Tug boats seem to have a personality of their own. Those have to be pretty old. I can't see them making wood tugboats after the turn of the century.
It would be neat to have a registry of the boats that have been "checked in" over the years. It's out there somewhere.
Dave, most "ghosts" are in our heads. I've found that when you are in a creepy place, your senses are dialed in to every sound, movement, smell etc. I'm not saying that it's NOT haunted. If you go there in the dead of night by yourself without a flashlight, it might as well be.
My grandmother cheated death there in the mid forties. She got T.B and was there for years. My dad and his father were not allowed near her. My grandmother would wave to them from the solarium on the roof; that was as close as they were allowed to get. My grandmother was released and lived to be eighty seven.
This is a beautiful house, but its misleading. While me and 3 other friends were wondering at night we came across a room with a little girl sitting on one of the rotted chairs staring at us, i cant think of anyway to verify this but the little girl with the camoflauge pants was screaming something about the time and how it was too late fo rus to be there, i wont be caught dead there again.
A number of railroad-owned tugs years ago had short stacks, to enable them to travel up the Harlem River and under bridges that were not obliged to open for them as they pushed carfloats and covered barges to and from railroad-owned freight stations in the Bronx. One such railroad tug with a short stack was also one of the very last DL&W steam tugs, the HARLEM.
The old NYCRR tugs, based at Weehawken until the Penn-Central merger of 1968, were perhaps the most famous of all NY Harbor railroad tugs. One of them even had a brief "co-starring" role with Barbra Striesand in "Funny Girl" back around 1967. The NYCRR had one of the largest and most diverse marine fleets in the harbor right into the 1960s. Truly, this pic symbolizes an era long since departed down the echoing corridors of time.
This is all that remains of the old Erie-Lackawanna RR ferryboat "LACKAWANNA". Originally built as the HAMBURG in 1891, she was renamed CHATHAM during the World War One. In 1949, she was dieselized and renamed LACKAWANNA. Her diesel engine gave off a high-pitched whining noise (I recall this growing up in the 60s) and was nicknamed "WHINING WILLIE" by the commuters riding her. She was one of the last active boats in the E-L fleet when all ferry service between Hoboken and Barclay St. was shut down in November of 1967. She also was the only Lackawanna boat to have radar installed on an experimental basis. As recently as the 1980s, this once-beautiful old ferry was still basically intact, albiet decaying and weatherbeaten.
Truly a sad and melancholy scene, one that truly saddens the heart of any enthusiast of classic harbor ferries. That ferry was one of the old diesel-electrics operated by the City Of New York from 1959 to 1966. The wreck in this picture is either the remains of the SEAWELLS POINT or her sister, JAMESTOWN. These two ferries were built in 1926 by the American Brown Boveri Electric Corporation of Camden, NJ. During the 60s, these two boats operated between E. 134th St in the Bronx, and Rikers Island, until a bridge was built in 1966. The ferries last ran on October 31, 1966, and were both sold for scrap to Wittes .