The historic Schermerhorn Row at 2-18 Fulton Street that houses South Street Seaport Museum’s main building (on the lower left) and a number of retail businesses. Photograph by Ziming Wang, 2021.
Capt. Jonathan Boulware is the President and CEO of South Street Seaport Museum. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy brought more than six feet of surging water into the entrance of the museum’s Fulton Street building, destroying the museum’s cafe, admission desk, gift shop, computer system, and electrical systems; at Bowne & Co. Stationers — a nearby printing shop owned by the museum, more than 200 drawers of antique wood and metal type were drenched. As flood water rose up to eight feet in the South Street Seaport neighborhood, many other retail businesses and historic buildings (such as Fraunces Tavern) were also inundated.
Leveraging funding from multiple resources including FEMA and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, South Street Seaport Museum has repaired and renovated its buildings for higher flood resilience, and planned for new exhibition and educational spaces. In this interview, Capt. Boulware — both as the museum’s president and as a resident of the neighborhood — shares the museum’s recovery and revitalization process post Hurricane Sandy, and expresses his views on the neighborhood’s more recent flood protection and resilience planning efforts.
This interview was conducted on Feb. 13, 2023, at South Street Seaport Museum.
“Long-term and short-term strategies at different scales should be developed hand-in-hand to ensure us a resilient future."
Ziming Wang: I learned from a New York Times report back in 2012 that Hurricane Sandy caused substantial damage to the museum: it inundated the Fulton Street building’s whole basement, surged to 6 feet above ground, and destroyed collections at Bowne & Co. Stationers. Could you give me some more ideas on the losses that Hurricane caused?
Jonathan Boulware: Yes, we had a flood that was over our heads pouring into the lobby — and I had a picture where one of my colleagues was standing at the entrance beside flood marks. The high flood mark was five or six inches above his head, so we estimate that the museum actually had around 6.5 ft of flooding. The sidewalks have been raised since Hurricane Sandy, so the flood marks would seem even higher back then as compared to today. As for Bowne & Co., the flood impact was not as severe: things did get wet, but they were soon restored.
Ziming Wang: Has the museum been impacted by more recent flooding events, such as Hurricane Ida?
Jonathan Boulware: No. Luckily, we didn’t have any flooding within our premises since Hurricane Sandy.
Ziming Wang: I noticed that the recovery of South Street Seaport Museum was supported by funding from FEMA as well as the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC). Are there any other funding or grants that helped the museum’s revitalization? How important are these funds to the museum?
Jonathan Boulware: Our recovery work hasn’t finished yet — it’s still ongoing! We’re in a multi-phase process of revitalizing our museum, which faced not only impacts from Sandy but also other financial struggles. We’ve already secured $7.9 million under the FEMA funding announced in 2015; another $5 million came from city-level, non-FEMA grants. Institutions such as LMDC helped us with ongoing capital projects — with the LMDC funding, we are currently renovating the 1868 Thomson & Co. Warehouse at 213-215 Water Street into spaces for exhibition, education and community use.
These funds have just been critical to us. Without them, we wouldn’t have been able to reopen and recover.
Ziming Wang: Speaking of the museum’s main building at Fulton Street, what repairs and interventions have been made? Are there any concerns, challenges or difficulties encountered in the process? Is the building prepared for potential floods in the future?
Jonathan Boulware: We were not opportunistic at all in recovering our building from flood impacts. The historic warehouses of the Schermerhorn Row that house our museum remained largely intact after Hurricane Sandy; the challenge we had was to effectively modernize the building’s mechanical systems, upgrading electrical, heating, plumbing, vertical transportation, and information infrastructure. When we upgraded these systems, we were not dependent on potential community-level adaptation strategies that might be implemented by the city; in contrast, we wanted the building to be floodable, in the sense that it won’t have its vulnerable infrastructure destroyed by the next major hurricane. Today, most of our building’s mechanical systems are located on the second floor; and our HVAC equipment has been relocated onto the roof.
One thing that remains a challenge is the land that our building sits on — one of the lowest and oldest parts of the city, the Seaport was built right at sea level through landfills. Therefore, the land that we currently sit on as we talk is very porous, and can pose potential flooding threat to underground utilities such as elevator shaftways during flood events. Given the material and construction of historic landfills, hardening the land in this neighborhood would be particularly difficult.
Ziming Wang: With all these undertakings, how long did the museum stay closed after Hurricane Sandy?
Jonathan Boulware: We were closed for a number of months right after Hurricane Sandy. Our internal operation restarted in 2013, and the museum was open to the public in the latter part of that year. We have never closed again since our reopening ten years ago.
Ziming Wang: In your earlier responses, you mentioned community-level flood resilience plans and flood prevention measures in South Street Seaport that were implemented by the city in recent years. How much are you aware of these plans and projects — such as the Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan that proposes an extension of the East River shoreline which will accommodate large-scale resilience infrastructure and public esplanades, or, temporary flood barriers placed as interim flood protection measures under the FDR Drive?
Jonathan Boulware: Yes, I’ve been following these efforts quite closely, not only as the president of South Street Seaport Museum, but also as a resident of the neighborhood. I do believe that issues of climate and flood resilience could and should be discussed on many scales — and we should get on our feet to adapt for the increasing threat of Sandy-like events. In some senses, I think we are lucky because we got an early warning shot back in 2012; the hurricanes that impact us in the future will likely be more frequent and even more powerful. However, I do have some critiques regarding the ongoing FiDi-Seaport Resilience Master Plan, and the interim flood protection measures adopted in the neighborhood:
First of all, it is not enough to talk only about in-situ adaptation. The “pernicious” aspect of framing resilience as a result of adaptation is that we sometimes tend to overlook long-term sea level rise, an issue that no amount of concrete and rebars can fix. In the short term, city-level investment and infrastructural upgrades may help us better bounce back after hurricane impacts; but we cannot solely rely on them because in 100 or even 500 years of time, we may have to retreat. My stance on managed retreat is that we can either walk away in a way that we’ve planned for, or we’ll be forced to run away. It’ll be a serious challenge for us as a species. Now, managed retreat might not seem to be a politically popular idea because there are just too many short-term goals and challenges competing for resources with such long-term planning efforts, but I do hope that we can see more city-level planning made on this front.
Speaking of the interim flood protection measures, I’ve seen the water-filled tiger dams deployed once — possibly before Hurricane Isaias. I think one challenge tied to this strategy has to do with the accuracy of weather forecasts — how right or how wrong can you get in certain advance? As a captain, I always follow hurricane tracking data from NOAA’s National Hurricane Center in order to ensure the safety of my crew members and passengers during cruise events. But hurricane forecasts always have a margin of error, which can be pretty significant when they're projecting impacts that will happen several days in the future. So let’s say these deployable dams need 30 hours to be installed; then the emergency managers in charge must make the call around 36 hours before the hurricane arrives, or they’ll be missing out the window for interventions. And in fact, they may make mistakes in two ways: although Hurricane Ida hit us hard, there were no barriers set up; and before Isaias, the city set up the barriers, but only to find out that weather conditions were actually mild. Now, those people who had to change their commute plans and walk extra blocks to their workplaces weren’t too satisfied — it’s similar to the situation where schools get a number of angry parents when a “snowstorm” was forecast but never came. When such mispredictions happen, they may hamper the trust and relationship between the community and municipal emergency management agencies.
Now, let’s get to the FiDi-Seaport Master Plan. It’s great to see that New York City is developing urban-scaled infrastructural solutions under the Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency (LMCR) initiative, and that FiDi-Seaport will serve as a section of the continuous flood defense infrastructure that is being constructed in Lower Manhattan. I must say it’s a fancy design; however, I do feel that emergency evacuation shall be better considered in the plan, and that the quality of landscapes could be further enhanced. Furthermore, like I said earlier, it would be great to see more diverse and long-term strategies besides shoreline hardening to be considered and studied in the neighborhood-level resilience master plan. Long-term and short-term strategies at different scales should be developed hand-in-hand to ensure us a resilient future.
A rendering for the resilience infrastructure proposed in the city's newly published FiDi-Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan.
Ziming Wang: You clearly saw the images and renderings published in the FiDi-Seaport Master Plan. How different is your vision of the future Seaport waterfront from the official design published in the master plan?
Jonathan Boulware: Well, the current design is still pretty much a sketch — it’s still a long way to go for it to be brought into reality. These curving walkways are pretty, and architecturally appealing; but my comments have remained centered on the accessibility and visibility of the Lower Manhattan waterfront. Back in 2001, Lower Manhattan witnessed the largest water evacuation in history; and that evacuation was only able to happen because the waterfront had the open space capable of accommodating hundreds of vessels that answered the call. So if you think of that, you’ll understand that access to water is an important part of urban design. While we focus on visual and spatial attractiveness, let’s not forget to retain the evacuation capabilities of the waterfront.
Ziming Wang: Have you been able to speak out your opinions in the public engagement sessions held during the making of the master plan?
Jonathan Boulware: Yes, I have. And when I have the opportunity, I’ll continue to make these comments in the future.
Ziming Wang: I know that Hurricane Sandy also caused significant impacts to other stores, restaurants and cultural institutions in South Street Seaport. How long did it take for them to recover? Were they supported by similar funding opportunities, or adapted for future flood events like the museum did?
Jonathan Boulware: The whole neighborhood was impacted by Hurricane Sandy, and some businesses did not ever recover. The favorite restaurant of mine left, and never came back; some coffee shops were also caught in great difficulty.
I would say that various retail businesses, restaurants, and cultural institutions in the neighborhood did not receive the same support after Hurricane Sandy. Very often, small-scaled institutions or establishments tend to be put lower on the list and receive less attention in the distribution of disaster recovery funding. Think about this — we fought for more than two years to secure the FEMA funding; and we are even one of the larger institutions in the neighborhood!
Another issue about FEMA funding is that it’s not essentially a grant; it’s an eligibility for reimbursement — which means that you have to make expenditures first. With the FEMA funding we’ve got, we may spend $1 million out of our pocket, and ask FEMA for reimbursement; and then, we may spend another $1 million. But the problem is that we need to have $1 million in the first place — it could be a great challenge for businesses and cultural institutions to gather a significant amount of cash available in hand after being impacted by a hurricane. And also, you typically only get 90% of the announced grant.
Ziming Wang: Which governmental or non-governmental agencies did you work with in the renovation process? Did you work with LPC quite a bit?
Jonathan Boulware: We work with LPC regularly — but not that much during our renovation process, since much of the work was non-structural or happened inside the building. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation remains one of our major partners, supporting our recovery, renovation, and exhibition programs.
Ziming Wang: In my previous interviews, some have stated that the LPC should take more lead in guiding the flood adaptation of New York City’s historic buildings. Would you agree with this statement?
Jonathan Boulware: I certainly won’t make a charge against LPC — in a city with tens of thousands of locally designated buildings, LPC is already having its hands full. However, the idea of developing a guideline for the flood adaptation of historic buildings sounds pretty worthy and promising — that’s something that the city should potentially allocate funding and resources for. If I was in charge of such a project, I would try my best to have the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice (MOCEJ), the City Council, preservation design firms, museums, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation at the table. You know, New York City has a number of the world’s best preservation design firms; I’m sure that’ll be an unparalleled resource.
Ziming Wang: Actually, there is a flood adaptation guideline for historic buildings just made on the national level — in 2021, National Park Service published its illustrated Guidelines on Flood Adaptation for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings, a document that has gathered extensive attention from preservationists across the country.
Jonathan Boulware: Good to hear that! National Park Service also has a set of guidelines on the application of the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Historic Vessel Preservation — you may check that out if you’re interested.
* This interview text has been transcribed and edited based on the interviewer’s notes. For more information on Hurricane Sandy’s impacts on South Street Seaport, please see this project’s Digital Report 01: Flood Risk of New York City’s Historic Built Environment.
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