The Brief Life of a Fanciful Building

Our photo of the week features the Fulton Ferry House that once stood where Old Fulton Street met the water’s edge in Brooklyn Heights, one in a series of ferry buildings on that site. One of the handsomest depictions of this building is paired in the Eagle photographs with an earlier Brooklyn ferry house, built sometime before 1746. The early view is adapted from an engraving in Stiles’ … history … of Brooklyn, N. Y. from 1683 to 1884. Stiles is not clear on the exact location of that earlier building. Another building on the site, one that immediately preceded the ornate last ferry house, is a more modest structure with one elegant tower presiding over several shorter sheds. We can see it here from two vantage points.

According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Fulton Ferry House of old a busy spot, May 2, 1930, main ed. p. 21) in the years following the Civil War Lower Fulton Street was a bustling commercial hub. It was the origin of many horse-car lines, and the street was lined with retail and wholesale stores. The publication office of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle was a block up from the ferry and newsboys hawked papers up and down the street. The article quotes Henry Ward Beecher, who, when asked how to reach Plymouth Church said, “Cross the Fulton Ferry on Sunday morning about 9 o’clock and follow the crowd.” That stretch of Old Fulton Street was later lost where it crosses Cadman Plaza and became the pedestrian esplanade in front of Borough Hall.

Construction controversy

The last Fulton Ferry House, a Queen Anne extravaganza, was completed in 1871 and promised to serve an eager and thriving neighborhood, but elicited controversy as well.

Despite regulations at the time prohibiting wood construction, the Union Ferry Company, by then a consolidation of several different ferries, planned a wooden building. The company argued that a wrought iron building would be damaged by waste and salt from the river, citing the failure of a ferry structure on the New York side. For some reason they bypassed the idea of stone or brick. The author of another 1871 article (The Fulton Ferry House encroachment, BDE, Sept. 6, 1871, p. 2) was skeptical of these arguments and ventured that the company simply didn’t want to incur the cost of more substantial materials.

The city did grant permission and Union Ferry proceeded to build its wooden structure, encroaching significantly on a city street. The Street Commissioner in response threatened to tear it down. After some months of acrimony the city and Union Ferry must have come to some agreement because the building was allowed to remain.

It is possible the looming Brooklyn Bridge, already started when the ferry house was being proposed, may have dissuaded the Union Ferry Company from investing in a costly structure. In hindsight we can see the bridge did shorten the useful life of the ferry house, but it appears from an article in the Eagle (The new Fulton Ferry House, May 20, 1871, p. 4) that eventuality was not well forseen:

If the choice of material was influenced by the fear that the East River bridge would prejudice the ferry, it was scarcely well founded. The increase of population will afford good dividends for both.

The increase in population did lead to very heavy traffic - on the bridge.

With the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883 the two cities became accessible to each other by foot, horse, then cable car, trolley, and then cars and rail. So heavy was the crowding the bridge was closed for some time to vehicles in 1922 due to structural concerns. Apparently those travelers didn’t reroute to the ferry. Ferry travel around the city waned steadily in the early 20th century, but it is unclear whether that was for reasons of infrastructure neglect or a change in commuting preferences.

Fire

The wooden structure lasted a little over 50 years but in the end, as feared, proved vulnerable to fire. A small fire was reported in 1910, and a much larger one in 1919. [Fire in historic ferry structure, Standard Union, April, 10, 1919]. That article I take with a grain of salt because it states the Fulton Ferry House was built in 1865. Either the author is referencing a different ferry house, or the wrong construction date. It did recount that the blaze was fierce enough to gut the roof and upper floors holding old records of the ferry company and other materials. My archivist’s heart sank to read that.

The days of the Ferry House were numbered. The Union was the last ferry to make a its run in January of 1924. The statue of Robert Fulton, which had presided in a niche in the building overlooking the river since October 14, 1872, was taken down and put in storage and the building was closed. On October, 8, 1925 the structure suffered the fire that led to its demolition in March, 1926.

After some years in storage the original zinc statue of Fulton was repaired and now resides at the Brooklyn Museum, while a sturdy bronze replica presides in Fulton Park in the heart of Stuyvesant Heights, 3.5 miles from its original home.

The Union Ferry Company may have made the right decision from an economic perspective. The elegant structure managed to grace the water’s edge for half a century until ferry travel was no longer profitable, but sadly it disappeared before New York became a city that strives to save its landmarks.

Interested in seeing more photos from CBH’s collection? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images, or the digital collections portal at Brooklyn Public Library. We look forward to inviting you to CBH in the future to research in our entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections. In the meantime, please visit our resources page, available here or access the resources of the former Brooklyn Collection here. Our reference staff are still available to help with your research! You can reach us at cbhreference@bklynlibrary.org.