2. Bristol Basin, Waterside Plaza

Waterside Plaza was also built on landfill made of Bristol ballast. During and after the war, this area was more popularly known as Bristol Basin, and a plaque installed in 1942 to commemorate the exchange. The plaque was originally placed by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia on a “footbridge that leads to the river,” reports The New York Times but now sits in Waterside Plaza. The English-Speaking Union of the United States provided for the plaque, arranged for a plaque, which LaGuardia placed on a footbridge leading to the river.

The plaque reads: “Beneath this East River Drive of the City of New York lie stones, bricks and rubble from the bombed City of Bristol in England. Brought here in ballast from overseas, these fragments that once were homes shall testify while men love freedom to the resolution and fortitude of the people of Britain. They saw their homes struck down without warning. It was not their walls but their valor that kept them free. And broad-based under all is planted England’s oaken-hearted mood, as rich in fortitude as e’er went worldward from the island wall.”

The plaque was was rededicated in 1972 by the actor Cary Grant, a Bristol native whose family survived the bombings.