Vintage NYC Art Print — 1920s East River Ferry Terminal — New York Wall Decor

Before the tunnels, the river was the commute.

It is difficult now to imagine how completely ferries once ran New York. Before the Holland Tunnel opened in 1927 — the very year Tony Sarg drew this — the only way to move between New Jersey and Manhattan was over the water. The railroads that ended at the Hudson's western shore ran their own fleets to finish the journey, and the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad's ferries were among the busiest on the river: broad, low, double-ended wooden boats shuttling tens of thousands of commuters a day between Hoboken and Manhattan.

Sarg drew one of them at rest in its Manhattan slip, and he drew it the way he drew everything — from above, with affection, missing nothing.

The ferry sits between long rows of timber pilings worn round and pale by decades of dockings. Smoke curls from the black stack with its Lackawanna band. Lifeboats hang along the upper deck. On the lower deck the crowd is already aboard — and among the commuters at the bow, a team of horses waits patiently for the crossing, because in 1927 a Hudson ferry carried whatever showed up: passengers, wagons, automobiles, livestock, all sharing the same deck. A second ferry loads in the neighboring slip. Above it all run the great green arches of the viaduct, and in the lower right corner, a rowboat with a single figure putters past — the smallest vessel on the river sharing the frame with one of the largest.

The Holland Tunnel opened in November 1927. The George Washington Bridge followed in 1931, the Lincoln Tunnel in 1937. One by one the crossings made the ferries unnecessary, and in 1967 the last of the great Hudson railroad ferries stopped running. The slips rotted. The pilings still stand in places along the river, pale rows of teeth in the water, holding nothing.

Sarg drew this boat in the final season before the tunnel — the last moment when the river was still the only way across.

Reproduced from Tony Sarg's New York (1927), a folio of 24 color lithographs capturing the city at the height of the Jazz Age. Sarg — best known today as the father of modern puppetry and the creator of the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon floats — produced these illustrations as a love letter to a city that never stood still.

Available in 12x16 and 18x24. Printed on archival matte paper. Free shipping. Unframed.