nuisance action for damages for the diminution in value of his
adjacent land. The Court ruled that the Act of 1745 did not
justify interference with Harrison's access to navigable water.122

A settlement was reached following the litigation. Harrison
agreed to release his claim to damages in return for Sterett's
vacation of the site. Soon thereafter the properties passed into
the hands Sterett's Presbyterian co-religionists, Col. Samuel
Smith and William Spear who by -1780 developed on the site two
wharves projecting two hundred feet out into the basin from Water
Street123 (Figure 14) .

Larger projects were to follow in the 1780's. The Scotch-
Irish "Mafia" was cornering the market on the waterfront. At the
southeast corner of Water and Commerce streets Samuel Purviance
built a wharf that served his distillery. William Spear extended
his wharf one thousand feet out to a small island where he
erected a bakery. Daniel Bowley placed his dock at the foot of
South Street. And Col. Sam Smith, built two, one thousand-feet -
long wharves out into the basin. Gradually fill was placed
between the land ends of the wharves. Tree trunks were used, and
when the tide fell it exposed a slime that gave off foul-smelling
vapors. A causeway took Water Street across the Falls. And the
waterfront moved a block south to the newly extended Pratt
Street, which ran an east-west route124 (see Figure 15) .

When Thomas Harrison died in 1782 he left the land bordering
the mouth of the Falls, still undeveloped and still a nuisance.
But economic conditions had changed; the marsh was now ripe for

47