Battery Maritime Building

The Battery Maritime Building is a ferry terminal at 10 South Street at the corner of South and Whitehall Streets near South Ferry at the tip of Manhattan. It is used for excursion trips and, since 1956, as the ferry terminal to Governors Island.

The Beaux-Arts building was built from 1906 to 1909 as the Municipal Ferry Piers, and was used by ferries traveling to 39th Street in Brooklyn. Designed by the firm Walker and Morris, it used a variety of architectural metals, including cast iron, rolled steel, and stamped zinc and copper, and the vaults under the porch roof utilize Guastavino tiles.

The building was originally constructed with a wide central stairway to large upper level waiting room. The upper level had a direct connection to the elevated train station that served it, the Staten Island Ferry Whitehall Terminal and Lower Manhattan. The terminal had three slips, 5, 6, and 7, its lower level serving as a vehicular loading area for wagons and motor vehicles. A Staten Island Ferry Terminal was constructed at the same time and appeared as a two slip twin. That building was gutted by fire in 1991 replaced with an interim structure that was replaced in 2009.

The Brooklyn ferry service shut down on March 15, 1938, and the 140,000 sq. ft. building was used by various city agencies. In subsequent years, its original multi-colored appearance was replaced by a paint color intended to emulate the copper patina of the Statue of Liberty.

In 1956, the U.S. Army began use of the terminal to provide service to an Army post, Fort Jay on Governors Island. Replacing smaller steam-power ferries with two larger new diesel-electric boats, the Army required larger ferry slips and docks, moving their ferry operation from an open ferry slip located at the Barge Office, west of the Staten Island Ferry Terminal to the Battery Maritime Building. When the United States Coast Guard took over Governors Island from the Army in 1966, they continued to used the terminal to provide vehicle and passenger service to the island for its 3000 residents and 2000 daily commuters until its departure in 1996.

Between 2001 and 2005, in a 36 million dollar renovation, the exterior of the building and its deteriorating wooden piers were restored and its exterior repainted in its original multiple color scheme by Jan Hird Pokorny Architects.

Today, during the summer season, public ferry service to Governors Island continues from the Battery Maritime Building, operated by the Trust for Governors Island, an agency for the City of New York, since 2003.