"Thousands of the Poor Enjoy the Fresh Air on the Piers" was the lede for a July 1892 article in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle.  The article describes the North and South piers of the Atlantic Basin as crowded in the hot Summer months; the residents of the Italian quarter making it "a sort of small Coney Island."

Venders on the pier sold pineapples, melons, pears and peanuts as well as lemonade and "lawzenjers."
Families sat together, mothers tended babies while men fished for eel and for drifting wood to burn, or sell as firewood.

People also flocked to Erie Basin's Long Dock to find relief from the Summer heat.  The Brooklyn Daily Eagle article reported that there it was Scandinavian families that gathered by the waterfront and that beer was readily available.

The article concluded that: "There is no doubt that the open piers on the river are a blessing to thousands of the poorer classes and it is a pity that there are not more of them."  It is significant to note that these piers were still active in the business of shipping.  It was not ships or people but both co-existing together.

Complete text of the article:

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 24, 1892

SUMMER ON THE WATER FRONT

Thousands of the Poor Enjoy the Fresh Air on the Piers

There are thousands of people in this city whose only chance at a sea breeze is gained on the piers along the water front, and a curious study they sometimes are.  Of late years this promenade is becoming restricted, owing to the fact that many of the pier owners or lessees refuse to allow the people access to them.  Without exception the most democratic pier in the city, in either city for that matter, is Dow’s, at the foot of Pacific street.  Here beneath the shade of the great elevators, at all hours of the day and nearly of the night, crowds of people sit and smoke and “chin” and inhale the breezes of the bay and East river.  Scores of women with babies in arms or in baby carriages are here at all times, trying to give the suffocating little ones a chance to struggle through the fierce summer heat which terminates so many little lives.   Although the risk of fire is perhaps greater here than on any other pier in the city, these visitors are never interfered with unless such interference is absolutely demanded by circumstances.  There is not another open pier from this point to the Atlantic basin, and there the North and South piers are crowded throughout the summer months, the latter especially so, as it is more easily reached, and the residents of the Italian quarter make it a sort of small Coney Island.  Pineapples, melons, pears and peanuts are vended, and the hoarse cries of the small boys who peddle alleged lemonade and doubtful “Lawzenjers, cent a pa-ack, a-all kinds!” resounds in the summer evenings.  Thursday night last there were probably three thousand people in this pier, enjoying the cool evening breezes and awaiting the arrivals of excursions parties which now make the North pier a favorite point of departure and arrival.  Many of these were transients, but the steady visitors are the Italians.  Whole families sit together the husband seeking to wile from the water an occasional eel, while the swarthy mother looks after the bambinos. Another section of the colony, if it is high water, is engaged in another sort of fishing – fishing for the flotsam and jetsam that the set of the tide brings along.  This consists mostly of wood which these fishers catch with a harpoon in the style of the old whalers, before guns came into use.  The wood so captured is carted home, dried and [burned] and so makes an acceptable addition to the Italian rag picker’s or fruit seller’s little income.  Incidentally it may be mentioned that many members of the South Brooklyn colony are reputed to be very wealthy and are engaged in the ship chandlery business, and, as all Italian barks tie up at the North pier, their location is favorable to business with their countrymen.  As a matter of  fact the Italians in the Sixth ward feel their importance and pre-empt a great deal of the  sidewalk on the east side of Hamilton avenue, where they stand of sit and chatter until far into the night, or early morning, rather. 

Another favorite out of air resort is the Long dock, Erie basin where the Scandinavian fathers and families resort to catch the breezes that blow from Staten island and occasionally from odoriferous Bayonne.  It is rather a long walk and not so well patronized as the North pier, but during the hot weather there is continuous procession to Beard’s farm.  The wanderer in this wilderness need not go dry and more than at the city by the seam for there is plenty of beer and about ten times as much of it to the glass as cam be got for a nickel in John Y. McKane’s bailiwick.

There is no doubt that the open piers on the river are a blessing to thousands of the poorer classes and it is a pity that there are not more of them.

[“John Y. McKane’s bailiwick” was Coney Island; he was a major player in its development as a waterfront attraction. ]