[URBAN NOTE] "How a Ferry Ride Helped Make Brooklyn the Original Suburb"

[rfmcdonald]

Sam Roberts of The New York Times recently described how an early ferry made Brooklyn the United States' first commuters' suburb.

This much is known about the maiden voyage of the Nassau: The twin-hulled boat carried 549 passengers, one wagon and three horses. It was captained by Peter Coffee, who would remain with the company that operated the vessel for 50 years.

Though Lewis Rhoda, the chief engineer, got tangled in the machinery and was killed on the first day, “this noble boat surpassed expectations of the public in the rapidity of her movements” as those on board glided across the unpredictable river as gracefully as if they were “passing over a bridge,” a newspaper account at the time said.

What is unknown is the name of the first passenger — the man (and chances are it was a man) who on May 10, 1814, boarded the Nassau, the first regularly scheduled steam-powered ferry from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Whoever he was, he can justly be called America’s first commuter.

Since then, for fully two centuries, millions of his fellow travelers have arrived by bridge, railroad, trolley, elevated train, subway, automobile, bus, helicopter, bicycle and, more recently, by revived ferry service in the diurnal ebb and flow that arguably transformed Brooklyn Heights into the nation’s first suburb, gave New York City what E. B. White described as its “tidal restlessness,” inspired the terms rush hour, bedroom community and urban sprawl and now nearly doubles Manhattan’s population on weekdays.