Strolling on the East River, 1867
As we posted recently, the Coast Guard has been busy breaking ice in New York Harbor. The current forecasts suggest that the frigid weather is likely to continue for several more weeks, so the ice breaking is also expected to persist. Nevertheless, it has been far worse in the past. Even the recent past. In 2015, ferry traffic was interrupted by heavy ice in New York’s East River, and sections of the Hudson River partially froze over. And that is nothing compared to conditions in the late 18th and 19th centuries.
When the Harbor Froze
Despite tidal currents that can run up to four knots, New York’s East River froze solid at least eight times between 1780 and 1888. The East River isn’t actually a river. It is a tidal strait connecting Upper New York Bay to Long Island Sound. Nevertheless, it froze often enough so that after the particularly hard winter of 1866-1867, there was a public outcry that led ultimately to the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.
People continued to walk across the frozen East River even after the Brooklyn Bridge was completed in 1883. In the hard winter of 1888, the New York Times reported: The ice was fully six inches thick and covered with two inches of hard snow” and “was solid from shore to shore.” That day, New Yorkers tested the strength of the ice and “paid a boy his two-cent fee for the use of his ladder” to get on the ice on the Brooklyn side… when they reached Manhattan, they found a young employee of the fish market with a thriving side business, charging 5 cents to use the ladder he secured to help people up to land. Continue reading
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