Pier 17 Mall at South Street Seaport Now Closed, Awaits Demolition [PHOTOS]

As of yesterday, Pier 17 Mall at South Street Seaport was closed permanently and will later be demolished after serving tourists along the East River since 1983. Despite the efforts of the Save Our Seaport campaign with Community Board 1, plans for the new space will go forward designed by SHoP Architects, who was also responsible for the South Street Seaport master plan. The developer at the helm of all these changes is the Howard Hughes Corporation, who sponsored the 18-foot sand castle this summer on Water Street.

The new building will inevitably be much more in line with the neighboring green spaces installed along the Pier 15 Waterfront Esplanade and on Fulton Street. These public spaces can be used both for public seating as well as music performances. When we visited the SHoP offices in spring 2012, one of the founding partners showed us some of their architectural inspirations, which included the open air Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood. Similarly, the new structure has open air pedestrian thoroughfares and glass garage-style doors that can descend in bad weather to seal in the lower levels of the complex, according to SHoP Architects.

Planned changes to the shopping center at Pier 17, South Street Seaport. via SHoP

We went by twice in the past week to document the building. Here are some photos as a farewell:

For more photos of the proposed mall by SHoP click here.