James M. Lindgren, a professor of history at SUNY Plattsburgh, looks at the 47-year-old history of the South Street Seaport Museum. 

Formed in 1967, the South Street Seaport Museum saved nine blocks of a 19th-century neighborhood from the bulldozer. Over time, it amassed what was once the nation's largest historic ship collection and developed a significant exhibit space in Schermerhorn Row (1811-1812). That block-sized row of buildings has been called "the city's first world trade center."

Today, the museum itself needs saving. It has suffered from bouts of mismanagement, the pressing needs of recovery after Superstorm Sandy, and continuing threats from developers.

The little-known history of the museum adds a revealing dimension to the story that is continuing to unfold. It shows what happens when City Hall adopts a cultural institution as its proxy, but then walks away in times of real need.

Soon after its founding, the Seaport Museum was befriended by Mayor John Lindsay, who (in an unprecedented move) named it sponsor of the Brooklyn Bridge Southeast Urban Renewal Area, which included the Fulton Fish Market.

While the museum's many programs offered hope to a city wracked by social conflict and economic decline, Lindsay required the museum to raise its own funds to save the deteriorated area. Buying some of the priciest land in the city through a third party, the museum requested permission to sell the air rights to cover the big debt and museum operations. But before the city's sluggish bureaucracy acted, the museum collapsed with the real estate bust of 1972. City Hall then purchased the museum's land and leased it back to the organization.

Under Mayor Ed Koch, the city struck a deal in 1981 with the James Rouse Company and the Seaport Museum to introduce a "festival marketplace" on Fulton Street and Pier 17. To win the approval of the city's review boards, Rouse promised much to the museum and the community; it also predicted that the mall's bounty would enrich the insolvent museum. Once its mall opened, however, those promises evaporated and City Hall did nothing to enforce them.

By 1988 the Seaport district had become the city's number-one tourist destination, but Rouse never paid a nickel to the museum. At the same time, City Hall refused the Seaport Museum's requests for the same operating support it provided every other museum on city-owned property.

Meanwhile, the city's Economic Development Corporation, which manages the city's leases, gave the museum short shrift and prioritized the mall. Despite those handicaps, the Seaport Museum became one of the city's top three history museums.

Then came 9/11. The museum's income dried up for two years, and City Hall did little to help. By 2007, the museum was broke. Finally, in late 2011, the city's Department of Cultural Affairs coaxed the privately run Museum of the City of New York to step in, but the EDC refused to ease the 1981 lease or even repair the city-owned Schermerhorn Row after Superstorm Sandy. That forced the MCNY to quit its stewardship of the Seaport Museum in mid-2013.

On August 31, The Howard Hughes Corporation, which leases the Seaport's commercial space from the EDC, quietly submitted its redevelopment plans and shocked many in the community. While its proposed hotel overpowers the adjacent historic district and Brooklyn Bridge, HHC also wants to take over the museum's leased spaces.

Disappearing into today's media sinkhole, the Seaport Museum has been undermined by City Hall's onerous leases and discrimination, the mall's failed promises, and the EDC's misguided governance. Friends of the Seaport Museum, as well as many in the Downtown community, look to Mayor Bill de Blasio to put the Seaport Museum back into the discussion.

New York is a great port, and every great world port has a maritime museum. The question is, Will New York?

Professor of History at SUNY Plattsburgh, James M. Lindgren teaches and writes about historic preservation. His "Preserving South Street Seaport: The Dream and Reality of a New York Urban Renewal District" will be published by New York University Press in April 2014.

Fulton Street as it looked on Jan. 17, 2014. Landmarked Schermerhorn Row, dating from 1811-1812, is in the background. (Photo: Barbara Mensch)

An exhibit called "Compass: Folk Art in Four Directions" was one of the last at the South Street Seaport Museum before it was forced to close its Fulton Street galleries.  (Photo: Terese Loeb Kreuzer)