The coronavirus pandemic has brought the NYC ferry back into vogue, and it hasn't lost its charm

If a hot tub can be a time machine – and Hollywood assures us it can – what about a ferry? 

Walt Whitman, for one, thought it could.

From the deck of a ferry crossing to Manhattan, 150 years ago, he addressed the readers of the future. "I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence," he wrote.

"Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt." 

What Whitman couldn't have known, when he wrote his poem "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" in 1856, is that the people of many generations hence would live in a bridge-and-tunnel world – one in which the experience of crossing to Manhattan on a ferry would be almost as unfamiliar, to the average citizen, as going to the ocean floor in a bathysphere. 

And what those people, of the mid- to late 20th century, couldn't have known is that the Manhattan ferry would make a spectacular comeback in the 21st. So that, ultimately, Walt Whitman was right.

Commuters, over the past 20-plus years, have rediscovered the ferry.

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"You can't beat it," said Jon Yasmer of Verona, who was making the crossing from Port Imperial, Weehawken, to West 39th Street in Manhattan on a recent Friday afternoon.

"It's a beautiful view, you get a nice breeze, and it's a way to relax on the water," Yasmer said. "And you get a bit of a suntan."

No traffic jams. No toll booths. Best of all, perhaps, the exhilarating sense – once familiar, then lost in the auto age – that Manhattan is an island, lapped by waves, roiled by currents, cooled by ocean breezes. The romance of the ferry is in the salt air, the spray, the incredible buildings seen from the water, as they loom closer. It is very much tied to the romance of New York.

"I love the view,"  said Annie Lowrie of Connecticut, shipping out on the same boat.  "It's a different perspective of the city, seeing it from the water rather than the street."

High tide

Cruising up and down city waterways, now, are dozens of ferries operated by several outfits.

The Manhattan, on which Yasmer and Lowrie were sailing, is one of many ferries that serve the "gold coast," North Jersey's affluent waterfront communities, courtesy of NY Waterway.

Another company, Hornblower, operates the ferries of NYC Ferry, the city agency that since 2015 has been shuttling New Yorkers within city precincts – uptown to downtown, east side to west side, and over to the Statue of Liberty. A third, New York Water Taxi has a regular shuttle – suspended now, because of COVID-19 – that goes from Wall Street's Pier 11 to Brooklyn's IKEA store. 

Then there's Seastreak, which operates longer routes from Atlantic Highlands (closed, temporarily, because of the pandemic) and Highlands in Monmouth County.

"It really changes your life when you switch over to the ferry," said Brett Chamberlain, director of marketing for Seastreak. "It's by far the most civilized commute in the area. Just feeling the breeze in your hair really changes your perspective on life." 

So, about COVID-19. It has hit the whole commuter industry hard, of course.

Seastreak, Chamberlain said, is operating at 10% to 20% normal capacity these days. NY Waterway, reduced to a single route in March, reopened on limited basis on June 29. It's operating at only about 7% capacity now, said Arthur Edward Imperatore Sr. of Fort Lee, founder and president of NY Waterway – the man who is credited, in the 1980s, with bringing New York's ferry system back from the dead.

He was optimistic then. He's optimistic now.

"We're gonna come back bigger and stronger than ever," said Imperatore, now 95. "We're gonna win."

Normally, NY Waterway averages 32,000 passengers a day, on 37 ferries it runs out of 10 New Jersey terminals. On this particular Friday midafternoon, there is only a smattering of passengers – which can't be explained entirely by the off-peak hours.  "Stay well – sit here," read stickers on the benches, indicating how far apart the passengers should sit. They were hardly necessary.

"It's been a problem with the COVID. It shut everything down," said captain Mike Baranok, who was guiding the ferry Manhattan into its slip in Weehawken after its run. 

Of course, in an age of masks and medical alerts, a small passenger list might be a selling point. So might an open-air top deck – as opposed to an enclosed, jammed subway or PATH car.

"Right now, it's not crowded, and it's always a beautiful ride, relaxing,"  said Laura Hamilton of North Bergen. "A nice way to break up the commute." 

COVID-19 aside, ferries have become a growth industry. This summer, South Amboy in Middlesex County was awarded a $5.3 million grant from the Federal Transit Administration for building a passenger ferry terminal. And ferries have been a hit with the public.

"The ridership of ferries has increased exponentially, year over year," said Karen Imas, vice president of programs for Waterfront Alliance, a regional advocacy organization.

Forward march?

Back to the future! Retrograde progress – going backward to move forward – seems to be a hallmark of our age. We invent nuclear power plants, and then discover that, after all, old-fashioned windmills might be better. We develop the CD – and then decide we prefer vinyl.

Now, after criss-crossing our waterways with suspension bridges and train tunnels, we seem to have gotten nostalgic for the old-school commute. Or perhaps, ferries make more sense – and bridges make less sense – than we thought.

"They're coming back because of the ease of commute," said Cortney Worrall, president and CEO of Waterfront Alliance. "And they provide a highly pleasurable means of travel."

The tale of the rise, fall, and rise of the New York ferry is older than New York itself. The city was still "New Amsterdam" when the first ferry began plying between Manhattan island and what is now Brooklyn in 1642. 

By 1661, New Jersey got its first ferry: it shuttled between Communipaw (Jersey City) and Manhattan. The Staten Island Ferry launched in 1712. By 1904, 147 ferries were operating in and around New York.

Most of them were run by the railroad companies. In those pre-tunnel days, any multi-state commute necessarily ended where New Jersey did – and resumed on the other side of the Hudson. 

Which explains why the train bearing the body of President Abraham Lincoln from Washington, D.C., to Springfield, Illinois, in 1865 had to grind to a halt in Jersey City – so Lincoln's body could be taken across the river by ferry. Locals made the most of the pit stop.

"There were large crowds at the train station, and in the street." Dennis Doran, historian and former president of the Lincoln Association of Jersey City, told The Record in 2015. "They put the coffin in a specially prepared funeral wagon, very elaborate, and it was pulled by horses up and down Montgomery Street, so that people could view it."

Ferries shaped their age, in ways that were not always apparent at the time.

The classic example, for this area, is Palisades Amusement Park in Fort Lee – still mourned by several generations of North Jerseyans. 

From the moment it opened in 1898, its fortunes were tied to the ferry. "Opposite W. 130th St. Ferry, New York" boasted a 1909 poster. Once the George Washington Bridge started bringing masses of car traffic to the attraction, starting in 1931, the neighbors began to complain, and the park's days were numbered. It closed in 1971. The ferry – though no one realized it then – had served as a sort of safety valve, regulating the flow of people into the area.

"The parks on the Jersey side, that gave people the opportunity to have that greenery and open space, were largely accessed by ferry," Imas said. "On the weekends, the ferries were at capacity very early in the day – and they only ran a handful. All these people would turn around disappointed, because the ferries had maxed out, and they couldn't have their day in the outdoors."

Decline and fall

But from the moment the Hudson tubes began letting train traffic into Penn Station in 1910, followed by the Holland Tunnel opening up to automobiles in 1927, the ferries were living on borrowed time. The George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln Tunnel (1937) appeared to be the last nails in the coffin. 

By the time the classic film "Citizen Kane" came out – 1941 –  the New York ferry already seemed like a sad, ghostly emblem of the past. "One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry," says "Kane's" old Mr. Bernstein, speaking in the very shadow of the George Washington Bridge. "On it, there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on – and she was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all. But I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl."

Along the river, old piers rotted, old ferries went to seed. One, the Mary Murray, lay derelict for years on the Raritan River near exit 9 of the New Jersey Turnpike – a wistful landmark. The Staten Island Ferry survived – the classic double-ended ferry, with dual wheelhouses, that could shuttle back and forth without having to turn around. But it was very much an anachronism. 

Enter Arthur Edward Imperatore Sr. – the man who put a defibrillator to New York's ferry business, and shocked it back to life.

"A lot of it was luck and a lot of it was good thinking," Imperatore said. "I could see that the river was underutilized. All rivers – the East River, the Hudson River. To me, it was very simple."

He's old enough to have experienced the Hudson ferries the first time around. "I knew about the ferry from when I was a kid," said Imperatore, a West New York native. "When we were kids, we used to sneak on the ferry, then walk to the subway. It was a nickel subway fare to get to Yankee Stadium."

Years later, in 1981, he purchased more than two miles of waterfront property, between Weehawken and West New York, for a paltry $7.5 million – rotting, abandoned rail yards that were of a piece with so much of the decaying infrastructure along the Jersey waterfront. His hunch was that it could be turned into valuable residential property – especially with that view of the Manhattan skyline. But first, it had to be made commuter-friendly.

Many happy returns

On Dec. 6, 1986, the Hudson saw something it had not seen in decades. A ferry, departing from a slip in Weehawken, headed for Manhattan.

The Port Imperial, as his first vessel was called, had a capacity for 100 passengers. On that first run were five or six people. "Arthur's Folly," people called it.

But as the old Gershwin song points out, they all laughed at Edison, too. "The congestion was choking the city," Imperatore said. "This was just common sense."

That first terminal, itself made from the carcass of an abandoned ferry, was on the site of the Weehawken ferry slip he remembered as a child. It's about 200 yards south of the one that is currently at Port Imperial, built in 2005 to accommodate the bigger crowds –  and the bigger boats. The new ferries in his fleet could carry as many as 400. And they were needed.

"Arthur's Folly" eventually multiplied into some three dozen boats, plus a fleet of 80 buses, on both sides of the river, to transport commuters to major destinations. And the derelict waterfront that Imperatore had bet on mushroomed into luxury condos, retail and amenities. The ferry hubs multiplied: two in Weehawken, two in Hoboken, four in Jersey City, and others in Edgewater in Bergen County, and Belford in Monmouth. Ferries made the "gold coast" possible, just as piped-in water made Los Angeles possible.

Imperatore is proud of his fleet. Prouder still when it makes news – as it does from time to time – as a rescue squadron. When Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger's famous Flight 1549 went down over the Hudson in 2009, it was a NY Waterway ferry that was first on the scene. "I got the call, I gave the order," Imperatore said.

That's another good case for ferries. "There is an argument to be made that ferries are an essential form of transportation in a time of emergency," Worrall said. "They can move people and goods during a time of crisis."

But the best argument for the ferries may still be Walt Whitman's.

They connect us to the past, and the future. And they connect us to our surroundings –  in a way that bridges and tunnels can't. Ferries take us over water. But they also ground us.

"They remind us that we are a region of islands and shorelines," Imas said. "They give us a different perspective on our geography and our communities, our open space and our outdoors. They are a way to reengage with the region. New York is a harbor city. New Jersey is a harbor state."

Take the ferry

Ferry schedules are necessarily fluid, given the COVID pandemic. Best to check out the latest information at the following websites:

• New York Waterway (North Jersey to New York): nywaterway.com
• New York City Ferry (New York to New York): ferry.nyc
• Seastreak (Jersey Coast to New York): seastreak.com
• New York Water Taxi (Brooklyn to New York): nywatertaxi.com
• Staten Island Ferry (Staten Island to New York): siferry.com

Jim Beckerman is an entertainment and culture reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to his insightful reports about how you spend your leisure time, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: beckerman@northjersey.com Twitter: @jimbeckerman1