become the East River Drive, now Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive.”
Though you won’t find it on any city road maps, the slight curve of the East River between these blocks is known as Bristol Basin (above).
Tags: Bristol Basin, building the FDR Drive, East River Drive, East River history, FDR Drive, Little England NYC, New York City maps, New York during World War II
Ephemeral New York 
October 31, 2011 at 11:56 am |
According to http://www.bbc.co.uk/bristol/content/articles/2005/11/15/pwaod_grant_feature.shtml there’s a plaque there… or once was…
October 31, 2011 at 2:09 pm |
Thanks for the link. I’d heard about the plaque while researching this, but have never seen it. I’d like to find out exactly where it is–or was.
October 31, 2011 at 3:15 pm |
So if archeologists in future times find something British in that earth, what on earth will they conclude?
October 31, 2011 at 6:27 pm |
There used to be a walkway bridge over on about 25th or 26th Street that rose above the East River Drive. This led to the piers on the East River, one held Maritime HS and the others had a few boats docking, usually tugboats. The plaque was on the walkway bridge as you came off it. I vaguely recall reading it while, as usual, trying to pick up a girl. Again I don’t recall winning her over. But I do remember that plaque, it still might be near the site. Anyway, the site for the past few years has been high rise buildings which was closed off to human traffic walking along the river, some how they got rid of that asinine rule. Now people can walk by the river’s edge, in a way, unless they’re doing some stupid building.
October 31, 2011 at 6:33 pm |
Thanks Mick. This week I’m going to see if it’s still there somewhere.
December 2, 2012 at 9:34 pm |
Did you ever find the plaque?? Being a HUGE Cary Grant fan I would love to know if the plaque still exists and exactly where it is. I was in NYC in June 2011 and searched and searched for it, but didn’t see it. I will be returning to NYC this month so am quite interested in it’s exact location.
October 31, 2011 at 7:13 pm |
I looked at your graphic and the plague is where the first pier was on 25th Street. These weren’t real piers, they had loads of benches for people to sit and waste their time on. Maritime HS was right there. One lazy day a tugboat docked on about 26th St and I was thrown a rope. “Tie to the (whatever he called it)!” I did so and the tugboat safely was secured. I felt so proud. I think Cary Grant would have liked me 😉
November 1, 2011 at 12:25 pm |
[…] Bowery for about 11 years has been regularly feeding neighborhood rats. [New York Post]Some of the soil under the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive was shipped to New York all the way from England after World War II. [Ephemeral New […]
November 1, 2011 at 5:44 pm |
[…] of the soil under the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive was shipped to New York all the way from England after World War II. [Ephemeral New […]
November 3, 2011 at 12:48 pm |
Some15 years ago or so I went on a History and Geology boat tour around Manhattan run by the American Museum of Natural History. (They chartered one of the Circle Line boats but went clockwise around the island, as opposed to the usual tourist route.) Our guide – a staff historian – mentioned something very similar to your article. When we passed East River Park in the LES, he said that it was largely built on rubble from the London Blitz. Could this also be true or did our guide get his story confused?
November 4, 2011 at 2:52 pm |
I would guess he got the story confused. Every source I found said the rubble came from Bristol, not London.
September 19, 2012 at 10:34 am |
[…] Bristol upstages London, however. That city’s Blitz rubble was shipped over to the US to reclaim land in Manhattan.East End slum becomes a picturesque bandstandArnold Circus…a buried rookery. Image by M@.The Old […]
September 19, 2012 at 2:17 pm |
[…] During the Blitz on London, an estimated 1 million homes were destroyed or damaged. Some of the rubble was, of course, recycled during the rebuilding, but millions of tons of brick and dust had to be disposed of somewhere. Step forward the Lea Valley. So much rubble was disposed of in Hackney and Leyton Marshes that, according to one Museum of London archaeologist we recently spoke to, the ground level was raised by 3-7 metres over large areas. Bristol upstages London, however. That city’s Blitz rubble was shipped over to the US to reclaim land in Manhattan. […]
April 6, 2015 at 6:04 am |
[…] not the only bit of the Blitz to make it to New York City. The landfill used to create the FDR Drive contains pieces of bombed out buildings from […]
November 28, 2016 at 2:46 am |
[…] few of these green spaces are as hard to get to as the quarter-acre oasis between the FDR Drive and First Avenue, behind the cluster of buildings that make up Bellevue Hospital […]
May 6, 2018 at 12:58 pm |
See the plaque here. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/bristol-basin
May 6, 2018 at 1:01 pm |
This is a good site – https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/gallery/bristol-blitz-1940-41-408923
March 8, 2021 at 3:57 am |
[…] Curie Avenue were widened, leveled, and elevated before being covered in 1939 or 1940 by the “rubble from bomb-destroyed buildings of British cities carried as ballast in ships docking in New York Harbor to load wartime […]