New York Harbor Ferries

Historical Perspective

The era of regular and reliable New York and New Jersey ferry transportation dawned in the first decade of the 19th century following the development of steam powered vessels by Robert Fulton and Colonel John Stevens. For New York City, much of it surrounded by water and largely built on peninsulas and islands, the most important ferry routes linked Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and New Jersey to Manhattan. Many operations were owned by railroads, others by the city and some were private.

Then bridges, subways and vehicular tunnels were constructed, most ferry routes were abandoned, and by the 1960s, there were just a handful, and all but one had expired by November 1967. The 69th Street Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to St. George, Staten Island ferry closed down in November 1964 with the opening of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. The Central of Jersey ferry between Jersey City and Liberty Street, Manhattan went on April 25, 1967, and the diesel trains re-routed to Newark Penn Station and the electric lines into Penn Station Manhattan.

The Erie-Lackawanna ferry from Hoboken to Barclay Street Manhattan closed on November 22, 1967, and passengers for Manhattan then transferred to the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad that tunneled under the Hudson then along the uptown line to Christopher Street and stops north to 33rd Street/Herald Square or the downtown line to the Hudson Terminal. That left the St. George, Staten Island to Whitehall Street, Manhattan Ferry as the sole remaining public operation. The SI Ferry currently handles 70,000 daily passengers and 20 million on an annual basis.

Ferries were generally considered old-fashioned and obsolete, but then along came an entrepreneurial father and son - Arthur Imperatore and Arthur Imperatore, Jr. - who had bold new ideas. The family owned a successful trucking company and had acquired land below the New Jersey Palisades at Weehawken, the site of the former freight and passenger facilities for the New York Central’s West Shore Line. The NYC’s ferry to West 42nd Street closed down in 1959, and the car float operations, carrying box cars on barges to the West Side freight yards between 60th and 72nd Streets, wound down soon after.

With the decline of waterfront industries and cross-Hudson freight and passenger operations, nearly the entire New Jersey waterfront between Edgewater, just south of the George Washington Bridge, and Exchange Place, Jersey City became ripe for office, residential, and recreational development. To attract buyers and renters to the planned riverside real estate developments, the Imperatores saw the need to provide a convenient and attractive way to cross the river.

In 1986, the cross-Hudson ferry was reborn with a single route between Port Imperial, Weehawken and West 38th Street, Manhattan, in essence a revived New York Central midtown ferry. Then to get the passengers from the remote West Side waterfront to where most wanted to go, private ferry buses met every boat arrival and operated over several routes to midtown Manhattan between 57th and 34th Streets and soon downtown along West Street. Many commuters were bound for the financial district in Lower Manhattan, so a second route opened to the Battery Maritime Building next to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. With the PATH trains (former Hudson and Manhattan RR) woefully overcrowded during rush hours between Hoboken and the World Trade Center station, a ferry route was established between a new slip at the south end of the Hoboken Terminal and a pontoon landing at Battery Park City opposite the World Financial Center.

With many Lower Manhattan firms establishing offices directly across the Hudson in Jersey City, a route opened between Battery Park City and Exchange Place, landing between the Colgate clock and Harborside Terminal, redeveloped into offices.

The passenger mix began to broaden from riverside dwellers and regular commuters, who arrived at the New Jersey landings by train, bus, car and even on foot, to off-peak leisure riders bound for Manhattan to shop, dine and attend the theater, concerts and opera. At Port Imperial, Weehawken, there was ample space to lay out a vast parking lot and charge ferry patrons a moderate fee. With reliable connecting ferry bus services in Manhattan in place, ridership took off. To reflect the expansion beyond a single New Jersey terminal and a couple of Manhattan landings, the company changed its name from Port Imperial Ferry to NY Waterway.

The company then began sightseeing trips in the harbor, seasonal ferries to Sandy Hook Gateway National Recreation Area, and to Tarrytown for the Sleepy Hollow Restorations and Kykuit, the Rockefeller Estate, and baseball park bound boats from Wall Street to Yankee and Shea Stadiums returning to the East Side.

Then came the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001. On that one fateful day, NY Waterway ferries evacuated 160,000 people from Manhattan, no mean feat. The collapse of the World Trade Center towers badly damaged the PATH station in the basement, and the normal commute for tens of thousands between home and Manhattan was severed or severely disrupted. Many companies lost their offices and moved their employees elsewhere.

For a time, the NY Waterway’s Battery Park City terminal was temporarily closed, and a new route opened to Pier 11 at the foot of Wall Street on the East River and late in 2001 to a new covered pier between Pier A and the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island’s Battery Park ferry landing. The World Financial Terminal at Battery Park City reopened then received a larger brand-new terminal and Pier 11/Wall Street was greatly expanded. On the New Jersey side, there are now landings, beginning at the south end, at Port Liberte, Jersey City, located behind and to the south of Liberty Island; Liberty Harbor/Marin Blvd, near the former Jersey Central Terminal; Paulus Hook (formerly Colgate), south of Exchange Place; Newport (formerly Pavonia); Hoboken, south side of Hoboken Terminal; Hoboken 14th Street at north end of Hoboken; Lincoln Harbor, Weehawken, opposite the Lincoln Tunnel entrance; and Port Imperial, Weehawken.

NY Waterway ferries now carried about 60,000 passengers a day (up from 32,000 before 9-11) or ten million a year as of the end of 2001. The ferry and ferry bus services operate without a subsidy, but public funds were earmarked to expand ferry landings to handle the huge ridership increases. Of necessity, the fares are higher than the subsidized PATH trains and interstate buses, so patronage is largely higher income passengers attracted to comfort, convenience and in the case of the midtown routes, to the reliable connecting ferry bus services.

NY Waterway also operates a cross-Hudson route above New York and sightseeing services. Another firm, New York Water Taxi also entered the ferry scene also operating regular commuter routes and sightseeing services. Their canary yellow boats with a checkerboard stripe are easily recognizable as they dart around the harbor.

When the PATH system fully recovered and then the economy went into recession, NY Waterway found itself over expanded and its financial situation become precarious. On some routes, scheduled were cut back and on others, weekend service was suspended, while some services were cancelled altogether. Half the remaining routes were taken over by a new operator BillyBey Ferry Company, though all the ferries kept running under the NY Waterway label. The current situation is still shaky but services continue while ridership has dropped by half from its peak.

When the last Erie-Lackawanna ferries finished with engines in 1967, the remaining boats were 62 years old. They were traditional double-ended passenger and vehicle ferries with propellers at both ends. The NY Waterway and the New York Water Taxi fleets are modern, two-deck, bow-loading passenger ferries, either monohull or catamaran. The standard speed boats make 10-12 knots, sufficient for the shortest routes, up to craft capable of 35 knots and higher for the longer routes where high speeds are required to attract business. But the traditional design lives on with the huge double-ended Staten Island ferries and the smaller former Coast Guard ferries that serve Governors Island.

MORE HISTORIC NEW YORK FERRY PHOTOGRAPHS