Before the Whitehall Terminal was built, ferry service in
New York Harbor was provided as early as the 1700s by individuals (and later private companies) with their own boats. This included a ferry service from
South Ferry, Manhattan, to
St. George, Staten Island, which started operating in 1816. The route was operated by the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's
Staten Island Railway after 1860. After four passengers died when a Staten Island ferry sank in 1901, New York City officials used the incident as a justification for their acquisition of the ferry lines to Staten Island. The B&O refused to sell their terminals to the city, prompting municipal officials to announce in 1904 that they would acquire the sites through
eminent domain.
Municipal Ferry Terminal Ferry lines from Manhattan to Staten Island began operating under the municipal authority of the Department of Docks and Ferries on October 25, 1905, seven years after the
City of Greater New York was established. New Jersey ferries were banned from South Ferry, so ferries from
Communipaw Terminal in
Jersey City were re-routed to the
Liberty Street Ferry Terminal in lower Manhattan. The following year, the city government acquired another route, which ran from South Ferry to 39th Street in
South Brooklyn (now the neighborhood of
Sunset Park in
Brooklyn). Under mayor
George McClellan, the city sought to build a new terminal for both routes. The existing terminals at South Ferry were independently operated, with two slips for ferries to Staten Island and two slips for ferries to Brooklyn. Slips 1 and 2 would serve municipal ferries to
St. George Terminal on Staten Island. Slips 5, 6, and 7 of the still-extant South Street Ferry Terminal (now the
Battery Maritime Building) were served by municipal ferries traveling to 39th Street in Brooklyn. Slips 3 and 4 were to serve ferries from both Staten Island and South Brooklyn. The three sections were designed to be independent of each other but visually identical in style. The original seven-slip complex was never completed as designed. The Staten Island and Brooklyn municipal ferry terminals were separated by the Union Ferry Company's smaller terminal, which was used for their Brooklyn routes to Atlantic Avenue and Hamilton Avenue. The second story had a direct connection to the
South Ferry elevated train station, the Union Ferry Terminal, and the municipal ferry terminal to Brooklyn. Plans for the terminal were approved by the city's Municipal Art Commission in July 1906. The westernmost Staten Island ferry slip burned down in December 1906, along with several temporary buildings nearby. Walker and Morris's plans were approved in February 1907, and a budget of $1.75 million was allotted to the work. Work started on the Brooklyn ferry slips first, followed by the Staten Island ferry slips in 1908. As built, the Staten Island Ferry terminal occupied slips 1 through 2. Starting in 1914, ferry passengers could transfer to
New York Railways Company streetcars at the Whitehall Terminal for free, but this privilege was canceled in 1919. In July of that year, a fire on the South Ferry elevated station damaged slips 1 and 2. The city took over the Atlantic and Hamilton Avenue ferry lines from the
Union Ferry Company in 1922. As part of the takeover, the two ferry lines were relocated from Union Ferry's Whitehall Street slips to the municipally operated South Street ferry slips. The old ferryhouse and slips 3 and 4 were then replaced with a utilitarian structure, which became slip 3 of the Staten Island Ferry terminal.
Second terminal After World War II, subways replaced the els, and cars began to travel through bridges and tunnels such as the
Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. By the early 1950s, the St. George–Whitehall and St. George–69th Street, Bay Ridge ferries were the only routes that still operated as part of the city's once-extensive ferry network.
Design and construction In 1951, Manhattan borough president
Robert F. Wagner Jr. asked the
New York City Planning Commission to provide $132,000 for a footbridge between the terminal and Battery Park, crossing over West Street. The following August, the
New York City Board of Estimate awarded a contract to Roberts & Schaefer for a renovation of the terminal.
New York City Department of Marine and Aviation consulting engineer John M. Buckley, chief engineer Lewis H. Radbage, and deputy chief engineer Emil A. Verpillot were also involved in the construction of the new terminal. Marine and Aviation commissioner Edward F. Cavanagh Jr. announced plans for the terminal in January 1953. The existing ground-level waiting room would be relocated, and the second-story waiting room would be linked with the Battery Maritime Building. By the end of that year, the new slips had been completed, and work had started on the building itself. The second terminal reused some of the original 1906 building's steel framework, but the older building was otherwise completely demolished. Escalators led from the street to the waiting room, which could accommodate 3,200 people.
Operation The NYCTA decided in early 1959 to overhaul the adjacent South Ferry subway station, adding a wide stairway that connected with one of the terminal's entrance ramps. The St. George–Whitehall ferry route continued to operate after the
Verrazzano–Narrows Bridge opened in 1964, as the bridge's opening was expected to spur an influx of residents to Staten Island. By 1967, the St. George–Whitehall route was the sole remaining ferry route in New York City. As early as 1972, city officials proposed replacing the St. George and Whitehall terminals with facilities that contained six slips, although officials did not plan to rebuild either terminal until 2000. After hundreds of ferry passengers were injured in a 1978 ferry collision, the Department of Marine Aviation upgraded the terminal's fog-lighting system. In January 1980, city officials began adding elevators and escalators to the Whitehall Terminal as part of a $5.75 million modernization program for the Staten Island Ferry. The federal government funded about 75 percent of the project's cost, while the state paid 20 percent and the city paid 5 percent. As part of the renovation, officials planned to add stores to the Whitehall Terminal. They relocated turnstiles and demolished a concession stand at the center of the terminal, allowing visitors to shop without having to pay fares. City officials formally opened the first store in the terminal, a cookie shop, in June 1981. The city government announced plans in 1985 to sell the Whitehall Terminal as part of the
South Ferry Plaza project. The Whitehall Terminal would be replaced, and the developer would restore the adjacent Battery Maritime Building, an official city landmark that could not be demolished. City officials received proposals from seven developers in August 1985. An eighth plan had been submitted by the end of that year. The
Zeckendorf Company was selected in July 1986 to develop a 60-story tower above the Whitehall Terminal at a cost of about $400 million. The city government would retain ownership of the terminals and lease the site to Zeckendorf for 99 years. Several city agencies had to approve the plans for South Ferry Plaza, so construction could not start for another two years.
KG Land was also a partner in the development project. The terminal was to be extended into New York Harbor, and new
pilings would be constructed to support the weight of the office tower. After the
Williamsburg Bridge was closed for emergency repairs in April 1988, ferries to
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, were temporarily operated from Whitehall Terminal. The South Ferry Plaza plan had stalled by late 1990. South Ferry Plaza was canceled in January 1991 due to a decline in the real estate market, and the terminal's renovation was delayed as a result.
New terminal Fire and early plans (right)The Whitehall Terminal's ceiling and roof were gutted by a major fire on September 8, 1991, rendering it unusable. City officials deemed the fire suspicious, citing the fact that the fire had spread quickly. The city saw an opportunity to rebuild the terminal, In May 1992, the
New York City Economic Development Corporation held an international
architectural design competition for a replacement facility. The same month, Congress proposed allocating federal funds for the project. The EDC selected six finalists that August:
Venturi Scott Brown,
Rafael Vinoly,
Aldo Rossi,
Polshek Partnership,
Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates and
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The next month, city officials also announced that they would permanently ban vehicles from the Staten Island Ferry to reduce vehicular congestion at the rebuilt terminal. New York state officials proposed a bond issue that would have provided $80 million for the Whitehall Terminal's reconstruction, but state residents voted against the bond issue in November 1992. A partnership of Venturi Scott Brown and
Anderson/Schwartz Architects was selected to redesign the Whitehall Terminal on November 6, 1992. The winning design featured a
barrel-vaulted waiting room similar in size to
Grand Central Terminal's
Main Concourse. which would have contained the
largest clock faces in the world, measuring . The clock received criticism from such figures as Staten Island borough president
Guy Molinari and architectural critic
Herbert Muschamp. After
Rudy Giuliani won the
1993 New York City mayoral election, he reversed the decision to ban cars from the rebuilt Whitehall Terminal, which not only raised the cost by $500,000 The decision was influenced by the fact that Molinari was the chair of the
United States House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Congress allocated another $3.6 million to the Whitehall Terminal project in November 1995, and another $2.5 million was included in the Transportation Appropriations Act for fiscal year 1996. Venturi Scott Brown subsequently redesigned the terminal, removing the planned clock and adding windows facing Lower Manhattan and a large indoor
LED display. In mid-1995, Venturi Scott Brown presented a revised proposal, which was publicly nicknamed the "zipper" because the plan included an electronic sign along New York Harbor. This proposal was also poorly received; Guy Molinari referred to it as "Las Vegas on the Manhattan waterfront". The architects presented a third proposal in September 1996, which called for a glass wall on the harbor and a glass entrance facing inland.
Revised design Frederic Schwartz of Anderson/Schwartz Architects presented a new design for the terminal in early 1997. The design called for a structure with a entry hall, as well as a waiting room overlooking the New York Harbor, which was to be 50 percent larger than the original waiting room. a long sinuous canopy on the street side with the words "Staten Island Ferry" on it, As part of the project, Peter Minuit Plaza would be constructed outside the terminal, replacing five small traffic islands. providing $40 million for the reconstruction of the Whitehall Terminal. By mid-1999, several members of Congress were considering withdrawing $12 million in federal funding because of repeated delays. City officials still had not made any public announcement about the new terminal ever since Anderson/Schwartz's plans had been announced two years prior. When the NYCDOT started soliciting bids for construction contractors in 2000, the project was set to cost $150 million. Construction on the project officially started on September 26, 2000. By then, the cost of the project had increased to $180 million because of engineers, architects, and contractors' fees. This was part of a larger plan for the Staten Island Ferry, which was to cost over $400 million. Two factors complicated construction of the new terminal. The NYCDOT required that two of the terminal's three ferry slips remain open during construction, so the terminal had to be rebuilt in phases. Furthermore, the terminal was also built over the
Battery Park Underpass and three subway tunnels, so a foundation for the terminal was built underground. As a result of the
Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002, all vehicular traffic on the ferry was banned in 2003, and passengers were required to board and depart from different sections of the ferry. Passengers departed from the terminal's lower level, which required boarding passengers to use the upper level. The St. George Terminal, at the other end of the route, was being rebuilt at the same time; by 2004, the costs of the two projects had increased by a combined $160 million. The final cost of the terminal's renovation had increased to $200 million, in part because of security and insurance costs related to the September 11 attacks. and it also installed spikes to deter pigeons, which frequently flew inside the terminal. The department also had trouble attracting tenants to the retail space at the terminal, which only had two tenants in the two years after it was completed. Following the completion of the new
South Ferry station under the Whitehall Terminal in 2009,
MTA Capital Construction rebuilt
Peter Minuit Plaza outside the ferry terminal, which reopened in 2011. The
United States Department of Transportation provided $2 million in 2010 for the renovation of the substructure underneath the Whitehall Terminal's slips. The upper level of the terminal contained a simulator that was used for training ferry captains. City officials installed Wi-Fi at the Whitehall Terminal in 2013 as part of a pilot program. After a controversy over the lack of electric outlets at the terminal, city officials installed
USB charging ports there in 2016. The lower levels of both Staten Island Ferry terminals were reopened in 2017 to reduce crowding on the ships' upper levels. The St. George Terminal's lower level was opened during the morning rush, and the Whitehall Terminal's lower level was opened during middays and the evening rush. ==Description==