Wharf Street Portals

Justin Gammon

Hidden in plain sight, along the asphalt desert that passes for a waterfront below Bastion Square, there are portals to a different and more romantic past.

At the turn of the 19th century the inner harbor was a bustling center of global commerce. Barques and schooners and elegant clippers arrived daily from trade routes all over the world carrying necessities and luxuries to a growing city.

The ships would line up in the harbor, waiting for a berth at the deep water moorings, where Red Fish Blue Fish now sits. Sailors would throw out their lines and shoremen would tie them off to great iron rings set into the rock. Rings that are still there and clearly visible today.

Then the work of unloading would begin. Planks, set up precariously against the wharfs, alive with men hauling bales and barrels to the maze of warehouses that covered the shore. One of the largest was Hudson's Bay which backed onto Wharf Street and had a warren of catacombs reaching under the road. The bricked up portals are all that remain.