Ask the average American anywhere in the country to answer the association question Staten Island and you get Ferry in immediate response. what is regularly billed as America's favorite boatride- not least because a round trip still costs an astonishing twenty-five cents- is the last public survivor of New York Harbor's once immense fleet of those doughty double-ended ferryboats. Dozens of ferryboats in a myriad of liveries crossed the harbor's waterways as recently as one generation ago Most have vanished as though they ...
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Ask the average American anywhere in the country to answer the association question Staten Island and you get Ferry in immediate response. what is regularly billed as America's favorite boatride- not least because a round trip still costs an astonishing twenty-five cents- is the last public survivor of New York Harbor's once immense fleet of those doughty double-ended ferryboats. Dozens of ferryboats in a myriad of liveries crossed the harbor's waterways as recently as one generation ago Most have vanished as though they never were, leaving in their ghostly wakes only fading memories and a few gorgeously restored ferry terminals. The handsomest of these terminals, on the New Jersey side of the Hudson, is probably the one dubbed by Christopher Morley the Piazza San Lackawanna. Over and Back captures definatively nearly two centuries of ferryboating in New York Harbor, by a master narrator of the history of transportation in America. In stories, charts, maps, photographs, diagrams, route lists, fleet rosters, and in the histories of some four hundred ferryboats, Brian J. Cudahy captures the whole tale as concisely as one could hope. The transportation expert, the ferry buff, the model builder, the urban historian: each will find grist for his or her mill. The photographs capture a highly significant footnote in America's past and present; the colored illustrations preserve some of the stylish rigs in which the owners garbed their boats, despite coal soot, oil smudge, and urban grime. Fully a third of the book comprises the most complete statistical compilation that the nation's public and private archives permit. The data show, among other things, that some of the former workhorses of New York Harbor are filling utilitarian or social roles elsewhere in the United States and overseas, and that the newest boats in the harbor began life along the Gulf of Mexico and in New England.
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Add this copy of Over and Back: the History of Ferryboats in Ny Harbor to cart. $16.25, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Brownstown, MI, UNITED STATES, published 1990 by Fordham University Press.
Add this copy of Over and Back: the History of Ferryboats in New York to cart. $31.50, very good condition, Sold by Powell's Books Chicago rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Chicago, IL, UNITED STATES, published 1990 by Fordham University Press.
Add this copy of Over and Back to cart. $40.00, very good condition, Sold by GarnetBooks rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newark, NJ, UNITED STATES, published 1990 by Fordham University Press.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good in very good + jacket. The History of Ferryboats in New York Harbor. 4to. [8], 472 pp. Bound in full gray cloth in illustrated dust jacket. Full-color and black and white photographs. Very Good, minor age-toning to pages and edges of binding, notes in pencil to margins of several pages (mostly in the appendices), in Very Good+ dust jacket with light wear to extremities.
Add this copy of Over and Back: the History of Ferryboats in New York to cart. $40.00, like new condition, Sold by Argonaut Book Shop rated 1.0 out of 5 stars, ships from San Francisco, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1990 by Fordham Univ Press.
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Square quarto. 472pp. Appendices. Index. Numerous photographs and maps throughout. Gray cloth with black lettering on spine. A very fine copy in fine pictorial dust jacket.
Add this copy of Over and Back: the History of Ferryboats in New York to cart. $59.99, fair condition, Sold by Wonder Book - Member ABAA/ILAB rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Frederick, MD, UNITED STATES, published 1990 by Fordham University Press.
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Acceptable. First edition copy. Collectible-Acceptable. Acceptable dust jacket. In protective mylar cover. NOT AVAILABLE FOR SHIPMENT OUTSIDE OF THE UNITED STATES.
Add this copy of Over and Back: the History of Ferryboats in New York to cart. $90.00, like new condition, Sold by J Mercurio Books Maps & Prints rated 1.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Garrison, NY, UNITED STATES, published 1990 by Fordham University Press.
Add this copy of Over and Back: the History of Ferryboats in New York to cart. $92.12, new condition, Sold by GridFreed rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from North Las Vegas, NV, UNITED STATES, published 1990 by Fordham University Press.
Over and Back has been one of my most prized possessions for several years now. I was surprised to find that it had no review on Alibris. Since it does not I will take some time to weigh in on my opinion.
Brian Cudahy is one of the greatest American authors of transportation subject matter who has ever lived and Over and Back is without question one of his greatest works.
Aspects of material culture...the machines and the structures which inform men's surroundings in time and place and which ultimately enable his forward progress...of those things which we all too often take for granted including the lowly and utilitarian ferryboat... attention must be paid. Historians and those interested in American Maritime Enterprise and Regional Commerce know just how supremely important is the Port of New York and what the engine powered double-ender ferries meant to that vital city. What Cudahy ambitiously attempts is no less than the identification and cursory history of EVERY ONE of the cities private and municipal double-ender ferryboats since the inception of steam power. Aditionally, he also discusses all of the operators and all of the routes over which these ferries ran (about 200 years of history). How well he succeeds may only be known by Cudahy himself, since no one else alive knows as much or has invested as much time and energy in the undertaking.
In my perfect world this author would perform the same treatment with other East Coast Cities such as Philadelphia and Boston, which also had extensive ferry operations, though by no means to the extent of New York.
If you hold any interest in maritime commerce, water-borne transit, New York history or if you simply enjoy the intersection of deep scholarship and accessibly great writing than this is surely the book that you never knew you always wanted! A+
