Brooklyn Timeline: Brooklyn Heights
- A painting of the Fulton Ferry from 1830. That looks like a fun commute! Cleaner than the C train anyway.
1814: The Launching of the Fulton Ferry
The Fulton Ferry—named after Hezekiah Pierrepont’s friend Robert Fulton, who not incidentally, also invented the mechanized ferry boat—revolutionized travel between Brooklyn and Manhattan. Suddenly, instead of waiting twenty minutes to get from one place to another, you could do it in eight or twelve. This really solidified Brooklyn Heights as a commuter suburb of Manhattan and as a place for young professionals to live. And, thus, the yuppie was born. And did those yuppies have to leave behind their early 1800s version of the Audi SUV? Oh, no. “Each of the ferries was large enough to accommodate two hundred passengers and numerous horses and wagons and fast enough to make the crossing in eight minutes.” You never want to have to leave your horses behind. The ferry was beloved by many famous Brooklynites, though. Not the least of whom was Walt Whitman, who wrote the beautiful “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.”
What is it, then, between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?
Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not.