The 92nd Street Ferryhouse (1920-1936)

December 18, 2024
by Theo Harrison

92nd Street Ferryhouse, 1920s. Courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Archives

Manhattan is an island city. Its an interesting thought, considering what’s left of the island to see.  Once a shifting tidal landscape , the vast majority of the city’s shoreline has been engineered.   The river’s edge pinches at bulkheads and slides under concrete expressways. Many of the activities that unfold along the waterfront are isolated from public life.  What remains of our waterfront are fragments, where access feels more like an exception than the rule.

United Nations Building (Above)
East River Drive Triborough Bridge Marker  (Below)   It’s easy to forget this from afar. Seeing these fragments align as a single, crisp edge is unforgettable. As urban forms have come to be characterized by sprawl, there is an incredible power to the abruptness of Manhattan’s containing. 

From the upper deck of the Astoria Ferry, the city stands above the water like an oil rig. It seems almost to have grown up from under the surface, or been lifted down from the sky.  The Astoria Ferry begins at Wall Street, climbing up the East River to its Northern terminus, a dock on E. 90th Street. Commuters disembark here onto a narrow boardwalk path sandwiched between the East River and FDR Drive. 
A few paces up from the ferry dock, a stone monolith sits on the grass with its back turned. It's rather morose looking, like a large tombstone. It is blank on the three sides facing the water, with an inscription only visible to drivers on the expressway:  “EAST RIVER DRIVE. TRIBOROUGH BRIDGE APPROACH”.  The marker memorializes a birth and a death: it sits on the bones of the original Northern terminus to the Astoria Ferry, the Old 92nd Street Ferryhouse, demolished nearly 100 years ago. 

In 1936, the Astoria Ferry was named the Rockaway, and it ran every 20 minutes across the river. A round trip cost 5 cents.  In July of that year, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia gave Rockaway commuters 60 days to find other means of transportation. He had agreed to turn over the land to the Triborough Bridge Authority to develop an expressway. The expressway would cost 10x the price. Commuters pleaded with the city to save the service. But the Mayor didn’t have much of a choice. Just four days earlier, he watched a miracle occur upriver.   

Alongside President Roosevelt and Robert Moses, LaGuardia saw the first parade of vehicles pass over the Triborough Bridge. The Triborough Bridge Project was really four bridges, connecting Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens. It’s difficult to express the scale of the project by any comparison, it a colossal traffic machine, on top of an unbelievable feat of human coordination. Its construction commanded 31 million hours of labor, and enough steel cabling to wrap the world twice. Consider that this was achieved in the depths of the depression- an extraordinary affirmation of the government as a solution-provider. 

Mayor LaGuardia’s reputation as an effective public official had never been more secure, but it was fastened tightly to that of Moses. Unparalelled in his ability to deliver projects, Moses was indispensable, but loyal to no one. When the Mayor asked Moses to allow the Rockaway ferry service 60 days, Moses decided to fastrack construction for the bridge’s approach himself.

July 11th, 1936. Opening Day of the Triborough Bridge
Triborough Bridge & Tunnel Authority Archive. (Right)

 

New York Times’ coverage of the repair of the Ferryhouse

On the afternoon of July 21st, the unwitting Rockaway pulled away from the 92nd Street Ferryhouse for another round trip. In its empty slip, two barges attached themselves to the dock. One contained a pile driver; the other, a wrecking crane. To the amazement of anyone in eyeshot, contractors began to destroy the active dock, effectively stranding hundreds of commuters with no way to return home across the river. On the street side of the Ferryhouse, a group of workmen plucked away at the cobblestones, severing the building on both sides.

LaGuardia’s first solution was to offer Moses a shortening of the 60-day waiting period. Moses refused to call off the work. LaGuardia ordered a squad of policemen to the Ferryhouse. After their arrival, contractors continued to demolish the building. Moses had amassed so much power as head of the Bridge Authority, the prospect of disloyalty to him was more threatening than the police about to enter the job site. LaGuardia eventually realized the contractors wouldn’t quit, and ordered the policemen to seize the Ferry House. Contractors were dragged out of the building with tools in their hands. 


A fleet of city workers spent the night to repair the building. By the morning, the Rockaway resumed service. But the victory was short-lived: just 14 days later, as the story slipped from headlines, LaGuardia quietly handed over the land to Moses. An accordion soundtracked the Rockaway’s final crossing, with commuters singing the song “Where Do We Go From Here?”. As the boat sailed away to be laid up, it sounded out three farewell whistles. Moses’s crew had already returned, destroying the dock once again. 

The Astoria ferry was resurrected in 2017, as part of a broader government push to reconnect the waterfront. It coasts on likeability, highly subsidized by city taxpayers. But some argue for it as an investment to reconnect a economically disparate city.  

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