North River
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This article refers to the North River, the lower section of the Hudson. For other meanings, see North River (disambiguation)
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North River describes the southernmost portion of the Hudson River, between the states of New Jersey and New York in the United States of America.
The origin of the name North River is generally attributed to the Dutch, in describing the names of the rivers in their American Nieuw Nederland colony as designating what is now the Hudson as the North River, and the Delaware as the South River.
Another story of its origin, much less circulated, has it that the earliest explorers, observing the two large streams joining at the tip of Manhattan Island, designated one the "North" River and the other the "East" River, based on their observed geographical directions from New York Harbor.
In modern commercial usage, however, the North River is the part of the river from the Hudson River's mouth to approximately the "bend" where the Hudson River turns from south-southwest to south at about 30th Street in Manhattan, and near the northern boundary of Hoboken, New Jersey. The piers in Manhattan below this point were known as North River piers and were designated in shipping notices as (for example) "Pier 14, N.R."
Hagstrom Company maps, generally considered the standard in the New York Metropolitan Area, formerly designated this lower part of the Hudson as North River and above that as Hudson River. Recent editions of these maps following the acquisition of Hagstrom by the Langenschedit Publishing Group omit the North River name, which has somewhat fallen out of usage with the decline and abandonment of the shipping piers in lower Manhattan and Hoboken.