Long Wharf

This guide to Long Wharf in Boston opens with a question: why would a sea captain drive a wooden pier nearly a third of a mile into a freezing harbor? It goes back to 1710, when Oliver Noyes decided Boston's shallow, muddy waterfront was choking trade, and built out into deep water instead. Merchants filled the north side with granite warehouses, and the harbor itself later turned against the wharf as the city kept expanding by filling in its own water, until buildings now standing near Quincy Market were once open harbor.