From Wasteland to Parkland Along the Hudson.

It's not that New York doesn't know what to do with its waterfront. It's simply that almost everything it has done, until recently, was hostile to public use. These two photographs, separated by 30 years, illustrate the transition of the Hudson River shoreline from a declining maritime port to a dismal traffic corridor to a blank-faced institutional backwater to a slender -- but welcome -- bit of parkland. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]