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Hoboken Ferry Co. signed by Emanuel Lehman - Stock Certificate

Inv# AG1029   Stock
Hoboken Ferry Co. signed by Emanuel Lehman - Stock Certificate
State(s): New Jersey
Years: 1890's

Emanuel Lehman, Merchant, Lehman signs this attractive New Jersey 1890’s stock at front. His business interests were extensive. Signature is hole cancelled but mostly unaffected. Quite Rare! Excellent Condition. From the Syracuse University Collection.

 

Emanuel Lehman (1827-1915) Lehman, a native of the village of Rimpar, near Wurzburg, Germany, was born Feb. 15, 1827. His parents, who were of German-Hebrew descent, gave their son a sound training both at home and in the high school in Wurzburg and the lad then entered upon the practical work of life. At that period, many Germans had learned of the better opportunities presented by the new world and were exchanging homes in the fatherland for a residence in the Southern States. Following this movement, Mr. Lehman sailed for America in 1847 and joined his brother Henry, a merchant in Montgomery, Ala., since 1844, in the management of a general store. They were diligent and hard working men, and as they prospered drifted naturally into a factorage and cotton business. To enable a cotton planter to cultivate his crop, it is necessary for him to resort to some neighboring general merchant, who will advance to him a large amount of supplies and carry him along to the time when the crop can be harvested and sold. The intimate relations of the Lehman Bro's with the cotton planters resulted in the development of an extensive trade, both in supplies and in cotton.

In 1856, the Lehman Bro's found themselves compelled by a growing business to establish a house in New York City, and Emanuel Lehman was placed in charge of it. The Civil War caused a serious interruption in the operations of the New York house, but, in 1865, it was re-established by Emanuel Lehman, the younger brother, Mayer, remaining in Montgomery for a while in charge of the Southern business, which was conducted under the name of Lehman, Durr & Co. They also established a commission business in New Orleans in 1865 under the title of Lehman, Newgass & Co., now known as Lehman, Stern & Co. All three firms were prominent in their respective cities and dealt in cotton, sugar, coffee, etc.

After the War, the brothers Lehman devoted themselves to a task which had enlisted the sympathy and active interest of every progressive and public-spirited man in the South, namely, a revival of the interests prostrated by the War and a development of the theretofore scarcely exploited natural resources of the region. In 1865, the State of Alabama being impoverished, the Lehman Bro's furnished $100,000 to defray the expenses of the first convention, held under the reconstruction act, and afterward acted as fiscal agents for the State, retaining this relation until Alabama came under the control of the Radicals, about 1871. By their investments, they promoted the reorganization of railroad companies, the improvement of real estate, the building of iron furnaces and other factories, and the opening of coal mines.  They were also principal owners of two excellent and prosperous cotton mills, one operated by The Tallassee Falls Manufacturing Co., near Montgomery; the other, the Lane Mills in New Orleans.

Mr. Lehman was a director of The Mercantile National Bank, The Queens County Bank on Long Island, The Alabama Mineral Land Co., The Berry-Boice Cattle Co., The Metropolitan Ferry Co., and The Tenth & Twenty-third Streets Railroad Co., and The Third Avenue Railroad.

The Hoboken Ferry Company was a subsidiary of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (DL&W). The company had a fleet of six ferryboats when it ceased operations in 1967. These vessels took their names from principal stations on the DL&W RR's main line from Hoboken, NJ to Buffalo, NY. Three of these - the Elmira, Scranton, and Pocono (née Scandinavia) - the Binghamton's sisters, were also built in 1905. (Another, the Ithaca, was destroyed by fire in 1946.) Of these, the Binghamton is now the only survivor. Please specify color. The Binghamton's engine, a 4 cylinder, double compound, marine steam engine, is of an axially symmetric design, like the double ended ferryboat Binghamton. Double compound engines were superseded by more efficient Triple expansion steam engines.

The Binghamton was a ferryboat that transported passengers across the Hudson River between Manhattan and Hoboken from 1905 to 1967. Moored in 1971 at Edgewater, Bergen County, New Jersey, United States, the ship was operated as a floating restaurant from 1975 to 2007. In 2017, following ten years of damage that effectively rendered the boat unrestorable, the ferry was dismantled. No structural components were salvaged.

Binghamton was built for the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad's Hoboken Ferry Company to carry 986 passengers and their vehicles. Added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 9, 1982, the Binghamton was possibly the last surviving steam ferry built to serve New York Harbor, where commercial steam navigation and double-ended steam ferries got their start, and which was profoundly shaped by vessels of this kind.

Until the Pennsylvania Railroad built Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan and tunneled under the Hudson River, all New York-bound rail lines from the west terminated at the New Jersey shoreline of New York Harbor. Accordingly, a number of independent and railroad-affiliated ferry companies provided passenger and light freight service across the harbor. One particular type of ferryboat, the "double-ender," was especially common in New York Harbor.

Steam navigation met its first commercial success in New York Harbor, with the voyage of Robert Fulton's North River Steamboat (Clermont) from New York to Albany in 1807. Four years later, in 1811, John Stevens inaugurated what is thought to be the world's first steam ferry service on the Hudson River between Hoboken and Manhattan with the vessel Juliana. The first American double-ended ferries appeared the following year with the paddle-wheelers Jersey and York of Robert Fulton's York & Jersey Steamboat Ferry Company. Excellent for transporting vehicles, the double-enders were well adapted to New York Harbor, where there was considerable demand for speed and efficiency (vehicles could drive on and off from either end, and time-consuming turns were not necessary). It has been estimated that over 400 double-ended ferries operated in New York Harbor during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The peak years were 1906-1908 when approximately 150 double-ended ferries were in service in the Harbor.

The Hoboken Ferry Company was a subsidiary of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (DL&W). The company had a fleet of six ferryboats when it ceased operations in 1967. These vessels took their names from principal stations on the DL&W RR's main line from Hoboken, New Jersey to Buffalo, New York. Three of these - the Elmira, Scranton, and Pocono (née Scandinavia) - the Binghamton's sisters, were also built in 1905. (Another, the Ithaca, was destroyed by fire in 1946.) Of these, the Binghamton was the last survivor.

The Binghamton's engine: 4 cylinder, double compound, marine steam engine. Like the double ended ferryboat Binghamton, this engine is of an axially symmetric design. Double compound engines were superseded by more efficient Triple expansion steam engines.

The Binghamton (Hull #49) was one of five identical screw-propeller, double-ended ferryboats built by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry-dock Company at Newport News, Virginia in 1904–05 to designs by Gardner & Cox, naval architects. She was launched on February 20, 1905, with Miss Charlotte Emery, daughter of John M. Emery, the newly promoted superintendent of the Hoboken Ferry Company and Ferry Department of the DL&W, serving as her sponsor. The Binghamton was completed a month later and left the Newport News yard on March 25 for the trip to Hoboken, New Jersey. She was placed in commission on April 3. Her Captain for the first crossing was Oren D. Relyea.

Her normal run was from the Hoboken Terminal to Barclay Street, a twelve-minute journey of approximately 1 and 3/4 miles, a trip made continuously nearly every day for more than sixty years (on occasion she substituted on the Hoboken - 23rd Street run).

As alternate methods of travel across the Harbor were implemented, ferry transport diminished. The opening of the Pennsylvania Railroad line to Penn Station in Manhattan (1907); the Hudson and Manhattan Rapid Transit Line (1907); the Holland and Lincoln tunnels (1927; 1937); and the George Washington Bridge (1931) all contributed to the decline of the ferries. In 1960, the DL&W RR merged with the Erie Railroad to form the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad. The last ferry crossing of the Hoboken company, in operation since 1821, took place on November 22, 1967, when the railroad closed its trans-Hudson operations and offered its ferries for sale. The Erie-Lackawanna Railroad eventually filed for bankruptcy before being absorbed into Conrail in 1976.

Hudson River ferry service later experienced a revival, beginning with services provided by NY Waterway in December 1986. These services are maintained by small, single-ended diesel-powered pedestrian ferries that carry on the tradition of their steam-powered predecessors. Traditional double-ended ferries (diesel-powered) meanwhile continue to serve in New York Harbor on the Staten Island Ferry.

In 1948, Marathon Pictures released a crime drama titled Close-Up. A "B" production, it was shot entirely in Manhattan. The film includes a dramatic pursuit scene shot outside of the Hoboken Ferry terminal, at Barclay Street, and on board the ferryboat Binghamton itself. Detailed interiors and exteriors of the ferryboat appear in this scene, as well as passengers and deckhands. The film starred Alan Baxter.

The Binghamton was acquired in 1969 by Edward Russo, an Edgewater, NJ contractor, for conversion into a restaurant. Russo planned large dining rooms on the Upper and Main decks, plus two pubs in the former engine room. He leased a berth at Edgewater, NJ, and scheduled a grand opening for Labor Day, 1970. But a tug strike and delays in dredging her berth at Edgewater indefinitely postponed these plans.

The Binghamton moved to Edgewater in 1971. Unable to find a concessionaire to operate the restaurant, Russo relinquished control of the vessel in 1973. In late 1974, the Binghamton was sold to Ferry Binghamton Inc., of Hackensack, New Jersey, for conversion to a restaurant and nightclub. On February 28, 1975, her new owners had the vessel moved to a new permanent berth about one half mile downstream. The restaurant opened later that year.

The US Department of the Interior listed the Binghamton on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. In 1997 the vessel made headlines when its owner, tycoon and former New Jersey Assembly Speaker Nelson Gross, was found murdered in Manhattan. The restaurant, known as "Binghamton's", remained in business for ten years, but closed by late 2007, after which the Binghamton remained unused at her berth in Edgewater. In July 2011 the owner applied for a demolition permit. As of May 2012, the ferry had taken on water and was partially submerged. It was further swamped during Hurricane Sandy sometime between October 29 and 30, 2012.

The ferry suffered a fire on Sunday, May 19, 2013, that was investigated by the Edgewater Police and the Bergen County arson squad. The owner, Daniel Kim, said that there was no damage to the boat. He further stated that he was closing on a deal to have a subtenant demolish and remove the ferry from the site, with plans to open a restaurant on a barge at that location. Demolition was expected to start in December 2016, and was completed by mid-2017. A replacement floating restaurant, named Binghamton II, was scheduled to open in Summer 2018, but to this day, no progress has been made for the future restaurant.

On July 26, 2017, the dismantling of the ferry began. Efforts to save the pilot houses were in vain when the demolition crew damaged the pilot houses in the process of removing them from the ferryboat's roof.

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A stock certificate is issued by businesses, usually companies. A stock is part of the permanent finance of a business. Normally, they are never repaid, and the investor can recover his/her money only by selling to another investor. Most stocks, or also called shares, earn dividends, at the business's discretion, depending on how well it has traded. A stockholder or shareholder is a part-owner of the business that issued the stock certificates.

Item ordered may not be exact piece shown. All original and authentic.
Price: $375.00