Yankee Ferry Departs Pier 25

 by Carl Glassman


The Pier 25 gate was locked, heavy machinery had arrived, and the power was cut. For Richard and Victoria MacKenzie-Childs, owners of the historic ferry Yankee, the message-Shove off!-was disquietly clear.

Richard and Victoria MacKenzie-Childs in the parlor of the Yankee, the historic boat they purchased two years ago. The couple spent a year repairing the craft and remodeling the interior. This year they hosted concerts, drama workshops and other events on the boat. Photo: Carl Glassman

So on Saturday morning, Dec. 3, a tug pulled their 98-year-old vessel from the pier and, for the first time in 15 years, left the Tribeca waterfront without the ferry's iconic presence.

The Yankee, which ferried immigrants from Ellis Island early last century and troops during World War II, is now at a marina in Weehawken, N.J.

"At least our stomachs won't be in knots every night," said Richard. The New Jersey marina would offer a three-month respite from what he and his wife described as a desperate search for a new home for the boat. It will be three years before Piers 25 and 26 are rebuilt as part of the Hudson River Park and before the Yankee can return to Tribeca, if it can come back at all.

The Yankee's departure ended weeks of wrangling with the Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT), the city-state agency that is overseeing development of the waterfront park from Chambers Street to 59th Street, and held the permit for the ferry to be docked at Pier 25. That permit expired on Nov. 13, and with the time for clearing the pier

for demolition at hand, the couple insisted they could not find safe harbor for the old boat, which is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. For more than two weeks they were floating vagrants.

Their problems began, they said, with an understanding that the Trust would help them move to Pier 40 at Houston Street, where the River Project and Downtown Boathouse on Pier 26 were relocated.

"The park originally announced that the Yankee was safe and going to be taken care of at Pier 40," said Victoria. "And that has turned out to be a public statement rather than a working statement."

The MacKenzie-Childs, who design and sell home furnishings, claimed that the Trust turned against them following the publication of a lavish spread in House & Garden, titled "Show Boat," that displayed the couple's whimsically appointed floating home. The article appeared in the November issue, just as the Yankee's permit was about to expire.

"That [article] put up a red flag politically," said Victoria. "It glamorized the life style."

The magazine's glorification of their home on the historic vessel, the MacKenzie-Childs said, led the Trust to back away from a promise to help them reberth elsewhere in the waterfront park.

"She told us [the article] changed things," Richard said Trust president Connie Fishman told them. "She said, 'This is a real problem.'"

The Yankee ferry is tugged from Pier 25 on Saturday morning, Dec. 3, where it was berthed for 15 years. Photo: Carl Glassman
Martin denied that the article influenced the Trust. "No impact whatsoever," he said. The trust understood that the couple would be living aboard the boat, he said, but only "to get it ready so they wouldn't have to be aboard."

The Trust locked the gate on Nov. 18. For the first four days the MacKenzie-Childs had the combination. Then, for a number of days after that the agency changed it. Victoria complained she was a prisoner in her own home.

"They should have been planning for this when they signed the permit," said Martin. "That's when they were notified that this would happen."

As the couple remained on the boat, pressured by the Trust to leave, they insisted that their stay was not an act of defiance.

"We are not trying to be pugnacious, not holding our ground," said Victoria. "We have tried so hard, turned over every rock. We can not find a place for Yankee except in the park and the park has a fixation for us to not be in the park."

With some "jockeying around," they said, there would be room for their 147-foot vessel among the small-craft tenants on the south side of Pier 40. But the MacKenzie-Childs claimed that the Trust left it to them to work out arrangements with those tenants, many of whom had seen the House & Garden article. Following a meeting with the couple, the other boat owners voted to reject the Yankee's move to the pier.

"Everything down there [at Pier 40] is water dependent, and it's about getting on the waterways," said Mike Davis, executive director of Floating the Apple, a non-profit rowing organization for youths. 'The Yankee's function, from what we got from the article, is that it seemed to be very ancillary." Davis added that he was concerned that the large boat would make it difficult to keep an eye on young people paddling near the pier.

The MacKenzie-Childs did win the support of Community Board 2, which voted last month to allow the Yankee to berth for a few months at Pier 40.

"The Trust has a responsibility to maintain historic vessels in the park and they should make and effort to find space in the park," said Arthur Schwartz, chairman of CB2's Waterfront Committee.

Jimmy Gallagher, the Yankee's former owner who brought the boat to Pier 25 in 1990, called the Trust "foolish and shortsighted" for its means of pressuring the couple. But he faulted the MacKenzie-Childs for making the boat "more like their home than a restoration project." And he said they should have developed political allies among historic boat aficionados and others. "They haven't gotten to know anybody," Gallagher said. "They don't have a constituency to help them."

Among the Yankee's biggest supporters is Julie Nadel, an HRPT board member who tried last month to drum up backing for the ferry to stay in the park's waters. The Trust's actions, she said, showed a lack of will to keep historic boats in the park.

"These vessels really matter on the waterfront," Nadel said. "This is not just any old boat."