Thursday, October 14, 2021 – BEFORE BRIDGES THESE WERE THE LIFELINES BETWEEN BOROUGHS
Here is the flyer and registration link.
https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2021/10/19/rihs-lecture-dead-queens
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2021
THE 494th EDITION
FERRIES ON THE
EAST RIVER
STEPHEN BLANK
Ferries on the East River
Stephen Blank
Today, we live in a veritable ferry-land. Ferries up and down the East River, ferries scuttling across the Hudson, ferries hauling tourists to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, Staten Island ferries. This ferry-abundance replaced a long ferry-drought. Here’s the story:
Throughout much of New York history, ferries were key to economic and social growth. Ferry service from New Amsterdam to Breuckelen dates back to the 1630s. The first ferry to New Jersey was founded in 1661. Ferries along the Harlem River, between uptown Manhattan and the Bronx, started in 1667, and a ferry to Staten Island began in 1712.
In 1904, 147 ferryboats operated on New York City waters. Then a wave of bridge and tunnel construction pushed development far into Brooklyn and Queens, diverting density from the waterfront. These new communities and business districts required land-based connections that ferries could not provide. The old ferry network became obsolete and the City began taking over failing services. By the 1920s, New York had an extensive municipal ferry system, backed by public investment in vessels and terminals. But it was shortlived; most of the routes lost their riders and the municipal network fragmented. In the 1960s, ferryboats disappeared from the East River, severing the oldest link between the boroughs. The last cross-Hudson ferry between Hoboken and Battery Park City) hung on to 1967 when it ceased operations.
“Fort Amsterdam about 1650”, NYPL Digital Collections
A little history
It all goes back to the Dutch – of course. The story is that in the early 1630s, Cornelius Dircksen, a farmer and owner of real estate at Peck Slip ran an informal ferry service to Breuckelen. If someone wanted to cross, they just had to blow on a horn hanging from a tree and Cornelius would do the deed. His landing on the Breuckelen side would become, of course, the future dock of the Fulton Ferry
Robert Fulton created the first steam ferry service across the East River in. In the early 1800s, and other Brooklyn businessmen competed for profitable routes to Lower Manhattan. By 1853, the Union Ferry Company of Brooklyn, the successor to Fulton’s business, consolidated control over the Brooklyn ferry business with 7 routes from Fulton Ferry to Hamilton Avenue and 40,000,000 annual passengers. And Brooklyn was home to the largest ferry company in the world. At the time the Brooklyn Bridge opened, there were at least 12 ferry routes in operation between Manhattan and Brooklyn, using 10 different ferry terminals in Brooklyn and 11 in Manhattan.
A ticket from the 1814 Fulton Ferry steamboat. The ferries carried both people and horse-drawn carriages and wagons. There were three cabins on the modern ferries of 1900. On the main deck, a cabin was provided for each sex. Most likely it wasn’t modesty that necessitated providing a women’s cabin, but rather the appetite for cigar smoking among men. It was taken as a given that women didn’t smoke. But if by chance a woman did, she could go to the unisex upper-deck cabin. Between the two main-deck cabins, an open area ran the length of the ferry. This is where horse-drawn vehicles made the voyage.
blog.robertbrucestewart.com/2013/08/crossing-new-york-by-ferry-in-1900.html
In the ferry-abundant second half of the 19th century, ferries streamed across the Hudson as well. Ferries moved people (passengers arriving by rail lines at their New Jersey Hudson River terminus and everyday commuters) and goods (from the same railroads). At one time, twenty passenger docks existed on the Manhattan side of the river.
In 1908, NYC ferryboats reported a total of 201,300,000 passenger rides. The ferry system was at its peak.
Ferries on the Hudson, ferries to Brooklyn. What about the rest of the East River?
This is the less told story. As settlements on what became Queens grew, so did ferry services, but ferries were never as dense as between Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. Early settlers transported grains, livestock, timber, and firewood across the river from Hallets Cove to New Amsterdam. The first passenger boats began operating in the 1700s from Hallets Cove to Hornes Hook—present-day 86th street—in Manhattan.
The Astoria Ferry
Peter Fitzsimmons began the first regular ferry service between Astoria and Manhattan in 1782. A fleet of row boats and sail boats would depart, at predetermined intervals, from a dock at Hallets Cove not far from what is now Socrates Sculpture Park. The fare was one shilling per person. When Stephen Halsey arrived in 1835, an overhaul of the ferry system was part of the sweeping changes he brought to Astoria. Halsey bought the ferry service, constructed new wharves at the foot of Astoria Boulevard on Hallets Point, and upgraded the boats being used to ship people to and from Manhattan. Soon, Astoria would become a refuge for wealthy New Yorkers’ “country” homes and a stop on the fast ferry route from South Street Seaport to Harlem, another center for New Yorkers of money.
In 1936, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia arranged to end the then city-operated ferry and transfer the land to the Triborough Authority to build a new approach to the Triborough Bridge. La Guardia finalized the plans for the turnover on July 15 but gave the ferry an additional sixty days to wind down operations while ferry riders found alternative ways across the East River. However, Robert Moses, who headed the Triborough Authority, didn’t want to wait that long. Long story short, on July 21, as the ferry Rockaway had pulled away from the terminal, Moses directed his contractor to tear the dock apart – even though passengers were waiting on the Manhattan side to return. At the last minute, La Guardia was able to get the police to stop the contractors from destroying the rest of the dock. That night, the city hastily rebuilt the damaged dock and ferry house. By morning, the Rockaway was back in service. But the Astoria ferry was over.
The Greenpoint Ferry
The first Greenpoint ferry dates from the 1830’s. The ferry was started by a Greenpoint carpenter, Alpheus Rollins. Neziah Bliss later established regular ferry service to Manhattan from Greenpoint around 1850, which is one of many changes that allowed for Greenpoint to become part of the City of Brooklyn in 1855. Bliss sold the ferry off to Sheppard Knapp, and the Knapp family ran the local ferry for many years.
On September 25, 1921, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that, after many years of running in the red, “the City of New York took over the ferry thanks in large part to the non-stop badgering of Alderman Pete McGuinness who so often berated Mayor Hylan that Hyland told him that the city would take over the ferry if Pete would only shut up. Amazingly, McGuinness did and the city began to run the ferry.” On February 12, 1933, the Greenpoint Ferry made its final run. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle tells us “Starting this morning, the East River Ferry is no more…” It would be part of a reorganized city ferry service. “The good thing about the new city-subsidized service,” the Daily Eagle stated, “is that fares are being slashed to $2.75 for a one-way ticket (formerly up to $6).” But it was gone.
The 34th Street Ferry
The ferry terminals at 34th St and James Slip both connecting with Long Island City at Hunters Point opened in 1858. When the Long Island Railroad moved from Brooklyn to Hunters Point, the ferry was linked to the LIRR. It closed down on in March 1925, after 67 years of East River crossings. The New York Times piece on the closing (March 4, 1925) focuses on the ferry skipper: “’Too slow for New York today,’ soliloquized Skipper Schow. ‘The ferryboats that were good enough for the late Theodore Roosevelt, Russell Sage, Charles Dana, August Belmont, William Whitney and William Vanderbilt, as they went to and fro between Manhattan and their Long Island homes, won’t do for the army of wage-earners riding nowadays from home to their work and back again. ‘T.R.’ and all the rest of them were satisfied with our speed then, but now even the hearse drivers complain when funerals cross the river.”
The Municipal Ferry Service
What about the Municipal Ferry Service? In 1905, the City of New York began a “progressive takeover of the ferry system” when it acquired the ferry route running between Whitehall Street (Manhattan) and Saint George (Staten Island) from the Staten Island Rapid Transit. By 1925, the New York City municipal ferry system had reached its pinnacle as it operated over a dozen routes that provided ferry service to all five boroughs and New Jersey. But the times had moved on. More bridges, better steel rail transportation and much greater use of automobiles doomed the project. Twenty years later, only one municipally-operated ferry route remained, the same route that it started with in 1905, the Staten Island Ferry.
So the ferry drought – except, as most of us saw as kids, the venerable Staten Island Ferry. And, now, ferry supreme. And our own dock.
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Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c)
Roosevelt Island Historical Society
unless otherwise indicated
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
Stephen Blank
RIHS
October 6, 2021
Sources
https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2015/02/new-yorks-first-ferry-service.html
https://greenpointers.com/2017/05/01/history-greenpoint-ferry/
http://blog.robertbrucestewart.com/2013/08/crossing-new-york-by-ferry-in-1900.html
https://www.takeawalknewyork.com/blog/robert-moses-and-the-demolition-of-the-astoria-ferry
https://www.archives.nyc/blog/2019/7/29/ferries
https://www.takeawalknewyork.com/blog/robert-moses-and-the-demolition-of-the-astoria-ferry
Stephen L. Meyers, Manhattan’s Lost Streetcars
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 25, 1921
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