Now the future of the historic waterfront, which docked the world's first steamboat and once teemed with 10,000 jobs, is again an open question.

It once teemed with fish, but they have mostly disappeared from its murky waters.

Manhattan once teemed with Southern restaurants serving fried chicken, biscuits, baked Virginia ham and coconut cake.

It is known from historical documents that the local stream, the Unnerbach, once teemed with fish.

The mummies were much valued on the black market, and fashionable 19th-century salons once teemed with guests eager to witness an unwrapping.

Lake Ontario once teemed with landlocked Atlantic salmon, but they were obliterated by the building of dams on their spawning streams.

Waters that once teemed with sea people were now almost barren.

The cinema once teemed with cads.

A dozen blocks south of the park on Halsey Street, a low-rise neighborhood that once teemed with small shops now is largely forlorn after nightfall.

And the streets teem with hipsters the way they once teemed with Jewish immigrants.