 |
 |
 |
|
FERRY, CENTRAL RAILROAD
OF NEW JERSEY (2) FERRY, CENTRAL RAILROAD
OF NEW JERSEY By 1925, the East River bridges had eliminated ferry service to Brooklyn and Queens, but the ferries continued to serve New Jersey commuters until the 1960s. On the Manhattan side, ferry slips were interspersed among the Hudson River piers. The Jersey Central Railroad ferry, which ran between Communipaw, New Jersey, and Liberty Street, operated for over a century, from 1864 to 1967. This terminal, designed by the railroad's chief engineer, Joseph O. Osgood, was completed in 1909. Abbott photographed the terminal in 1936 and again in 1938. In the first photograph, she stood across West Street just north of the Liberty Street pedestrian bridge, which allowed commuters to rush to the ferry without confronting the street's heavy traffic. The strict symmetry of the terminal facade is harshly broken by the bridge, which fills the photograph's left side. Abbott printed this negative two ways. The full negative is composed vertically, with the cobblestones of West Street filling the foreground (Abbott File 160). In a cropped version, Abbott eliminated the foreground, making a horizontal composition and drawing attention to the taxis, newsstand, and food vendor beneath the grand entry way and covered bridge (Abbott File 294). When Abbott returned in 1938, she stood south of the pedestrian bridge and photographed the terminal and the bulkhead sheds to the north (Abbott File 294). The two treatments of the pedestrian bridge illustrate the effects of different lenses: the long lens of the earlier photograph foreshortened the bridge, and the wide-angle lens of the later photograph elongated it. The later photograph was taken shortly before the bridge was torn down to make way for the elevated West Side Express Highway. The site of the piers and ferry slips across from Liberty Street is now occupied by Battery Park City's World Financial Center. A pedestrian bridge at Liberty Street (1985) connected the World Trade Center (1970s) on the east side of West Street with the World Financial Center (1980s) on the west. In 1989, New York Waterways initiated ferry service from Battery Park City to Hoboken, New Jersey. Return to the Lower West Side |