The borough best known for the New York Yankees becomes the epicenter of the city's seafood industry this weekend, taking over after Friday's closing of the 183-year-old Fulton Fish Market in lower Manhattan -- a move that left ordinarily tough-guy workers feeling a bit misty.

The "changing of the cod" officially occurs Sunday night, when workers accustomed to peddling their wares beneath the Brooklyn Bridge head up the East River to the New Fulton Fish Market at Hunts Point. The new facility cost $85 million.

"Big guys ain't supposed to cry, but a part of old New York is dying here today," said Joey Centrone, one of the workers at the market before it closed for good on Friday. "I recognize this place is antiquated, but it's a part of us."

The original became one of New York's most colorful outposts after its Feb. 5, 1822, opening as a meat and vegetable market. The site on the East River was selected because of its proximity to the Fulton Ferry, which could reach Long Island's vegetable farmers.

Within a decade, fish peddlers began setting up their own space. Eventually, the fish trade took over and grew into the market where about $1 billion worth of seafood from around the world is sold annually.

The move from its historic location was inevitable. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration now requires that all fish be refrigerated indoors. At the Fulton market, workers loaded and unloaded the fish outdoors -- standing in the sweltering heat of the summer or the swirling snow of the winter. Their new home in the Bronx will stay at a climate-controlled 41.

For many of the fish market employees, this was the only place they had ever worked, watching the sun rise each weekday morning in the company of guys named Joey Tuna and Good Looking Anthony. Some were second-generation workers, like fish wholesaler Mark Rudes.

His father opened Beyer-Lightning 72 years ago. On Friday, he took down the sign with a tire iron as his wife and daughter took pictures.

"I thought this is the most disgusting place in the world," said the 56-year-old Rudes. "But I fell in love that first day and I never left."

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