William Howell: West Side Highway

More than 70 photographs documenting the “end of an era” for queer cruising culture on Manhattan’s West Side piers Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, the abandoned piers running along New York’s West Side Highway served as a hotbed of gay cruising activity as well as a haven for the broader LGBT community. By the mid-1990s, abutting neighborhoods were undergoing intense transformation through gentrification, with many dilapidated buildings and structures being demolished. The remaining piers were a gathering spot beyond the boundaries of daily life, where gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people found a place to be openly themselves. For some, the piers were a place for hustlers and sex workers to meet with their patrons. For others, the piers were a place to simply “be” in the sunshine, relaxing, free of scorn, fear or judgment, in ways not possible elsewhere at that time. The series likewise documents a New York that doesn’t exist anymore: the World Trade Center stands proud in the background of many of these photos. The surrounding habitat of the piers themselves have since been replaced with luxury apartments and a family-friendly city park. The West Side Highway Pier series depicts that, even in New York City, people had to go to extremes—to the end of a pier, at the edge of a continent, treading on unsafe structures—to be free to be their authentic selves. This series documents the final days of this once-infamous gay playground, with reverence to the historical context in which it once existed.William Howell is a Brooklyn-based photographer and artist who earned his BFA in photography from Pratt Institute and currently resides in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.